Author Note: Yes, another WIP. I really don't know when to stop, do I? This one's a bit odd though. Warnings are...noncon (past) and mpreg for now. Will add more as needed. Also I've already seen and tried to fix the major spacing issues—curse you FFn! *shakes fist*—but please feel free to point out any problems I've missed. Much obliged.
Now this starts out kinda dark, I know, but keep in mind as you go that this fic is primarily intended to be a semi-comedic lighthearted character study though who knows (certainly not me) where it will end up when all's said and done.
General Disclaimer: The Harry Potter franchise is the brain child of the illustrious J.K. Rowling. I am only playing with her characters.
Now without further ado—off we go!
"I want you to listen to me very carefully, Harry. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are."
—Sirius Orion Black
Harry does not panic.
He is prouder of this one fact in that moment than of any other accomplishment he can recall off the top of his head—and there are many.
Never let it be said that when confronted with a crisis of such great magnitude that anyone completely sane would either sink into denial or lose complete control of themselves Harry James Potter could not keep his shit together.
Instead, he closes his eyes, leans against the stall of the public bathroom he has locked himself in, and tells himself firmly to continue breathing like everything is fine, like the world hasn't suddenly just changed in a way that means it will never be the same, that he will never be the same.
Harry counts to ten and, upon finding this an insufficient period time to regain control, keeps counting. At thirty beats he scraps the original plan as too simple to hold his attention, and starts keeping count of every number in increments of three.
The act allows his heart to get back to pumping along at a reasonable pace, steadying along with his carefully moderated inhales and exhales, and before Harry loses track of where he is on the number line—one thousand two hundred and two, no three, no wait…damn it!—gets him to a point where he feels almost normal.
He isn't, of course, but if he were to walk out in public right now he would draw no odd stares or hesitant concerned comments. Harry desperately wants to avoid attention right now, so this is a positive thing.
He presses a hand to his chest to feel his heartbeat, steady and fooled into passivity, strong and stable, and takes a deep breath. The exhale is shaky, but quiet, and that is something of a victory.
Harry is willing to take small victories now, more than he ever has been before, and his sigh is all but inaudible, barely stirring the air, as he sinks down onto the closed toilet seat—the closest thing within sight of the soft, plushy, always comfortable and warm sitting chairs of the recently discovered Potter Manor.
Remember, small victories. Remember the little good things.
Do not fucking panic now, Potter.
The desire to bury his face in his hands and perhaps cry for a little while is staggeringly powerful—his shame hidden and private for the moment, but it won't stay that way, he knows—but with an almost heroic effort of will Harry resists. His forearms rest on his knees, and his hands hang still between his legs as he hunches over, eyes too wide and staring at nothing, but the shock begins to recede from their dark green depths.
Even though he had prepared the test and gone through the trouble to slip his near constant shadows these days to take it alone—Ron and Hermione were great, really, but together they were a terrible force to be reckoned with, especially when Harry's wellbeing was concerned—he hadn't really been expecting this.
Even with the frankly suspicious signs and the symptoms that had only been fluctuating from bad to worse and then more sharply from worse to cataclysmic, even with the weight of misgiving heavy on his shoulders while staring the mounting evidence in the face, Harry had been wholly unprepared to accept the consequences if he really had been…
Harry sighs again when he feels the inevitable smile creeping across his face, wide and unfortunately sincere. Perhaps it is a remnant from unhappier times—the Dursleys and their various punishments come immediately to mind—but when pushed past reasonable limits, limits in place for a very good reason, Harry has always unconsciously and involuntarily smiled.
Hermione thinks it's a trauma thing, and she would be the one to know, Harry supposes, developed from repeatedly facing circumstances so bad that one can only laugh or scream in response to them. Ron just thinks it's bloody creepy how Harry was always smiling on the battlefield, surrounded by death and blood and gore. Harry wholeheartedly agrees with him, but can't really help himself now any more than he could then.
He takes a deep breath and then another and another. He can handle this. The initial rush of oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, what do I do, oh shit, has mostly faded leaving drained and hollow calm in its wake. Harry is grateful for it.
It lets him stay almost detached from the whole situation—something that has always been difficult for him—and look at it through a lens of almost-not-quite objectivity. He can pretend, for a moment at least, that this is someone else's problem, someone else's life, he is looking at because he always was better at helping people with their problems than dealing with his own.
His thoughts are still a tangled mess and there is a distant ringing in his ears that Harry is just about certain he's imagining, but slowly, as he sits and breathes and comes to terms to with a lot of things, a single, crystalline idea detaches itself from the snarled disarray in his mind.
What is he going to do?
It is an excellent question. It is a question Harry does not have an answer for—not a good one anyways—certainly not one he can procure as a spur of the moment thing and justify later, but he is going to have to do something. A decision will have to be made whether Harry is ready for it or not.
His gaze, fixed on a tiled floor dirty with use from scores of previous users, is dry and clear and determined. Harry has never really been all that special—he was forced into bad situation after bad situation growing up and he dealt with them as best he could, and now that he is grown he still deals with bad situations and he still deals with them the best he can.
He is not perfect. He has made mistakes—oh, the mistakes he's made, too many to count just like everybody else—and made rubbish choices and he's going to make a lot more before he's through in this life, no doubt about it.
This; however, this doesn't have to be one of them. He so, so badly wants to make the right decision here, but…
He's alone.
He's never done the smartest things or made the best decisions while he was alone, but he doesn't have to be.
Harry has good friends and allies and acquaintances and even an enemy or two he'd wager would be willing to help him with this. Harry doesn't have to be alone and, suddenly, he doesn't want to be.
It was his choice to be alone before—maybe it wasn't a great one, but it had been one he thought he needed at the time—and now he was choosing to go search out his friends, who were undoubtedly worried and searching for him. Ever since they noticed his disappearance they had probably never stopped.
A swell of absurd amounts of affection warm him from the inside as Harry unlocks the door and strides out of the bathroom stall with his head held high, continuing out the main door in similar fashion.
He draws gazes as he goes, but they are not of pity. There are woman who look at him and long and then there are men who see and look on with envy and some longing of their own. Above all it is helpfully familiar and though they make Harry uncomfortable as they ever do, he ignores them all with the ease born of an age of practice.
Not once does he look back, where in the trash receptacle of the bathroom he'd hidden in for nearly half an hour held a revealed secret—two lines where there should have been one on a convenient plastic device hidden from sight among a bundle of brown paper towels.
The secret is in Harry's head now, no matter where he leaves the evidence, and it is there to stay.
Hermione is furiously worried, or maybe worriedly furious, when Harry sheepishly reveals himself. Ron, standing behind her, face silent and drawn, only gives Harry a knowing look—it tells Harry that Ron was equally worried, but forgave him already—and keeps well back, out of range of Hermione's explosive temper.
Eventually, Ron intercedes with a level of tact that surprises all of them, himself included, by delicately suggesting they have this conversation somewhere other than in the middle of the street—where they won't draw so many curious eyes connected to gossiping mouths.
Hermione looks around and winces—they have drawn a crowd, loose groups of people standing at the outskirts of respectable distance, their eyes fixed on the trio, murmuring softly to each other—then grabs Ron with one hand, Harry with the other, and, twisting her torso in a preparatory movement, drags them both along after her as she instantly Apparates to her apartment.
Five minutes later Harry is sitting on the couch in Hermione's small living room, a cup of fresh tea cupped in his hands.
Ron sits to his right, not noticeably leaning against him, but deliberately jostling Harry's thigh with his leg every so often to remind him that Ron's still there, that he isn't going anywhere, that he will be there as long as Harry needs.
Hermione sits to his left still tense and wrapped tightly up in herself, her anxiety—that he caused, Harry thinks with a guilty flush—for her friend's safety not quite dissipated. Nor is it likely to do so until Harry explains.
He doesn't quite know how, but neither Hermione nor Ron push him. They only rest on either side of him, silent pillars of support, fully prepared to assume whatever role he needs, to wait as long as necessary for Harry to open himself to their watchful, protective assessment of his…condition.
No one tells him to talk but, eventually, a little bit past a time when the tea he sips periodically has been refilled twice and is beginning to chill, and the quiet has become peaceful, not at all tense, Harry does open his mouth and speak.
Ron and Hermione listen like they always do.
Harry is ridiculously thankful for them, to have friends such as this who care for him like they do. Somehow Ron's arm ends up slung over Harry's shoulders and Hermione's squeezes between his back and the couch to wrap around his waist and the two of them hold him steady between them, comforting, reassuring, loving.
Those who looked upon them with less than goodwill would sometimes sneeringly refer to them as the Golden Trio. Always said in manner that was part disgust, part contempt, and with a good deal of skepticism.
But those people were more right than they knew. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were a true triad—a group of three who held themselves together by relying on others and being relied upon, connected by a bond so tight that nothing could tear them apart for good but death.
Harry talks for a very short time and then, finally, when he is done, he waits for judgment.
It does not come.
"What d'you want to do, Harry?" Ron asks, at the same time Hermione says, "How can we help?"
Hours later Harry makes his decision.
Ron doesn't like it. He rants about stupid hero complexes and Harry's own special personal brand of stupidity and how stupidly unfair it all is. He paces the room in angry circuits, but his rage is not directed at Harry, more at the situation itself and the person who brought it about.
Hermione doesn't like it. She backs her position up with evidence, lots of it, garnered from research she'd begun the moment Harry came clean about his suspicions. What Harry suffers—though the word in not quite apt, he cannot find a better one so it will have to suffice—from is, although, rarer than sightings of a black unicorn, entirely possibleand, Hermione stresses, very likely to end poorly for him. Poorly, she expands upon grimly, as in an extremely painful death.
Harry's decision stands.
It isn't Harry's fault.
This is the first thing everyone hastens to say. It isn't Harry's fault. It truly isn't, and maybe, deep down inside, Harry believes that, but he regardless must hold some level of responsibility for the consequences of this thing that is not his fault.
He is captured, too damn easily—and by nothing more than dumb luck. A stray Stunner collides with his right shoulder as yet another fight in Diagon Alley is winding down and Harry drops. The spell does what it is designed to do.
Harry is out cold for a long while. Long enough for a low ranking Death Eater, one on his first raid, to spot him lying there defenseless. Long enough for that not particularly clever, but ambitious and so very lucky, Death Eater to grab him and activate a Portkey—taking them away from the battlefield, away from any potential rescue. Long enough for Harry to be dragged before the Dark Lord and dropped unceremoniously at his feet like a dog brought to heel.
Or, as Voldemort whispers later in his creeping, snake-like voice, a prize of war.
That is what Harry becomes, for over two months—seventy two days, one thousand seven hundred twenty eight hours, one hundred and three thousand six hundred eighty seconds, near as Harry can figure it—a prize of war, no more and no less. An object.
It is Dolohov who comes to him first, to Harry's cell in Voldemort's dungeons. Harry isn't killed immediately, he doesn't know why, Voldemort's tendency to gloat rearing its ugly head again maybe, but Harry isn't complaining. It is only later that he wishes he had been. It would have been kinder.
Kindness; however, is a word Harry almost forgets the meaning of while he is a guest in that place because he certainly sees none of it.
Dolohov doesn't even have to work for what he wants—doesn't need to suppress Harry's struggles or use magic to force him into submission—because the heavy iron manacles—at least Harry thinks they are iron; they buzz unpleasantly against his skin—Voldemort has ordered him clapped in do not allow Harry any means to defend himself with.
It is as if his magic is gone. It is a horrifying feeling, but that gets worse soon enough. Dolohov enters his cell Harry's second night—day maybe, it's hard to tell, there aren't any windows in the cell—and Harry
cannot fight, cannot fight, cannot do anything but take it and try not to scream because he has given enough, enough has been taken from him already, they will not have this as well, they will not have his silence, it is the last tool he has left, so Harry grits his teeth and bites his lip until it bleeds but he does not scream, he does not scream, he will notscream
can do nothing to defend himself. It is a violation of the kind Harry feels intrinsically can never be wholly recovered from, but Dolohov does eventually—Thank Merlin—leave Harry in the cell, bruised and bloody and sick inside, but not broken. Harry is alone once again and it is such a relief.
Then Dolohov comes back and he brings Carrow with him and Harry thinks to himself that he has never hated anyone more than he has Dolohov at that moment.
He does not scream.
Carrow is fond of blood. He likes to see it, touch it, taste it. He rips Harry's back open with a curse Harry's pain fogged mind cannot recall but for a quiet swish of wood through the air and violet light, then tilts Harry's head back and looks him in the eye while he touches all the raw flesh he has just ruined and brings bloody fingers to his lips to lick them clean.
He does not scream.
Dolohov invites Carrow to take a turn. They have similar interests it seems—they like to watch the other work. There is always now blood and pain and the chill of stone against his naked skin and metal around his wrists and ankles—Harry thought cold iron was only supposed to work on fairies anyway?—and Dolohov and Carrow's faces.
Still he does not scream.
Harry sees a lot of Dolohov's face and a lot of Carrow's too. He knows how they look excited, how they look gleeful and ecstatic and thrilled. (There are subtle differences. He knows them all.) He knows how they look angry, frustrated, and plain foul-tempered.
He knows what face they make just before they come.
Harry does not need to develop searing hatred for the both of them. It just snaps into existence one day like it was meant to be there all along. He thought he knew hate before. He was wrong.
But Harry remembers who he is. He holds himself together with silence through the worst of it, clutching to the belief with strength of will born of desperation rather than determination that sooner or later they would get tired of him.
Only he does not know that only broken toys are boring and sometimes not even then. He does not know that his refusal to scream for them is why they continue coming back day after day with new tortures and cruelties to shower him with.
Harry does, naturally, figure this out eventually, but by then…he does not know anything else. He wants it to stop more than anything in the world, but…he cannot give up his silence either.
This is mine. This is mine and you cannot take it from me.
Harry gets to know many more faces, not just on Dolohov and Carrow either. They bring the LeStrange brothers to him, one at a time at first, then together, and then together with Bellatrix chortling with merriment in the background, throwing the odd curse or suggestion on their technique.
Harry bites his tongue so hard he almost takes it all the way off. Dolohov notices the blood dribbling out of his mouth and quickly moves to heal the damage. That's another thing he does—fix Harry wherever he can, the physical bits anyway.
Harry ultimately figures out that he does it because he likes inflicting fresh wounds on a smooth, unblemished body, but not so much a scarred one. He is very good at it. Harry supposes that means he's had a lot of practice. This, unsurprisingly, does nothing to endear the man to him.
There are more faces, more names, more pain.
Yaxley who doesn't like to take Harry—how does Harry even describe it without using the word -?—sexually, but makes up for it in prolonged periods by holding Harry under such creative curses that make the regular Cruciatus seem almost tame by comparison.
It is he who introduces Harry to so many new concepts and experiences that Harry can now say with utter surety—if he spoke, which he doesn't—that being skinned is most definitely more painful than being burned, though burns hurt longer and the area lacking skin went a lovely numb after a while.
Harry hates Yaxley too, but he does not scream for him.
Then there is Rowle, who looks absurdly normal most of the time with his blonde hair, blue eyes, and good breeding. His face is rarely twisted up in insanity and bloody joy born of madness like the others, but he is one of the worst because he is actually gentle in his well hidden lunacy.
When he takes Harry he makes sure to prepare him first—here Harry learns that it is what one is supposed to all the time, if this were a normal situation, one he consented to—so it only burns the slightest bit and Rowle apologizes for it every time.
He strokes Harry's hair back with a light hand and presses tender kisses to his forehead. He whispers things into Harry's ears, too low for anyone watching to hear if there even is anyone because Rowle doesn't appreciate an audience. It isn't like the things the others tell him, but sweet things, nice things.
Rowle tells Harry he is beautiful. He tells Harry that he loves him, really, truly, he does. He calls Harry 'son' once—this is around the time Harry becomes certain he is mad—and tells Harry that if the boy would come to think of him as his 'Father' that would be lovely.
He uses those exact words and Harry almost, almost, chokes on an escaping rusty laugh. It is all so ridiculous. How can this really be happening? Harry is beyond certain Rowle is crazy, but that fails to be comforting at all.
He recites poetry sometimes featuring Harry's eyes—like emeralds but darker, better, more precious than diamonds, dear heart, more telling than blood—and, to Harry's eternal shame, turns his body against him enough that Harry actually achieves orgasm, a pleasure he assuredly does not want.
Rowle is something Harry is unprepared for, which only makes his effect so much more devastating.
But though he breaks Harry more than the others managed—the cracks are there, visible and widening by the day—he cannot, for all his insidious loving words, make Harry utter a sound.
There is Nott, who really does look a lot like his son. Isn't that a strange thought though, Harry ponders these inconsequential things while his head cracks against the stone wall behind him and he watches stars burst in his vision, that he knows this man's son? That they go to school together?
Harry watches his face, but really doesn't find him to be all that interesting. He is almost—and how terrible have things become, how twisted must he be now to find this—boring.
Harry doesn't even need the focusing sting, no matter how small, of biting himself anymore. He can take it with only the pain rippling across his face in brief spasms, but otherwise remains a very relaxing blank canvas.
He had never realized how wonderfully relaxing it was to feel, literally, nothing.
There are still names, still faces, but less important now, less distinguished in his mind. Look, there is Avery. That one there is Jugson. Oh, and here's Travers, he doesn't come by all that often, and how nice, he's brought MacNair along with him.
He does not scream for any of them.
Harry loses track of the days, there is no sunlight, not for him, but he remembers all of the faces. Afterward, that is how he tracks time backwards, constructing a timeline for himself on what happened and when—he measures the passage of time by the intervals between his visitors, not that Harry even realizes that is what he is doing at the time.
That changes when Voldemort takes a sudden interest in him again. Ever since he had thrown Harry to the dungeons and the not so tender mercies of whoever wanted him, Voldemort hadn't cared to show his face even once.
Then one day he is the one to come to Harry. There are no witnesses to what he does—perhaps he warned the Death Eaters off, Harry doesn't know—but Harry and himself.
A vow of silence ends.
Harry screams and screams and screams for him as many times as the man-snake orders him to. He can do nothing but submit and submit he does. Thus, Harry Potter, in his cell, in the dungeon of the Dark Lord, fifty days into his captivity—
—breaks.
Voldemort smiles, whip thin—Harry remembers that smile with total clarity even though everything else blurs and distorts through the veil of his tears and unending agony—and hisses, "Mine."
And Harry, with a voice ragged from long disuse and then torn from so much abuse in a short period of time, can only rasp a weak something that sounds almost, maybe, roughly, sort of like, "Yours."
Harry is rescued eventually.
The Order finds a hotspot of Death Eater activity—they do not actually know this is where Harry is being held—and raid the place. They aren't overly successful. They don't catch anyone particularly high ranked, but drop a few of the more unskilled among the Death Eater ranks. As per standard procedure, only after the clear they whole house do they check the dungeon.
And, suddenly, Harry is free.
But not really. Not completely. Though he doesn't know it at the time, when the Aurors take him from that place straight to the hospital, he carries something with him. Small, invisible to the naked eye, but it will grow.
"I'm going to leave wizarding Britain." Harry says to Ron and Hermione. "I think maybe I'll try France or America."
Neither of them is happy about it. He doesn't really expect them to be.
"Are you sure?" Hermione asks.
"You want us to come with you?" Ron offers like it's nothing when really he's only just gotten a decent, stable job and is enjoying a normal life for the first time in years.
Harry shakes his head. His friends would, the pair of them, up and leave everything behind for him if he asked, Harry knows this, but that is exactly why he cannot—will not—ask. Because they won't say no and he knows it.
He doesn't want them to give up everything they've worked for up until now, even for something like this. Especially for someone like him.
"Ron," he starts gently.
But Ronald Billius Weasley is not to be underestimated, nor is he Harry's best mate for nothing. He just knows that the next words out of Harry's mouth are going to be stupid and self-sacrificing and cuts him off before he can start this nonsense again.
"Harry," Ron overrides him, and there is something hot and roiling in his voice that will not be denied or ignored. "We are your friends. We are always going to be there for you—" Ron winces a bit here because he especially hasn't always been there for Harry to say nothing of this most recent disaster when he was useless to his friend. "—whether you like it or not!"
So there, he concludes silently, eyes narrowing in warning as Harry blinks at him, looking even more owlish than usual.
Harry tends to come across to those who don't know him well—it's a particularly bizarre aspect of his friend, Ron thinks, one that works both for and against him sometimes—as adorably fragile and bit naïve, if not downright innocent.
It's stupid as all hell because he isn't. At all.
Harry stops growing back in their fifth year, way before the rest of them shoot up again during their final growth spurt, and it's not like he was ever very tall to begin with.
Ron mentally describes Harry as a short bloke, weirdly thin, and sort of fine boned (Hermione had once called him petite—Ron had snorted, Harry had gagged and looked as if he were having an aneurysm, but that is neither here nor there).
Harry is quiet when they go out in public, but that's only because he's absurdly self-conscious, and he has this way he sometimes peers at people through the thick lenses of his glasses with his big eyes and thick lashes—it makes him look, swear to Merlin, like some small, soft, cute, cuddly, little animal.
(Not that Ron notices or anything and even if he did he would never, never ever say so to Harry's face or Hermione for that matter because it would get back to Harry somehow and Ron rather likes his nose unbroken, thanks very much.)
What ordinary people miss is that within the truly deceptive packaging is a formidable soul—underestimate him at your own peril, overlook him and witness your doom.
Harry is sharp enough, smarter than Ron though he's never beaten him at chess, and he makes these mental leaps sometimes that baffle even Hermione. Ron has seen it happen and watches in awe as Harry runs and the world scrambles to catch up with him, but only winds up trailing in his wake.
Plus the whole fact that Harry's a freaking genius at Defensive Magic, which despite the name is a really hardcore branch of spell casting to master—benign sounding it may be, it's one of the strongest and most important categories to learn—and the seeming paradox of Harry's lack of skill for it.
Hermione used to get really frustrated at him because Harry would cast a spell—totally off balance, wonky wand movements, sloppy aim—and still pull it off better than anyone else. Ron had no idea how he did it. Still doesn't for that matter.
But that aside, even more impressive is Harry's natural ability to take the most basic of spells intended primarily for defensive purposes and use it to put together a rock solid offensive.
Don't even get him started on Harry's temper, which doesn't flare up all that often and usually only when he's really pissed off, but can be frighteningly intense when unleashed.
Harry's an engine of destruction in a fight of any scale, Ron knows this as a fact, but looking at him now—all soft befuddlement and genuine concern—it's not the easiest thing to keep in mind.
This is not Harry, the Chosen One, he's looking down at, but Harry, his best mate,and Ron will be damned if he goes running off out of some misguided idea that Ron and Hermione will be better off without him.
Hermione lays a calming hand on his shoulder and Ron takes a deep breath. They share a common opinion when it comes to matters of this nature—sometimes Harry needs to be protected from himself.
They aren't going to be at all reasonable about this, Harry thinks as Hermione pulls Ron back. Not much, two or three inches at the most, but it's a significant enough amount to set warning alarms off to someone who knows her.
She's physically moving Ron, all but ordering him to stand down, so she can step up onto the field herself and really play without fear of collateral damage.
"Can we talk about this?" Hermione asks, playing the role of a mediator, when she's actually preparing for an argument—"Debating is a perfectly healthy hobby, Harry," she'd once claimed—she knows she has enough support to win.
Harry smiles, and it's not one of the terrible ones he can't stop from showing up every now and then, but a slight curve of his lips displaying genuine amusement.
Hermione can have the whole Magical Lexicon up her sleeve; it isn't going to matter a bit in the end. He can tell her that, of course, and try to cut her off before she gets a really good head of steam going, but that wasn't going to matter much either.
Facts are Hermione's lifeblood. Logic, the air she breathes. She is, in a sad way, incapable of understanding that nothing she can show him, nothing she can say, no matter how well presented or how much support she gives it, will change his mind now.
She cannot sway him with all the factual evidence in the world because Harry doesn't operate solely upon what can be proven—he never has. Sometimes, now for instance, he makes decisions that he can't back up, but follows through with them anyways because…because he thinks with his heart more than his head.
(This has caused him problems in the past. Hermione is sure to bring them up. Harry plans to steadfastly ignore them until they become relevant. Hint: they will never be relevant)
"Sure, Hermione. Go ahead." Harry agrees easily, settling himself back against the couch cushions. He takes a sip of tea—cold—and pulls a face. Without seeming to pay it any attention, Hermione draws her wand and shoots off a warming charm.
It's actually more than a bit impressive how she doesn't even need to look anymore. She senses it—cold tea at two o'clock—like a superpower. Harry thinks Molly Weasley may be rubbing off on her. From the wide-eyed look Ron directs at her back as Hermione strides away, Harry senses that he concurs.
Ron shakes his head like he's trying to clear it—he's going to pretend he doesn't notice anything, Harry thinks with a tinge of glee, have to remember to poke him about that later—and walks over to drop heavily next to Harry on the couch.
He throws his arm over Harry's shoulders again with a too causal to be natural air about him. Harry lets him get away with it though he sends a level gaze Ron's way to make sure that it has been noted. Touching other people of his own violation now is…different.
He wasn't much of a touchy-feely person even before, but now he catches himself shying from just the brush of someone's shirt against his arm. It's not an entirely comfortable realization, to find himself so irrationally terrified of something so small (except it's not irrational at all the Healers try to explain, Harry listens carefully and then disregards what they tell him, it's so preposterous).
Ron and Hermione are different though, special.
Harry touches them sometimes, just to prove he can and they always hold still and let him, even when he does it at really weird times—when Ron hunches with intense concentration over a pot of what will hopefully be dinner or when Hermione is dozing and half-asleep after a long trip to visit her parents.
They can touch him in return because they, at least, are safe in Harry's mind. A constant.
They ask, tentatively at first, until Harry stares flatly at them after they do it one time too many and says in a voice warm with the beginnings of anger that if they try to treat him again like he's some sort of traumatized invalid he's going to "—curse the two of you into next week, I swear to Merlin, I'm fine. You never did that before so cut it out now! I mean it!"
Harry shakes his hand a bit, flicking away the splash of tea that slopped over the cup's rim when Ron threw himself down and almost made Harry spill it, and blows on the suddenly hot liquid—the cup is the perfect temperature in his hands, just on the right side of burning.
Hermione is in her element now, shaking off the day's heartaches like a bird rustling its feathers until they all fall into place, gleaming and perfect, and there is nothing she sees but the problem and the solution she is sure she can find if only she focuses on it hard enough.
She paces the length of the room once, twice, before halting and spinning around to face them. Her hands shake by her sides, twitching with aborted movements as they try to draw a picture of whatever runs through Hermione's mind at the moment.
They still abruptly. Hermione is ready, her thoughts organized into a complex pattern she is prepared to share aloud, but because Hermione always loved the extra bits and pieces she finds in her world of books she begins, almost predictably, with history.
Step by step, she takes them through it—her words are directed primarily at Harry, but Ron listens too—and she tells them about the first recorded instance of two males conceiving, how it was thought to be a fanciful rumor at first, dismissed easily as it traveled by word of mouth until it was captured in a short series of novellas titled Loste Aryts (most of its contents being complete nonsense), the only works ever published by an old witch everyone thought to be mad, Aria Crassus.
Apparently there are also a number of magical creatures with the ability to changes sexes in order to conceive and that ability passes sometimes to those humans with some of their blood. Veelas for instance, Hermione says, are a fair example of this as the malecounterpart actually grows the necessary organs (Ron looks ill, Harry shudders) to reproduce when they take a mate of the same gender.
Harry is a different case altogether; however, as he has no creature blood running through his veins—Hermione checked twice over—nor has he had any run-ins with any fertility deities nor consumed the mess of potions and completed the various ritualistic ceremonies required for normal humans, male or female, to conceive nor entered into any shifty deals with things capable of blessing/cursing him with such an affliction.
Nonetheless Harry is with child, so logically there has to be a reason behind it.
(If Harry laughs hysterically when the word 'logic' is mentioned because really, what was logical about this, then that is his business and not subject to discussion.)
Harry, while curious, cares less about the how and more about the what. As in, what the ever-loving bloody buggering fuck is this? What the hell is he supposed to do about it? What's going to happen to him? Or, as a fairly new portion of his mind corrects, what's going to happen to them?
Hermione's theory is…not pleasant, to say the least. She formulates it when, in her tireless research, she came across an ancient Romanic text, Bonding Families Rituals Between Warring States, as it loosely translates.
Harry truly has no idea how she manages the multiple miracles of unearthing the exact book for the task at hand right when they need it, but this occasion is no different. Hermione finds the book, reads it, and mulls it over for a good long while.
It's in Greek obviously, and translation spells only do so much for complete literary comprehension, but this is Hermione, who is quite possible the most brilliant witch of her generation and she manages just fine. From what she deduces, it contains rituals—long ago forbidden, dark, barbaric rituals—about bonding.
Specifically, bonding between two people from families with a history of blood feuds—nasty things to get around, those—whether both of those parties agree to the bond or not.
It cut down on the backstabbing and vengeance killing, Hermione explains quietly, when your wife or husband's life is forfeit if they or any of their relations try to betray you. And the most common method of cementing the bond in place for forever and a day is, naturally, by having a child.
The ritual is specific, they tend to be, but Hermione thinks that Voldemort and his Death Eaters may have gone through the motions required, by some stroke of fate, in exactly the right order, and the rest of it just sort of fell into place.
Harry interprets this to mean that thanks to a mystical law of magic and some remnant of the Dark Ages, he got knocked up. Accidentally.
Wonderful.
He doesn't ask her to elaborate on this ritual she thinks brought this all about. In truth, he doesn't really want to know. More particularly, going by the faint green tint to Hermione's face, he doesn't want to have to go over what happened to him in any great detail. Or any detail for that matter.
He explains the bare necessities to the orderlies at the hospital—they need to know to treat him and based on the injuries he had, they probably would have figured it out anyway, better to be truthful about it now and avoid unpleasantness later—and he thinks they might have told Ron and Hermione the watered down version of what he told them, but he does not breathe a word of what specifically happened while he stayed in Voldemort's cold, dark dungeon, and he does not plan to either.
It wasn't like it would make a difference anyway. It's private and no one is suicidal enough to press him for answers. Hermione might have guessed, hell, she probably had a dozen theories the moment she first laid eyes on Harry. She's clever like that, but tactful enough to keep her horror quiet and hidden from Harry's eyes.
He cannot go through that, not even with them, not even knowing how they care for him. It will only make it worse, attempting to clinically compare the steps required for the ritual to what had been done to him.
Harry doesn't want to see the compassion—no, the pity, he could never stand having pity leveled at him—in Ron and Hermione's eyes. He doesn't need to hear Ron rage on his behalf, coming up with creative ends for all the people to lay hands on him. He doesn't need Hermione to try to be objective about it, like it's just another facet of research, when he knows she'll fail.
He could not bear it. Not from them.
"Let's see, ingesting the essence of the bonder. Step 3."
"You mean swallowing their blood? Or their seed? Yeah, you know I think I do remember something like that."
"Which one? It doesn't say here which—"
"Both."
"Both? Really?"
"Really. Both."
"At the same time?"
"Does it matter?"
It just wouldn't work.
Thankfully Hermione moves on without even the barest pretense of going down that route. This is the part she is so desperate for Harry to listen to, to understand. This is why she wants him to stay close where they can keep an eye on him and where medical care is readily assessable.
He won't be able to deliver the…the baby, she says at last after a hesitation that stretches just a beat too long, as it isn't physically possible. He'll need a Muggle C-section or some magic version of it anyway to get the baby out.
Then there is the matter of his health. What if a complication crops up? They are even more common this way and what if Harry miscarriages and he's miles away from a qualified professional who knows what they're doing and in too much pain to properly apparate? What if something goes wrong?
It would be so easy for Harry to lose it, or even his life if he wasn't careful, and it wasn't like Harry had the best track record with his health before. Now it was even more important, and he should have someone with him at all times just in case.
Harry smiles and nods and says that he was already planning on keeping a Portkey on him with a direct line to Madam Pomfrey, that he would be very careful, and surely it would be better if he was away from the stress of being hounded daily for simple merit of being who he was.
Hermione huffs and Ron's arm around Harry's shoulders tightens just a little bit more, only loosening when Harry leans forward to put his now empty teacup on the low table in front of the couch.
"Harry James Potter," Hermione says severely, putting her hands on her hips, "You are not pulling that card with me!"
Actually, Harry is pretty sure he is pulling that card, whichever card Hermione is referring to, he really has no idea, but Hermione will undoubtedly fill him in momentarily.
"You can't just run away from the people who care about you. We'll keep the vultures away from you the whole time, Harry. You can stay with me or Ron's family if you want. It wouldn't be a problem. No one would bother you at the Burrow; no one but family can get through the wards."
Hermione scowls at Harry who feels his face flush under her steely gaze. Oh, that card—the no other choice card. Only Harry isn't trying to play any cards, he just wants to go.He needs a change, any change, and location is probably the least dramatic of his options.
He doesn't think he could handle going through with this—like he already knows he's going to—and stay in the niche he's already made for himself. The cognitive dissonance trying to imagine his life as it is—the paper still writing incredibly invasive monthly articles about him, the people who want to muscle their way into his private business, the absolute nightmare of fame—with a bloody kid, a baby, in tow gives him a headache.
That aside; however…
"I don't want to run, Hermione," Harry tells her, "Just…hide for a little bit. And I don't want to stay cooped up inside for nine months either. I want to go somewhere people don't know me, where I can be normal for a while, maybe."
"You can't be normal, mate." Ron says practically, but not without his own heavy handed sympathy. "You could never pull it off, and especially not now with," he waves a self-explanatory hand in the vague direction of Harry's stomach, "that."
Harry pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to push down a rising tide of anger, at the same time telling himself that Ron honestly doesn't intend to be so tactless, that at heart his ginger friend is only protective to a fault and a bit thick sometimes which occasionally leads to unfortunate comments that unintentionally offend others with his seeming callousness. He has marginal success.
"Stop trying to tell me what I can and cannot do," Harry matches Hermione's scowl for intensity and blackness. "If I want to go then I'll go. I do notneed anyone's permission."
"We aren't trying to tell you to do anything! You're an adult, Harry. You can do what you like—"
Harry grumbles, "Nice of someone to remember that."
"—but we're adults too! If we want to go with you then that's what we're going to do! It's our choice." Hermione's face softens and she sits next to Harry, taking his hand and squeezing it reassuringly. "Harry. It's our choice and we choose you. Just like always."
Ron shrugs his agreement. "She's right, mate. Where you go, we go."
Harry opens his mouth, a retort ready on his tongue for why that is not going to happen.
Ron and Hermione can be every bit as stubborn as he can, so this likely would have gone on for a good long while until they were all sick and tired of the argument—Harry determined that his friends not throw away nearly a year of their still new and shiny peaceful lives, Hermione and Ron just as determined to not let Harry go down alone—had not, at that precise moment, the fireplace Hermione had installed at great expense and with more than a few odd glances because her apartment had no chimney burst into green flames and spit out a sooty figure in black robes.
The wizard hurtles into the room, tripping over the neat black grate designed to keep the ash off the carpet in his haste, and almost falls headlong to the floor. He recovers his balance at the last second, lurching upright and wheezing for a moment before taking a deep breath and facing the three on the couch, all of whom have wands trained on him.
"Ronald Weasley?" he asks, raising his hands to prove himself unarmed. "I'm Phillip McCauley. I work at St. Mungo's."
"Yeah?" Ron has yet to lower his wand, instead jabbing it at the intruder to indicate haste in making his point would be a good thing. "And?"
"A missus Molly Weasley has requested your presence at our facilities as soon as possible. It's about your sister, Ginevra."