DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter. I am not affiliated with JK in any way. This story is not in any way affiliated with the Harry Potter franchise.
Chapter 1: The Lull
"Then why didn't you stop me?" Draco asked, his face so pale and drawn he hardly seemed human, to Harry he seemed very small, very young and very dead.
"I tried, Draco." Professor Dumbledore managed. "Professor Snape has been keeping watch over you on my orders--"
"He hasn't been doing your orders, he promised my mother--" Draco looked almost ghostly against the blackness of the night, the shining green skull hanging in the air behind them.
"Of course that is what he would tell you, Draco, but--" Dumbledore started.
"He's a double-agent, you stupid old man, he isn't working for you, you just think he is!" Draco cried triumphantly, Harry wondered if he was trying to convince Dumbledore or himself. He looked so young...
"We must agree to differ on that, Draco. It so happens that I trust Professor Snape--" Dumbledore, on the other hand, seemed ancient, old, gray and dying. His eyes were wide, painful, and pleading.
Severus, imposing and black seemed larger then life, taking the stage of the dreamscape, his demeanor seeming to fill the whole world with a black dread. "We've got a problem, Snape," Amycus said, his eyes and wand directed on their prey. "The boy doesn't seem able--"
"Severus--" Dumbledore's voice was pleading, it stilled Harry's insides to hear such a powerful man, his mentor, his hero, sound so very vulnerable. Draco cowed in the darkness, trembling.
Snape didn't respond, he just cut a path over to Dumbledore's crumpled body, his sharp, black, empty eyes seeming to look right through him. As he passed all the other occupants of the Astronomy tower pulled away, fear rippling through them, fear and respect for Severus' impossibly imposing visage. None of them spoke, they just watched him, hunger and anticipation in their eyes, even Fenir seemed almost docile, like a dog at Snape's heel.
The ex-Potions Master stared at Dumbledore, his eyes probing the old wizard's mind, his face was ripe with hatred and disgust, he looked at Dumbledore as though he were a stray and scraggly dog, something unwanted, repulsive. "Severus...please..." Dumbledore was saying.
Snape raised his wand, pointing it directly at Dumbledore, all of the hatred drained, his face a stony mask of nothingness. "Avada Kedavara!" He roared. Green light spewed from the end of his wand, hitting Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, he just watched, terror gripping his heart, as Dumbledore was thrown into the air with the power of the curse. He hung there, his head snapped to face Harry.
"You could've stopped this." He hissed.
And then he plummeted over the edge and downwards, out of Harry's sight.
Harry woke up with a start, soaked in cold sweat. For a moment he didn't know where he was, the image of Dumbledore's accusing face hanging in front of his eyes. He blinked furiously, focused.
He was in his bedroom at Number 4 Privet Drive for the last time. He would leave today to the Weasleys and never return here ever again. The Dursleys were overjoyed. They seemed to very much take to the idea of never having to deal with Harry's "magical mumbo-jumbo" anymore. They'd ordered him not to write or to call. Like I would. Harry thought hatefully.
Knowing that sleep wouldn't return Harry got out of bed and moved to the window, sitting on the sill and staring out at the black sky. He remembered Dumbledore walking up the street last summer to fetch him and old tears seared his eyes. No. He thought angrily. He wouldn't cry anymore. The time for tears was over. He was seventeen, he was an adult and he didn't want to mourn a memory anymore. There were more important things to think about. Like the Horocruxes. Voldemort had six of them; so far Harry and Dumbledore had only destroyed two: the diary and the Riddle's ring. That left four unaccounted for. Dumbledore had said that he believed Voldemort would chose one item from each of the Hogwarts Houses: Gryffindore, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. But what? There had to be a lot of relics from the founders of the house, how could Harry know where to start? Whatever had been in the basin that Dumbledore had drunk out of was relatively small. And who was R.A.B? And why had he stolen one of Voldemort's horocruxes? If he knew where it was then he was probably a Death Eater. But why would a Death Eater take one of his master's most precious items? Had he destroyed it? What if he'd gotten the other three?
All of these questions had been whirling around Harry's mind all summer and he couldn't seem to find an answer for any of them. Finally he'd vowed to stop thinking about it, realizing that it was driving him crazy. But the questions wouldn't comply. They just kept coming. And with each question there were twenty more that popped up. And none of them answered. Dumbledore would know what to do. Harry thought darkly. He always knew what to do.
He pushed Dumbledore from his thoughts and stood up, stretching, and looking at the clock. It was nearly 4.30 a.m., that meant that he would be leaving the Dursleys in about two hours, or whenever Mr. Weasley managed to get here to pick him up, which meant that no time was actually promising.
Harry dressed in the dark, taking notice that his pants were, again, too short for him. He'd grown another two inches over the summer, putting him at 5'9'' even. He was inching up on Ron day by day. He smiled to himself, imagining looking down at the top of Ron's head instead of the other way around.
But thinking about Ron wasn't exactly the most pleasant thing either. He knew that he should be grateful to his friends who were there to help him--but how could they? They hadn't seen the things that he'd seen. They didn't watch Severus Snape murder Dumbledore all the while unable to do anything but stand and look. They hadn't felt the inner helplessness of it all. Harry's belief that the 'good guys' would eventually win was terribly shaken that night. Dumbledore had been their leader, their fearless leader, and now he was gone. The Order had elected McGonagall to resume Dumbledore's job, but it didn't feel the same. She wasn't as sharp as he was, nor did she have a knack for saying the right things at the right time. Morale was at an all time low and Harry wondered if the Order of the Phoenix would even survive this crushing loss. I wonder if any of us will. Harry thought darkly.
When he was dressed he did one last sweep of the room to make sure that he had all of his things safely in his trunk before leaving it forever and descending the stairs, his trunk bumping along behind him magically. After his 17th birthday the decree for underage wizards no longer applied to him and he'd taken full opportunity to terrorize the Dursleys like they'd never been terrorized before. He'd done very little without the use of his wand. Granted, he'd only had a week to do it in, but it was satisfying to see their horror-stricken faces every time he whipped the wand around.
When he made it to the kitchen he found that he was not alone. Aunt Petunia sat at the table, a cup of tea in her hands, but she didn't look like she was drinking it. Instead she just sat there, still and quiet, staring into the liquid. "Uh, are you okay?" he asked awkwardly.
Petunia gave a start and almost dropped her cup, looking up at him in surprise. "Oh, Harry--I--I didn't hear you--what are you doing up?" She asked angrily.
"What's it mean to you?" Harry shot back.
She stood up, walking over to the sink and pouring out the cold tea, rinsing out the cup and replacing it in its rightful place. Crossing her arms she turned to face him. "I suppose you're leaving, then?" she asked.
"S'pose." Harry responded.
"Then you'll be wanting to know the story." She said evenly, even though her hands were shaking.
"Story?" Harry asked, only mildly interested, half expecting her to start telling him all about Mrs. Number 2's daughter who was home from college and had a Mohawk.
"About Albus Dumblydore." Petunia clarified.
Harry gave a start, looking at her in surprise. "What do you know about that?" he asked.
"I know he's dead." She sniffed, holding her head up. "And if you ask me--good riddance. He was a pesky old man." Her jaw tightened.
"Don't talk about him like that!" Harry exclaimed, stabbing his wand in the direction of her face.
She drew back instinctively. "But that doesn't mean I'm glad." She said hurriedly, Harry didn't know if it was out of fear or because she wanted to say it before he could turn around and leave. "He--he was nosy and assuming--"
"He sounds just like you--why weren't you best pals?" Harry growled.
"But he took care of us." Petunia finished, holding her head up again.
"Took care of--?" Harry was confused.
"Of us. Of this family. When Voldemort couldn't find Lilly he started looking for me." She told him, her eyes suddenly dull, not at all like Harry was used to seeing them. "And he came here--here!" she exclaimed. "He knocked on the door, Vernon opened it and--" Petunia gave an involuntary shiver.
"And what?" Harry pushed.
"And he tried to kill him!" Petunia seemed very close to tears. "Dudley was only a baby then, he was sitting in the living room with me and he started wailing, but no matter what that terrible, terrible man did he couldn't hurt us!"
"Dumbledore..."
"He put some sort of--protection around the house. He made it so that he couldn't come in. Couldn't hurt us while we were inside. He found Lily before he could come back and get me when I wasn't home. But Dumblydore never removed the protection. It's why he dumped you here. In his letter he told me that if we ever mistreated you, if we refused you refuge here, he would take down the protection and that horrible man could come back and hurt Dudley." She shivered again.
"Remember my last..." Harry remembered the howler that had been received by Petunia last year. Dumbledore had made her allow Harry to stay; now it made sense. "That's why you didn't kick me out!"
"Of course." Petunia said, tight-lipped. "It's the only reason we didn't give you to an orphanage the second you landed on our doorstep. As long as you were here then the house was safe. If you ever left--then who knows what he might do to us? He isn't even human."
"Well now that I'm going--what are you going to do?" Harry asked. "The protection is probably going to end because I can't call this place 'home' anymore." He remembered Dumbledore's words.
Petunia flinched. "I know." She said softly. "That's why you've got to win."
"Win?" Harry asked.
"The war. That's why you have to win. You have to kill him or else he'll come here and he'll kill us all." She clarified. "I know that's not much incentive, you probably hate us--"
"Probably?" Harry repeated. "You made my life hell. You hated me! My parents died and I could never call you any sort of mum, I might as well have been raised in an orphanage! In fact--it would've probably been better there! You were terrible to me, the lot of you! You never once cared before whether I lived or died, so why should I care if you die?"
"Because you're a good person." Petunia spat out, looking as though that'd hurt. "Because we won't be the only ones to die if you lose. Dumblydore is just the first. I remember when he was in charge last time, before he--disappeared. I remember what fear there was in your kind."
"How would you know?" Harry asked."Harry--no matter how much I hate your kind--you're everywhere. The whole country knew something was happening--they just never suspected. An entire subculture just seemed to shut down overnight. Fearful. Unexplained events, unexplained deaths, impossible deaths, Harry. They were in the regular newspapers too. Something was happening, we knew it. I knew it, Lily didn't have to tell me." She shook her head. "I hated her for bringing him here. If it weren't for her and her precious James, we wouldn't've been put in this position to start with. Everything would've stayed normal. Simple. But she had to go and get herself involved because she was an insufferable do-gooder. She and your father. And they brought all of their troubles to my doorstep wrapped in a blanket." She looked hatefully down at Harry. "And now they're gone."
"Yea." Harry said darkly. He didn't know what he expected from her. A warm goodbye? No. She wouldn't give him that. If Uncle Vernon or Dudley were awake they would give him a warm goodbye all the way to the doorstep--but not Aunt Petunia. She would be cold up until the end. "Well--s'long." He told her.
"Goodbye, Harry Potter." Petunia said, walking around him and starting up the stairs before she paused. "Don't let him get us." She said quietly, and then continued up into the darkness.
Harry stared at where she'd been for a long time before walking to the door and pulling it open. The cool morning air assaulted his senses as he stepped out on the dew-wet stoop and sat down, his trunk behind him. He watched the sun as it peeked over the horizon, felt the first inklings of what would be a warm day on his arms and blinked in the sudden brightness.
He tried not to think about anything much. He found that if he kept his mind blank enough then it didn't hurt so much. If he didn't think about anything then he wouldn't have to think about Dumbledore or Voldemort or Snape or a million other painful things. He could just pretend that he was just like every other seventeen year old boy going over to his friend's for the remainder of the summer. He could pretend that Voldemort wasn't ripping a path through his world, that things weren't getting desperate, that he, Harry, didn't have to do something before it was too late, that he wasn't the only one who could. Instead, he could just be normal. He could just be seventeen. He might even think about Ginny or wonder who would win the Quidditch World Cup. He could think about whether or not the school would open, but that lead back to Dumbledore. No. He could think about Ginny. That was safe. Nice, safe Ginny. And he could hate her for it.
