[[Looking Out With Empty Eyes]]
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: This is for Shira Lansys' 'Speed of Lightning' Competition. The prompt was to write an AU fic. So here you are, and please review!
"Harry, son, come down! You too, Dudders."
Harry shot his head up at the tone of his uncle's voice.
Harry and his cousin jostled each other as they rushed out of their respective rooms and attempted to be the first to reach the bottom of the stairs. They laughed and pushed each other, earning a gentle, yet disapproving look from Vernon Dursley, Harry's uncle and Dudley's father.
"Come on, boys, settle down." There was a smile on his face, however. "Look, as it's your birthday soon, Harry, we wanted to talk to the pair of you about what you would like to do?"
"Zoo!" Cried Dudley, and Harry nudged him.
"No! Let's go paint-balling!"
Dudley's eyes brightened. "Yeah, great idea! That sounds like fun."
Harry and Dudley started pretending to shoot each other, and Dudley faked a very elaborate death.
"This is going to be great!" The cousins exclaimed in unison. They looked at each other, and burst into laughter.
)O(
"That was the best thing we've done, ever." Dudley laughed, out of breath.
Harry mimicked shooting actions. "Pow pow pow! I got you good, haha!"
Dudley lunged at Harry and swatted at his head. "Nah, I was way better."
"I don't think so!"
They noticed Vernon waiting outside by the car, and so ran up to him, both babbling about their day and the number of shots they each took throughout their time. Vernon seemed pleased that the boys had enjoyed themselves, and so patted them on the back and chuckled heartily.
"Well done, sons."
As always, Harry felt a beat of happiness every time Vernon had called him 'son'. He wasn't really part of their family, not by direct blood, but since his own parents' deaths, he had been brought up with his aunt, uncle and cousin's love and support. He had never felt unloved or left out, and that was more than he could ever ask for. More than his parents could ever give him.
His aunt had told him about his parents. They were freaks, she had said. They had gotten themselves killed in some freak accident, and left him. He was glad, though. He was happy at his aunt and uncle's home, and he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Especially not with some weird freaks...
)O(
It was the day after his birthday, and there was a knock on the door.
He and Dudley jokingly fought their way to the door, but Dudley won, and opened it abruptly. An absolute giant of a man filled up the doorway, and he had to duck for his head to fit in the frame.
Harry and Dudley glanced at each other, and they tried not to laugh at the freakish man.
"U-um, what do you want?" Harry asked, stifling a laugh.
The man looked Harry up and down. "'Arry? 'Arry Potter?"
Harry suddenly frowned, and Dudley looked confused.
"Yes, that's me."
"I could tell. Look jus' like yer dad. And yer eyes are like yer mother's."
Harry glared at the man, almost daring him to say another word about his weird parents. "What? How did you know them?"
He was genuinely curious, though the familiar way in which the giant man talked unnerved him.
"Why, from 'Ogwarts, o'course."
"Ogwarts? What's that?" Dudley suddenly said.
The man looked at Dudley with a strange look of disgust, and Harry became defensive. "Hey, don't look at my cousin like that!"
"Sorry, 'Arry, sorry. But 'Ogwarts is a school, yer know? The one where yer mum and dad learnt it all."
"Learnt what?" Harry asked, perplexed.
"Yer know, magic!"
Harry caught Dudley' s eye, and they both started laughing loudly. The idea was ludicrous! His parents learnt magic? What sort of prank was this?
"I think you've made a mistake, sir," Harry said, convinced of his inaccuracy.
"No, no," the large man said. "I'll prove it to yeh." He whipped out a pink umbrella, and shot fireballs from the end.
"You're… you're a freak!" Harry cried out. "You're like them."
Dudley nodded, looking terrified, his eyes glued to the umbrella.
Harry fist-bumped Dudley's shoulder. "Don't worry. It's just crazy talk and flashy tricks. It's not real."
The big man looked amused. "Not real, 'eh? 'Ow about this?" He shot more from his umbrella, though it backfired and set his vast beard alight. The two boys laughed, and were sure that the 'magic' was a lie.
"So, 'Arry. What do yer say? Will you come to 'Ogwarts? You'll be 'round others like yehself. You could learn magic together." He said, patting down the burning cinders of his beard.
Harry continued laughing. "No. Just no. It's stupid! I can't do whatever you did, and even if I could, I want to stay here. I love it here."
Dudley nodded. "Yeah, we're like brothers! You can't take him away."
Harry smiled. "I'll never go, D. Who else will help you take down the Forster twins?"
They both grinned, and it was set. Harry wasn't going to Hogwarts, and he wasn't going to be a wizard.
)O(
)O(
Almost seven years had passed since the offer to join Hogwarts, and Harry had never regretted it.
Not until the day it came back to haunt him, that is.
It was late autumn, and he and Dudley were walking back from a house party at their friend Jamie's. It was dark, really dark, and very cold. It was as though there was an unnatural chill in the air.
Everything felt…wrong, and even Dudley could feel it.
"Oi, Harry, do you feel that?"
Harry shivered, and nodded. "Yeah. Feels like something's watching me."
"Me too," said Dudley, his teeth chattering.
They entered an underpass with broken flickering lights, casting them in strange, ethereal glows.
They slowed down then, feeling nothing but fear and darkness inside. The cold was becoming unbearable, and Harry had never been so afraid in his life.
He turned, feeling the presence behind him, and was faced by a terrifying image; a mass of black, coiling material billowed in front of him, filling the underpass up and sucking the life out of his heart.
He screeched, and didn't notice as Dudley stared blankly around. His face slackened and his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, but Harry didn't notice.
The abyssal face before him drew him in, and nothing else mattered. It reached closer to him, opening a maw of a mouth, and Harry felt nothing but despair and anguish.
The thing got closer still, and soon the blackness was surrounding him entirely, suffocating him its mass of fear.
He felt all his memories leave him, before he collapsed into blackness…
)O(
White. White and clean. Clean and white. Clean.
That's all both their lives consisted of then. Hospitals, wards, nurses, doctors, specialists, machines, tests, words, meaningless words.
They had been driven insane that night.
Neither of them had been the same, and they never uttered a single, coherent word ever again.
Memories were gone, and all that was left was darkness and… nothing.
All gone. They couldn't think, or feel, or care, or anything.
They weren't dead, no. Not physically, at least.
They were dead inside though.
Petunia and Vernon paid for the best treatments, but nothing could fix them.
Nothing could ever, ever fix them.
They were gone.
And no-one ever understood why.
)O(
If only.
If only Harry had said yes to going to Hogwarts. If only he had learnt the one spell that would have repelled the creature in the underpass that day.
If only he had believed in magic, and maybe, just maybe, he and Dudley would still have been whole.
And maybe the end wouldn't have happened.
Not the end of everything.
(Not yet, at least.)
It was the end of the peaceful, wizarding world.
See, Harry was the one who was supposed to change it all. But he wasn't there, and a dark wizard rose up, with no one powerful enough to oppose him, and the end happened.
Everything's in tatters now.
The darkness spreads, and soon enough, it will seep into the general population.
It will destroy everything, and all the while, two oblivious, blank teenagers exist, just about, in a hospital, thinking empty thoughts, and looking out with empty eyes.
They didn't see the end when it came.