XIXIX

Standard Disclaimer: I don't own the following characters, etc. etc.

WARNING! SPOILERS for Half Blood Prince!

A/N: This story contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I imagine that everyone who is here on this site reading this story has probably already read it, but I figured I'd best be safe and go ahead and post this warning. Do NOT read this story if you have not read HBP, unless you're a masochist or something, because it will certainly leave you moaning in pain.

But, without further ado:

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XIX

XIXIX "Safe" XIXIX

"I know you never loved me," he stated and she nodded, saddened by his tone but it was true. She never had. She didn't know what to say, so instead she focused on trying to look at Harry without seeing that man instead, and failed.

The silence settled and she wondered briefly if he had drifted off again. But after a few moments he blinked up at her with alert green eyes and Petunia was slapped with a sudden memory of Lily when she was younger. She had been happy once upon a time. Her eyes would dance and everyone fell in love with her almost immediately. She drew people to her like magic. Harry seemed to have the same gift. He was a favorite here, clearly. Maybe he was her sister's son.

He seemed to be caught up in an internal debate over whether he should voice whatever it was he was thinking. He hadn't spoken to her so much in years. It was a change, surely, and supposedly for the better. But it felt odd and uncomfortable to abandon their routine of silence.

Harry pursed his lips, apparently deciding to speak after all. "Were you ever afraid?" he asked carefully. "Keeping me on Privet Drive, I mean. Did you ever worry that sometime things might happen?"

Again, Petunia nodded. "Sometimes things did happen," she said softly.

Harry made a sound that could have been a scoff or could have been a sigh, and then said, "Yes, I suppose so." He stood up and shuffled to the window, burying his hands in the pockets of his robes. "But you kept me anyway. And you kept taking me back. You didn't love me and you were afraid and sometimes things happened, but you let me come back again and again.

"You know," he sighed wistfully, as though he would continue, but then he was silent again. He leaned against the cool stone wall and looked out into the courtyard. It could be beautiful and green at times, but the sky had been so overcast this year that everything looked gray. It seemed appropriated that life here lack color.

Harry smiled wanly at nothing in particular, and that seemed appropriate as well.

"I was so ready to be gone from Privet Drive," he said, "To be away from you and Uncle Vernon and Dudley. I was so wrapped up in getting away from the muggle world that I never much considered it from your point of view."

He turned back to her and ran a hand through his messy hair and he tried to smile again and it still didn't quite work. She tried to smile back at him but it felt like a grimace on her face. He looked down shyly and spoke to her feet.

"It was really something, you know, what you did for me. I didn't appreciate it then because I didn't quite realize what it meant. And I know Dumbledore told you that you were protecting me by taking me back every year, so maybe you understand how important it was or maybe you don't… I don't know. At any rate, I'll be 17 soon and I'll be out of your hair after that. And I have to go… I have some things to take care of, and I might not be back afterwards. So I just wanted to make sure you knew now that, well…" He took a deep breath like he was about to make an important announcement, "I really appreciate you keeping me alive this long."

She thought for a moment he was going to hug her, but he didn't. Instead, he sat down in front of his lunch tray. Out of one of the pockets in his robe he pulled out his pointed stick and Petunia flinched involuntarily. He refused to part with it anymore, and it always gave her a fright—ever since that first time he'd used it against Dudley, with all that raving madness about Hogwarts letters and half-giants. The doctors had said it would leave a scar, but Petunia didn't know how bad it was; Dudley had never shown her, and would she never ask.

He waved the stick over his food tray, and, seemingly satisfied, shoved it back into his pocket.

"The House Elves have really outdone themselves today," he said pleasantly, and Petunia nodded. There wasn't anything to say to that, really.

Harry was eating his mediocre fair. After awhile, he looked back up as though suddenly remembering she was still there. "I am glad you got to see Hogwarts before I left," he said. "How do you like it?"

Petunia opted to avoid answering his question by asking one of her own. "Where do you intend on going?" she asked, making conversation. It was a moot point, of course. But he was alert. They may as well talk.

"I have to find Voldemort's horcruxes," he said matter-of-factly. Petunia looked at him blankly. "And then, after I've found them and destroyed them, I'm going to kill Voldemort once and for all."

"And Voldemort is…" began Petunia, thinking back over the slips of conversations they'd had over the years, "He's the one who gave you that scar?" She pointed to his forehead, and Harry hurriedly brushed down his bangs, covering it in a nervous gesture that called immediate attention to the hideous thing.

"He's an evil Dark Wizard," said Harry. "He thinks he's found the key to immortality. He's split his soul into six different objects, so that he's no longer really human. He's just a sliver of a soul in a recreated body."

He caught her eye and noted that she was still listening. Heartened, he drove on. "He used some of my blood and this guy Wormtail's hand to restore himself into a human body."

"My word."

"Don't worry, Aunt Petunia. I'll stop him."

Petunia made a face, but said nothing.

"And if I happen to get a chance to kill Snape along the way, so much the better."

Petunia's hand was over her heart. "Why do you want to kill him? I know you didn't like him, but…"

"He killed Dumbledore. I watched him. Then he fled Hogwarts with the other Death Eaters."

Petunia didn't know what to say. Harry turned back to his meal and seemed to forget her again.

XIXIX

"He is more alert than usual," said Petunia, trying to find something good to say about the visit.

"Yes, he seems to be reacting well to the changes we've made. He's calmer when he's lucid, and he is lucid far more often than he was on his previous dosage. The main problem is that while we are able to control his behavior, other," she paused and then stressed, "Issues remain unresolved."

Petunia sniffed. "That little girl who is always reading told me that he is 'The Chosen One' now." She couldn't help but lower her voice as she said this. It wasn't her fault, but it was embarrassing to have this abnormality in the family. If the neighbors ever found out…

"That would be Hermione Granger. One of his best friends, I should think. And greatest allies. She keeps him out of trouble."

"Is that so? Only he just told me that that Voldemort person has split his soul into six pieces and that now Harry has to find these pieces and destroy them before he can go on to kill the 'evil dark wizard'." Petunia had a bad taste in her mouth. She hated talking of such things.

The stern woman behind the desk nodded briskly. "It is something of note that his violent tendencies tend to be fixated on manifestations… That is to say, his violent outbursts are only ever directed at the imaginary characters in this story he has woven for himself."

"And my son, Dr. McGonagall," Petunia corrected. "He has been violent on numerous occasions against my son."

Dr. McGonagall nodded in concession. "I am still not prepared to allow Mr. Potter access to your son, based on their past altercations. However, he has shown no inclination to violence toward any real person in thirteen months."

"I'm not sure about that," Petunia sighed, narrowing her eyebrows. "He told me he intends to kill Dr. Snape."

"Hm." Dr. McGonagall began tapping her pen on her desk. "He hadn't mentioned that in our sessions. Although he has expressed his suspicions that Dr. Snape had something to do with the death of one of our other patients, shortly before Dr. Snape transferred to the city."

"Dumbledore, yes?"

"Yes. Sweet old man. Harry had taken quite a liking to him. He died in his sleep—heart failure, and so young, too. He was only 66 years old." Dr. McGonagall sighed, but then returned to her brisk, businesslike tone. "And did you have a chance to visit with your sister?"

"Yes, I did," said Petunia, wishing she had not. Lily and that man had both been living off of machinery for 16 years since the motor accident. Until the day she died Petunia would never forgive that man for all the pain he had brought into her life—the schizophrenia that his son inherited with all the paranoia and delusions, the life-worse-than-death he'd inflicted upon himself and her sister….

Petunia may not be a very clever woman, but if she had been given a chance she would have come up with ways to torture that man for an entire lifetime and make him pay for what he'd done.

She let none of this show, of course. Ever.

"Lily seems well taken care of," she said blandly. "Thank you."

"Of course," smiled Dr. McGonagall kindly. "Have you reconsidered letting Harry make visits? It would be no trouble to arrange a guard to accompany him between the wards."

Petunia shook her head. "No good could come from it," she said, thinking of the hopelessness she felt when she sat with her sister, thinking that no son should ever have to feel that way while looking at his mother. "Harry tells me he means to leave St. Brutus'. I think he might actually try. The last thing he needs is an opportunity to escape."

McGonagall nodded, appearing to accept Petunia's decision on the matter. But she would ask again. She asked every time Petunia visited, and Petunia always refused. She was running out of excuses, and in a year he'd be eighteen and then they would be able to change his treatments without her approval. She dreaded the day that the matter was out of her hands and the doctors took him down three flights to see what had really become of his parents. Petunia couldn't help but think maybe it was better to believe they'd been blown up by some mad wizard. At least there was a point to that. What point would he have when he was no longer 'The Chosen One', but just some crazy, wasting away in St. Brutus' Mental Institution?

Petunia stood up to leave, shaking Dr. McGonagall's hand formally.

"Thank you," she said, ready to be out of this mental asylum, ready to return to her normal husband and her normal son in her normal house. "I'll be back when I can." She always said that, meaning to return next week, but letting the weeks stretch into months, and longer still.

"We'll have security watch him," said Dr. McGonagall neutrally by way of answer. "Don't worry. Harry is safe here."

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Fin