Category: Harry/Ron.
Rating: R. Boys will be boys.
Spoilers: Chamber Of Secrets
Summary: "Something as complicated and bizarre as magic."
Feedback: Please! It's my first HPSlash!
Note: Not mine. Thanks to Neil Gaiman and to Sandra who betaed.
Speaking In Tongues by Lily O.
On Privet Drive, he didn't have friends. He didn't have parents, and
he didn't have clean clothes all the time, and he was a skinny kid with
glasses as big as two moons fallen from the sky. He didn't have
friends, but sometimes Dudley got bored, and stuffed, and tired of
ordering him around or beating him up. And then sometimes Dudley would
tell him things.
"And then *stuff* comes out of it," Dudley whispered gleefully in the
dark, one night. "And if it goes in a lady's belly button she grows a
baby."
It sounded disgusting and rather farfetched, he thought. What stuff?
And what about the man's belly button? Harry decided not to give
Dudley the satisfaction of asking questions. He decided not to argue,
either. "Who told you that?"
"Everyone knows it," Dudley told him with a self-important grin. "And
everyone does it. Grownup men have to do it all the time or it backs
up and it hurts."
"Hurts where?" Harry said without thinking.
Dudley kicked him in the shin. "Where do you think, pinhead?"
Harry didn't yelp. It might have woken Aunt Petunia, and she'd wake
Uncle Vernon, and then he'd be under the stairs again. And it was a
cold night.
"That's why people have to get married, I expect," Dudley continued,
his piggy face screwed small as he strained to think. "Otherwise
they'd just run around doing it all the time, and then there would be
an awful lot of babies."
Harry closed his eyes and hoped that the effort of logical reasoning
would wear Dudley out for the night. He'd cleaned out the gutters that
day, and he was tired.
"Want to know," Dudley said, and his tone turned menacing, "want to
know what happens to boys who do it to themselves?"
He was ten years old, and he wasn't stupid. But he believed what they
told him, because there was no one to tell him any better.
*
He was twelve years old, and he heard voices.
Everyone heard voices at Hogwarts; there were ghosts under every table
and specters in every closet. There was a staircase that was a poem;
you had to walk up in perfect iambic pentameter or they'd start to
buckle beneath your feet. At any moment, one of the paintings might
choose to start telling you its sad life story, wailing at the top of
whatever it used to speak. You couldn't miss it. You'd have to be
deaf, or crazy.
But sometimes Harry heard a voice other people couldn't hear. It was
around him, above him, under him; it moved like water and sounded like
ice. He had only heard it twice. Ron and Hermione knew. Or, at
least, he'd told them, and they'd believed him as much as they could.
Harry saw the limits of their faith in their eyes. He didn't mention
that the voice had told him to kill.
I never would, he thought. I couldn't. I'm not a black magician.
Hogwarts was always too cold or too hot in the winter. The buildings
were ancient and drafty and the furnaces were cranky and possessed.
Harry supposed that no amount of magic, no spell or charm, could fool
the weather or block it out. Or perhaps it was one of those things
that the Board had decided not to meddle with. Builds character,
they'd have said. Harry dropped into a chair in the common room. He
took off his glasses and tried to read about how to make stones bigger
than you could lift, holding the textbook a few inches away from his
eyes.
"Potter!"
"What?" He tried not to sound irritated. He'd almost been able to
concentrate for a moment.
Someone stepped into the doorway. "What are you doing up here? We're
meant to be down on the Lower Acre. There's a Spelling Bee against
Ravenclaw this afternoon."
Harry squinted until the blurred shape turned into Percy Weasley. "We
are? There is?"
"It was announced at breakfast this morning," Percy said wearily. He
pointed at the bulletin board on the wall behind Harry's head. "And
there's a notice up."
"Oh." Harry closed the Standard Book Of Spells and reached for his
glasses. People kept announcing things he didn't notice, mentioning
things he didn't catch. He would miss assemblies, or a paragraph of
notes; a class would end and he'd forget to leave the room. It
happened a lot when there were things on his mind.
In theory you could take a shower whenever you wanted one, as long as
you got the key from the Head Boy. In practice, the boys had to be
herded in there twice a week unless they were literally immobilized by
layers of mud. First and second year students went together in a
supervised group. The older prefects took the job in turns, but there
were only one or two that really watched.
Thursdays were shower nights -- if anyone was going home for the
weekend, he would be sent home sparkling. The floors were muddy; the
hot water was blistering while it lasted. Harry was at the end of the
line. He stood under the water as it turned from cold to frigid,
rubbing his upper arms more for warmth than to get clean.
"Pervert." Dean Thomas spat the word onto the tiles.
Harry didn't wonder who he meant. Derek Skiles was sixth-year and
built like a barrel. He tapped his foot, and smiled toothily, and
stared. Every now and then he would snap a towel at one of the
unfortunate boys nearest the doorway. It was said, when Skiles was out
of hearing, that he'd been known to try to do other things. Harry had
not asked what things.
"I've been trapping lacewings all day," Ron muttered under the rush of
the water. "Neville's stupid newt keeps eating them."
"Do you think it will work?" He didn't mention the Polyjuice Potion by
name; keeping it quiet was already hard enough. Harry looked at the
drain as if he expected Moaning Myrtle to burst out of it. You never
knew who was listening.
"Of course it will," Ron said cheerfully. "I just don't know how yet."
Harry squeezed his own arm, feeling the solid bone underneath his pale
skin. He didn't think Ron was being too optimistic, exactly. Life had
a way of working out right; they got away with things they shouldn't.
They were lucky, Harry thought. But other people weren't. His
forehead tingled. He tilted it up and let the cold water splash into
his face.
*
There were three days left in the term, and half the dorm was empty,
and the Polyjuice Potion was brewing in Hermione's care. Harry lay
awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling. They were going to find out
the truth, he thought. They had to. Because people wouldn't stop
staring and he hated it.
When he'd first started at Hogwarts, people had stared at him and
whispered. "That's the boy," they'd said. "That's the boy who
survived when You-Know-Who"--always a shudder, a furtive
glance--"killed his parents. They say he's been living with the worst
Muggles -- doesn't even know which end of his wand is up." He hated
it, hated being famous.
This year he thought it would be different. This year he wasn't
anything new, except to the first-years. Like Colin Creevey, he
thought, and grimaced. Colin was lying, Petrified, in the hospital
ward. Just a few beds down from Justin Finch-Fletchley. Harry
whimpered softly to himself. It wasn't his fault.
"But you speak Parseltongue," Hermione had said that morning, not
looking up from the dusty, dog-eared page in Moste Potente Poisons.
"Not that I'm saying it means anything, mind you. It's just
interesting." She said 'interesting' the way she did about a
complicated homework assignment.
Harry clenched twin fistfuls of sheets. It was true, but it was so
strange. He'd talked to the snake that Malfoy had conjured up at the
Dueling Club's first disastrous meeting. And he didn't know how it had
happened, only that he'd spoke and the serpent had understood. He
sighed, and heard the sing-song of the Sorting Hat creeping through the
back of his mind, telling him he would do well in Slytherin House.
I wouldn't, he thought vehemently. I never--
"You awake?" Ron asked, peeking through the curtains around the bed.
"Shh!" Harry pulled the curtain aside. "Yes. We're supposed to be asleep."
"Nobody cares." Ron sat down by Harry's feet. "There's hardly anyone
left here anyway. They've all gone home for the holiday."
"If you wake someone up, they'll think I'm killing you," Harry said
glumly.
Ron snorted. "Don't let them bother you. We'll find out who's behind
this, soon enough."
"Justin should have gone to Eton. He was on the list and he came here
instead."
"What do you think it's like?" Ron jostled the mattress as he settled
himself more comfortably. "At Muggle schools."
"Just like this." Harry propped himself up on his elbows. "Except
with more math and not so many mandrakes."
Ron snorted. "I don't know how people do it."
Harry refrained from saying that it kept them from getting killed quite
so often. They would figure it out soon enough. He wondered if it
would be soon enough for Colin and Justin, soon enough to keep anyone
else from getting Petrified, or worse. "Hermione's on fire, anyway," he
said aloud.
"Double, double, toil and trouble," Ron agreed. "She pitches in,
you've got to give her that. Guess where I was tonight?" When Harry
didn't guess, he continued, "Fred and George sneaked me into the attic
over the girls' dorm. There's a floorboard you take up and then you
can put your eye to a crack in the ceiling. You can see *everything*."
He tried to sound more enthusiastic than he felt. "Yeah?"
"It wasn't much," Ron admitted. "Just a bunch of silly girls from
fifth-year. Anyway, they were up there wanking and now they've gone to
brag about it to their friends. You mustn't tell anyone."
"Okay." Harry was used to keeping secrets. He'd been doing it all his
life. Secrets from the Dursleys, from his professors and his
classmates. He kept Hermione's secrets from Ron and Ron's secrets from
Hermione. Sometimes he wondered if anyone remembered the secrets they
told him, or if they pushed the secrets into his hands and then left
them behind.
"I didn't want to do it anyway," Ron said, whispering now. "I've never
wanked off in front of anyone. Have you?"
"No." Harry didn't add that he'd never done it at all. He knew that
the older boys did it all the time, alone and in groups, but didn't
quite understand the fuss.
"Seamus Finnigan did it in the bathroom. In front of Skiles and his
friends. He said they made him do things."
What things? Harry did not ask. "Yuck."
"He said it wasn't that bad." Ron yawned loudly. "I'm going back to
sleep. 'Night, Harry."
"'Night." But Harry stayed awake until morning.
*
He was ten years old, and he wanted to go to sleep but Dudley wouldn't
let him.
"They grow hair all over their hands," Dudley said, grinning at Harry
in the dark. "And if they don't stop then they can go blind. Or their
pecker will turn black."
"You're making it up."
"Are you calling me a liar?"
"No," Harry amended quickly.
"You are." Dudley shifted his bulk in Harry's direction. "I'll tell."
"I believe you," he lied. He didn't believe that things like that
could happen to people. It sounded like werewolves; it sounded like
magic, and he was too old to put credence in that kind of thing.
"I'll tell." Dudley opened his mouth to shout. Then curiosity got the
better of him. "What I don't understand is, how come the woman lets
the man do it?"
He considered this. "She wants a baby, I suppose."
"You don't know anything," Dudley sneered. "You're only an *orphan*."
Harry bristled at his words, a lump in his throat. But it was true.
*
In the late spring, the voice came again. Rip, it said. Tear. Kill.
Harry didn't. He wasn't a black magician, wouldn't hurt anyone. And
he would never, never hurt Hermione, who was now frozen, still and
silent next to the others in the infirmary. And Hagrid and Dumbledore
were just as lost--taken away from the school, accused of incompetence
and suspected of worse. It was almost summer; it was still cold and
gray.
Ron tried not to take it hard. He tried to stay optimistic. During
lunch one day, apropos of nothing, he said, "She has a crush on
Professor Lockhart."
"I know," Harry said around a mouthful of bread.
"I don't get what girls see in him. He's stuck up and he's got a brain
the size of a gnat. I could teach Defense Against the Dark Arts better
than he does."
"In your sleep. With your wand hand behind your back."
"Exactly."
"Hermione likes him." Ron shook his head vehemently. "Why do girls get
all warm over that sort?"
"Girls are odd," Harry said simply. They contemplated this for a
minute. Last year, Harry thought, Hermione hadn't really been a girl.
She was just their friend, and they hadn't thought much about it.
Nothing they said or did this year was different exactly. But she was
a girl, and they found themselves constantly aware of it; she was in an
interesting, elusive, blood-thumping category. Girls were odd.
"My sister likes *you*," Ron said. It wasn't a secret. Ginny Weasley
had been blushing in Harry's presence since the first time she saw him.
"Yeah?"
"She's just a kid." Ron's voice took on a warning tone. "You know what
I mean?"
"Don't worry," Harry said. He wasn't interested in Ginny Weasley. He
had a better idea now what sex was--it still sounded surreal and
gymnastic, but at least he had a handle on the concept. When he
thought about sex, which was often, he thought about some of the girls
he passed in the halls every day, or imaginary girls he'd never seen.
And sometimes he thought about the things the other boys were rumored
to do in the bathroom, in the dormitories, in hidden passages. Other
places, too, if certain stories could be believed.
"Right." Ron picked up his cup. "She's going to be all right. We'll
fix it for her."
Harry knew they were talking about Hermione again. It struck him
suddenly that Ron might like her, might have used his brothers'
peephole trick to try and spot her in the girls' room. He didn't ask.
"Yes," he said firmly, wondering how they'd make it true. He was
twelve years old, and the world's weight sat on his shoulders.
One night he dreamed that he was having sex with a girl. In the dream,
he knew he loved her and always would, he knew that everything was
going to be all right. When he woke up, the sheets were wet and he
couldn't remember the girl's face. He wasn't silly enough to worry
about going blind for more than a moment. After that he had other
dreams, but they were never about love.
Everyone was terrified that they'd be attacked. But it didn't get them
out of classes and it didn't stop them from talking. Every day he
wished he'd find the Chamber of Secrets, and every day he wished
Hermione was awake and talking and that Dumbledore would return. In
the meantime, he heard stories. On Mondays and Thursdays, in the
showers, the boys joked about body hair and sizes, and compared notes.
Dean Thomas told Harry one day that Professor McGonagall was a dyke,
that she offered sixth-year girls private lessons in more than Advanced
Transmogrification. "You can't tell anyone," he said, elbowing Harry
in the ribs. "I heard it from someone who saw."
Dean was the authority in their dorm on dykes, perverts, and anything
else to do with sex. Snape, he said, was a pervert. You could tell
because of his eyes. It was always in their eyes. When Dean said that
his eyebrows waggled and everyone laughed. Harry laughed, too, but he
looked at the floor.
He knew Ron hated spiders, but they dared the Forest anyway. It was
too easy to break the school rules. They got caught and they got
scolded and punished, but it never got harder. Harry wasn't sure if it
was like that in Muggle schools as well, or if it was just Hogwarts.
Maybe it was because they were dealing with something as complicated
and changeable as magic.
*
Harry had been only four years old once, and he had awakened late one
night needing the bathroom badly. In the dark, he'd crept down the
hall, unfastened his pajamas hastily, made it to the bathroom just in
time. In the dark, he listened to liquid splashing on porcelain,
hoping he wasn't getting too much on the floor mat.
When he was finished, he tiptoed back down the corridor. He paused by
his aunt and uncle's bedroom door, listening to see if they were awake.
He heard strange sounds coming from inside the room. Aunt Petunia was
making them. It sounded as if something was hurting her, and he heard
Uncle Vernon shouting.
He's killing her, Harry thought, and before he could stop himself--he
hadn't learned the self-control yet--he began to cry. It must have
been loud sobbing, because Uncle Vernon threw the door open. He stood
there in his shorts, breathing rapidly, his face tomato-colored. Harry
had started wailing louder, sure he was about to be murdered.
That was the first night they made him sleep under the stairs.
*
And they solved it. They saved Ginny Weasley, thanks to Hermione's
notes, to Dumbledore's magic, to their own blind luck and adrenaline.
It was all a rapid blur, a long stretch of emergency and fear. They
had just been doing what they had to do. He survived Voldemort again,
or his younger self. And the voice no one else heard had been the
basilisk, speaking to him in the snake-language. The basilisk, he
thought, sighing with relief, and not something equally monstrous and
black and deadly inside himself. Many secrets came out that day.
It was only much later, after the celebration, when Harry realized that
Ginny and Ron and Professor Lockhart could have died. And so could he
have, and death was final even if you were a wizard. He finished
brushing his teeth and went on to the boys' dorm. There were more
cheers and salutes, more boasts and congratulations, much more
attention. He was famous again and for once he didn't mind, because he
was proud, and everyone was alive. It kept on even after the lights
were out, and by the time it was quiet dawn was only a few hours away.
Harry looked up at the ceiling. There wasn't much of the term left,
and the summer was close. He could hardly bear the idea of being back
at number four, Privet Drive, of facing Vernon and Petunia and Dudley
every day. For three months, he wouldn't be a wizard, and he wouldn't
have friends. It was enough to make you wish yourself Petrified, he
thought, if only for the summer.
"Well, one thing's for sure," Ron said, close to his ear.
Harry sat bolt upright. "Don't do that!"
"Sorry. Shove over." Ron eased himself through the curtains and onto
the bed, next to Harry. "One thing's for sure," he repeated. "No one
will think you're Slytherin's heir now. No one will think it's a bad
thing that you can speak Parseltongue."
"Yeah." There was a pause. "Is every year going to be like this?"
"I hope not." Ron leaned his head back into Harry's pillow and
chuckled nervously. "You may be a grand hero, Potter, but I'm just an
ordinary boy."
"I'm not a hero," Harry said severely. He rolled onto his side and
looked at Ron. "Ginny's safe now, though. And Hermione."
"Everyone." Ron pulled Harry's sheet over himself. "Someday you'll
probably marry her."
Harry wasn't sure this time if Ron meant Hermione or Ginny. He wasn't
sure he wanted to know. "Why do you think that?"
"Everyone at Hogwarts marries someone else at Hogwarts," Ron said,
sounding as if this particular tradition didn't thrill him much. "All
the wizards and witches in the country come here, after all. Who else
is there?"
It was true, although Harry had never really considered it. A wizard
couldn't marry a true Muggle unless he was prepared to lie for the rest
of his life. You might learn to believe in magic if you had never seen
it before. Once you had, you couldn't go the other way. Harry found
Ron's hand without looking, without meaning to. "There are other
countries," he said.
"Fair point. You could marry a witch from India. Or Australia."
"Or America."
"There aren't any wizards in America."
"They've got everything in America," Harry said; it was a fact that
everybody knew.
"Not wizards. They've got superheroes instead. I've read about it.
And they have cowboys and Indians and spacemen. Motorcycle gangs and
surfers and the lot, and a million McDonald's restaurants. They don't
have room to grow their own wizards."
Harry tried to imagine cowboys and aliens eating cheeseburgers together
at a picnic. "Well, we could always be the first."
"We're weird enough," Ron agreed. His face was inches away, close
enough that Harry could see his freckles, could see his smile even
without his glasses on. Later, when Ron's hands and mouth were on him
and Harry's eyes were closed, he could still see the smile.
The two children slept with their arms draped around each other. They
snored in rhythm, and they had the exact same dreams.
*
On Privet Drive, everything was as bad as he thought it would be,
except when it was worse. They resented him for coming home, and
especially for looking happy, healthy, well-fed and clean and strong.
They sat at the dinner table, his first night back. He nibbled a
forkful of burnt pudding while Dudley shoveled the tasteless stuff into
his gaping mouth. Uncle Vernon was praising Dudley's performance in a
football game--he'd conveniently fallen on an opposing player--and
Harry imagined trying to explain Quidditch to them. They'd never
understand, he thought. They were about a mile too thick. For them,
it would always be impossible to fly.
Later that night, but before he went to sleep, Dudley tried to boast
about his girlfriend, a chubby, grubby girl who lived down the road.
"She let me put my hand right up her," he bragged to Harry, a knowing
leer on his face. "She'll let anyone do anything to her."
Harry wasn't really listening. "That's nice," he murmured.
Dudley's small eyes held intense annoyance. "What do you know about
it? You're only a stupid virgin. You're pathetic." He stomped out of
the bedroom. "I'm not going to talk to you anymore," he hollered as a
parting shot. Harry hoped it was a promise.
He was twelve years old, going on thirteen. He wasn't stupid, and he
was cautious about what he chose to believe in. He was still a skinny
kid in huge glasses. But he wasn't going to live on Privet Drive
forever.
We could go to America someday, he thought before he fell asleep.
They've got everything there.
And he thought if their luck held, it might actually happen.
*
End. Any comments? Let me know.
lilyokb@yahoo.com
Rating: R. Boys will be boys.
Spoilers: Chamber Of Secrets
Summary: "Something as complicated and bizarre as magic."
Feedback: Please! It's my first HPSlash!
Note: Not mine. Thanks to Neil Gaiman and to Sandra who betaed.
Speaking In Tongues by Lily O.
On Privet Drive, he didn't have friends. He didn't have parents, and
he didn't have clean clothes all the time, and he was a skinny kid with
glasses as big as two moons fallen from the sky. He didn't have
friends, but sometimes Dudley got bored, and stuffed, and tired of
ordering him around or beating him up. And then sometimes Dudley would
tell him things.
"And then *stuff* comes out of it," Dudley whispered gleefully in the
dark, one night. "And if it goes in a lady's belly button she grows a
baby."
It sounded disgusting and rather farfetched, he thought. What stuff?
And what about the man's belly button? Harry decided not to give
Dudley the satisfaction of asking questions. He decided not to argue,
either. "Who told you that?"
"Everyone knows it," Dudley told him with a self-important grin. "And
everyone does it. Grownup men have to do it all the time or it backs
up and it hurts."
"Hurts where?" Harry said without thinking.
Dudley kicked him in the shin. "Where do you think, pinhead?"
Harry didn't yelp. It might have woken Aunt Petunia, and she'd wake
Uncle Vernon, and then he'd be under the stairs again. And it was a
cold night.
"That's why people have to get married, I expect," Dudley continued,
his piggy face screwed small as he strained to think. "Otherwise
they'd just run around doing it all the time, and then there would be
an awful lot of babies."
Harry closed his eyes and hoped that the effort of logical reasoning
would wear Dudley out for the night. He'd cleaned out the gutters that
day, and he was tired.
"Want to know," Dudley said, and his tone turned menacing, "want to
know what happens to boys who do it to themselves?"
He was ten years old, and he wasn't stupid. But he believed what they
told him, because there was no one to tell him any better.
*
He was twelve years old, and he heard voices.
Everyone heard voices at Hogwarts; there were ghosts under every table
and specters in every closet. There was a staircase that was a poem;
you had to walk up in perfect iambic pentameter or they'd start to
buckle beneath your feet. At any moment, one of the paintings might
choose to start telling you its sad life story, wailing at the top of
whatever it used to speak. You couldn't miss it. You'd have to be
deaf, or crazy.
But sometimes Harry heard a voice other people couldn't hear. It was
around him, above him, under him; it moved like water and sounded like
ice. He had only heard it twice. Ron and Hermione knew. Or, at
least, he'd told them, and they'd believed him as much as they could.
Harry saw the limits of their faith in their eyes. He didn't mention
that the voice had told him to kill.
I never would, he thought. I couldn't. I'm not a black magician.
Hogwarts was always too cold or too hot in the winter. The buildings
were ancient and drafty and the furnaces were cranky and possessed.
Harry supposed that no amount of magic, no spell or charm, could fool
the weather or block it out. Or perhaps it was one of those things
that the Board had decided not to meddle with. Builds character,
they'd have said. Harry dropped into a chair in the common room. He
took off his glasses and tried to read about how to make stones bigger
than you could lift, holding the textbook a few inches away from his
eyes.
"Potter!"
"What?" He tried not to sound irritated. He'd almost been able to
concentrate for a moment.
Someone stepped into the doorway. "What are you doing up here? We're
meant to be down on the Lower Acre. There's a Spelling Bee against
Ravenclaw this afternoon."
Harry squinted until the blurred shape turned into Percy Weasley. "We
are? There is?"
"It was announced at breakfast this morning," Percy said wearily. He
pointed at the bulletin board on the wall behind Harry's head. "And
there's a notice up."
"Oh." Harry closed the Standard Book Of Spells and reached for his
glasses. People kept announcing things he didn't notice, mentioning
things he didn't catch. He would miss assemblies, or a paragraph of
notes; a class would end and he'd forget to leave the room. It
happened a lot when there were things on his mind.
In theory you could take a shower whenever you wanted one, as long as
you got the key from the Head Boy. In practice, the boys had to be
herded in there twice a week unless they were literally immobilized by
layers of mud. First and second year students went together in a
supervised group. The older prefects took the job in turns, but there
were only one or two that really watched.
Thursdays were shower nights -- if anyone was going home for the
weekend, he would be sent home sparkling. The floors were muddy; the
hot water was blistering while it lasted. Harry was at the end of the
line. He stood under the water as it turned from cold to frigid,
rubbing his upper arms more for warmth than to get clean.
"Pervert." Dean Thomas spat the word onto the tiles.
Harry didn't wonder who he meant. Derek Skiles was sixth-year and
built like a barrel. He tapped his foot, and smiled toothily, and
stared. Every now and then he would snap a towel at one of the
unfortunate boys nearest the doorway. It was said, when Skiles was out
of hearing, that he'd been known to try to do other things. Harry had
not asked what things.
"I've been trapping lacewings all day," Ron muttered under the rush of
the water. "Neville's stupid newt keeps eating them."
"Do you think it will work?" He didn't mention the Polyjuice Potion by
name; keeping it quiet was already hard enough. Harry looked at the
drain as if he expected Moaning Myrtle to burst out of it. You never
knew who was listening.
"Of course it will," Ron said cheerfully. "I just don't know how yet."
Harry squeezed his own arm, feeling the solid bone underneath his pale
skin. He didn't think Ron was being too optimistic, exactly. Life had
a way of working out right; they got away with things they shouldn't.
They were lucky, Harry thought. But other people weren't. His
forehead tingled. He tilted it up and let the cold water splash into
his face.
*
There were three days left in the term, and half the dorm was empty,
and the Polyjuice Potion was brewing in Hermione's care. Harry lay
awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling. They were going to find out
the truth, he thought. They had to. Because people wouldn't stop
staring and he hated it.
When he'd first started at Hogwarts, people had stared at him and
whispered. "That's the boy," they'd said. "That's the boy who
survived when You-Know-Who"--always a shudder, a furtive
glance--"killed his parents. They say he's been living with the worst
Muggles -- doesn't even know which end of his wand is up." He hated
it, hated being famous.
This year he thought it would be different. This year he wasn't
anything new, except to the first-years. Like Colin Creevey, he
thought, and grimaced. Colin was lying, Petrified, in the hospital
ward. Just a few beds down from Justin Finch-Fletchley. Harry
whimpered softly to himself. It wasn't his fault.
"But you speak Parseltongue," Hermione had said that morning, not
looking up from the dusty, dog-eared page in Moste Potente Poisons.
"Not that I'm saying it means anything, mind you. It's just
interesting." She said 'interesting' the way she did about a
complicated homework assignment.
Harry clenched twin fistfuls of sheets. It was true, but it was so
strange. He'd talked to the snake that Malfoy had conjured up at the
Dueling Club's first disastrous meeting. And he didn't know how it had
happened, only that he'd spoke and the serpent had understood. He
sighed, and heard the sing-song of the Sorting Hat creeping through the
back of his mind, telling him he would do well in Slytherin House.
I wouldn't, he thought vehemently. I never--
"You awake?" Ron asked, peeking through the curtains around the bed.
"Shh!" Harry pulled the curtain aside. "Yes. We're supposed to be asleep."
"Nobody cares." Ron sat down by Harry's feet. "There's hardly anyone
left here anyway. They've all gone home for the holiday."
"If you wake someone up, they'll think I'm killing you," Harry said
glumly.
Ron snorted. "Don't let them bother you. We'll find out who's behind
this, soon enough."
"Justin should have gone to Eton. He was on the list and he came here
instead."
"What do you think it's like?" Ron jostled the mattress as he settled
himself more comfortably. "At Muggle schools."
"Just like this." Harry propped himself up on his elbows. "Except
with more math and not so many mandrakes."
Ron snorted. "I don't know how people do it."
Harry refrained from saying that it kept them from getting killed quite
so often. They would figure it out soon enough. He wondered if it
would be soon enough for Colin and Justin, soon enough to keep anyone
else from getting Petrified, or worse. "Hermione's on fire, anyway," he
said aloud.
"Double, double, toil and trouble," Ron agreed. "She pitches in,
you've got to give her that. Guess where I was tonight?" When Harry
didn't guess, he continued, "Fred and George sneaked me into the attic
over the girls' dorm. There's a floorboard you take up and then you
can put your eye to a crack in the ceiling. You can see *everything*."
He tried to sound more enthusiastic than he felt. "Yeah?"
"It wasn't much," Ron admitted. "Just a bunch of silly girls from
fifth-year. Anyway, they were up there wanking and now they've gone to
brag about it to their friends. You mustn't tell anyone."
"Okay." Harry was used to keeping secrets. He'd been doing it all his
life. Secrets from the Dursleys, from his professors and his
classmates. He kept Hermione's secrets from Ron and Ron's secrets from
Hermione. Sometimes he wondered if anyone remembered the secrets they
told him, or if they pushed the secrets into his hands and then left
them behind.
"I didn't want to do it anyway," Ron said, whispering now. "I've never
wanked off in front of anyone. Have you?"
"No." Harry didn't add that he'd never done it at all. He knew that
the older boys did it all the time, alone and in groups, but didn't
quite understand the fuss.
"Seamus Finnigan did it in the bathroom. In front of Skiles and his
friends. He said they made him do things."
What things? Harry did not ask. "Yuck."
"He said it wasn't that bad." Ron yawned loudly. "I'm going back to
sleep. 'Night, Harry."
"'Night." But Harry stayed awake until morning.
*
He was ten years old, and he wanted to go to sleep but Dudley wouldn't
let him.
"They grow hair all over their hands," Dudley said, grinning at Harry
in the dark. "And if they don't stop then they can go blind. Or their
pecker will turn black."
"You're making it up."
"Are you calling me a liar?"
"No," Harry amended quickly.
"You are." Dudley shifted his bulk in Harry's direction. "I'll tell."
"I believe you," he lied. He didn't believe that things like that
could happen to people. It sounded like werewolves; it sounded like
magic, and he was too old to put credence in that kind of thing.
"I'll tell." Dudley opened his mouth to shout. Then curiosity got the
better of him. "What I don't understand is, how come the woman lets
the man do it?"
He considered this. "She wants a baby, I suppose."
"You don't know anything," Dudley sneered. "You're only an *orphan*."
Harry bristled at his words, a lump in his throat. But it was true.
*
In the late spring, the voice came again. Rip, it said. Tear. Kill.
Harry didn't. He wasn't a black magician, wouldn't hurt anyone. And
he would never, never hurt Hermione, who was now frozen, still and
silent next to the others in the infirmary. And Hagrid and Dumbledore
were just as lost--taken away from the school, accused of incompetence
and suspected of worse. It was almost summer; it was still cold and
gray.
Ron tried not to take it hard. He tried to stay optimistic. During
lunch one day, apropos of nothing, he said, "She has a crush on
Professor Lockhart."
"I know," Harry said around a mouthful of bread.
"I don't get what girls see in him. He's stuck up and he's got a brain
the size of a gnat. I could teach Defense Against the Dark Arts better
than he does."
"In your sleep. With your wand hand behind your back."
"Exactly."
"Hermione likes him." Ron shook his head vehemently. "Why do girls get
all warm over that sort?"
"Girls are odd," Harry said simply. They contemplated this for a
minute. Last year, Harry thought, Hermione hadn't really been a girl.
She was just their friend, and they hadn't thought much about it.
Nothing they said or did this year was different exactly. But she was
a girl, and they found themselves constantly aware of it; she was in an
interesting, elusive, blood-thumping category. Girls were odd.
"My sister likes *you*," Ron said. It wasn't a secret. Ginny Weasley
had been blushing in Harry's presence since the first time she saw him.
"Yeah?"
"She's just a kid." Ron's voice took on a warning tone. "You know what
I mean?"
"Don't worry," Harry said. He wasn't interested in Ginny Weasley. He
had a better idea now what sex was--it still sounded surreal and
gymnastic, but at least he had a handle on the concept. When he
thought about sex, which was often, he thought about some of the girls
he passed in the halls every day, or imaginary girls he'd never seen.
And sometimes he thought about the things the other boys were rumored
to do in the bathroom, in the dormitories, in hidden passages. Other
places, too, if certain stories could be believed.
"Right." Ron picked up his cup. "She's going to be all right. We'll
fix it for her."
Harry knew they were talking about Hermione again. It struck him
suddenly that Ron might like her, might have used his brothers'
peephole trick to try and spot her in the girls' room. He didn't ask.
"Yes," he said firmly, wondering how they'd make it true. He was
twelve years old, and the world's weight sat on his shoulders.
One night he dreamed that he was having sex with a girl. In the dream,
he knew he loved her and always would, he knew that everything was
going to be all right. When he woke up, the sheets were wet and he
couldn't remember the girl's face. He wasn't silly enough to worry
about going blind for more than a moment. After that he had other
dreams, but they were never about love.
Everyone was terrified that they'd be attacked. But it didn't get them
out of classes and it didn't stop them from talking. Every day he
wished he'd find the Chamber of Secrets, and every day he wished
Hermione was awake and talking and that Dumbledore would return. In
the meantime, he heard stories. On Mondays and Thursdays, in the
showers, the boys joked about body hair and sizes, and compared notes.
Dean Thomas told Harry one day that Professor McGonagall was a dyke,
that she offered sixth-year girls private lessons in more than Advanced
Transmogrification. "You can't tell anyone," he said, elbowing Harry
in the ribs. "I heard it from someone who saw."
Dean was the authority in their dorm on dykes, perverts, and anything
else to do with sex. Snape, he said, was a pervert. You could tell
because of his eyes. It was always in their eyes. When Dean said that
his eyebrows waggled and everyone laughed. Harry laughed, too, but he
looked at the floor.
He knew Ron hated spiders, but they dared the Forest anyway. It was
too easy to break the school rules. They got caught and they got
scolded and punished, but it never got harder. Harry wasn't sure if it
was like that in Muggle schools as well, or if it was just Hogwarts.
Maybe it was because they were dealing with something as complicated
and changeable as magic.
*
Harry had been only four years old once, and he had awakened late one
night needing the bathroom badly. In the dark, he'd crept down the
hall, unfastened his pajamas hastily, made it to the bathroom just in
time. In the dark, he listened to liquid splashing on porcelain,
hoping he wasn't getting too much on the floor mat.
When he was finished, he tiptoed back down the corridor. He paused by
his aunt and uncle's bedroom door, listening to see if they were awake.
He heard strange sounds coming from inside the room. Aunt Petunia was
making them. It sounded as if something was hurting her, and he heard
Uncle Vernon shouting.
He's killing her, Harry thought, and before he could stop himself--he
hadn't learned the self-control yet--he began to cry. It must have
been loud sobbing, because Uncle Vernon threw the door open. He stood
there in his shorts, breathing rapidly, his face tomato-colored. Harry
had started wailing louder, sure he was about to be murdered.
That was the first night they made him sleep under the stairs.
*
And they solved it. They saved Ginny Weasley, thanks to Hermione's
notes, to Dumbledore's magic, to their own blind luck and adrenaline.
It was all a rapid blur, a long stretch of emergency and fear. They
had just been doing what they had to do. He survived Voldemort again,
or his younger self. And the voice no one else heard had been the
basilisk, speaking to him in the snake-language. The basilisk, he
thought, sighing with relief, and not something equally monstrous and
black and deadly inside himself. Many secrets came out that day.
It was only much later, after the celebration, when Harry realized that
Ginny and Ron and Professor Lockhart could have died. And so could he
have, and death was final even if you were a wizard. He finished
brushing his teeth and went on to the boys' dorm. There were more
cheers and salutes, more boasts and congratulations, much more
attention. He was famous again and for once he didn't mind, because he
was proud, and everyone was alive. It kept on even after the lights
were out, and by the time it was quiet dawn was only a few hours away.
Harry looked up at the ceiling. There wasn't much of the term left,
and the summer was close. He could hardly bear the idea of being back
at number four, Privet Drive, of facing Vernon and Petunia and Dudley
every day. For three months, he wouldn't be a wizard, and he wouldn't
have friends. It was enough to make you wish yourself Petrified, he
thought, if only for the summer.
"Well, one thing's for sure," Ron said, close to his ear.
Harry sat bolt upright. "Don't do that!"
"Sorry. Shove over." Ron eased himself through the curtains and onto
the bed, next to Harry. "One thing's for sure," he repeated. "No one
will think you're Slytherin's heir now. No one will think it's a bad
thing that you can speak Parseltongue."
"Yeah." There was a pause. "Is every year going to be like this?"
"I hope not." Ron leaned his head back into Harry's pillow and
chuckled nervously. "You may be a grand hero, Potter, but I'm just an
ordinary boy."
"I'm not a hero," Harry said severely. He rolled onto his side and
looked at Ron. "Ginny's safe now, though. And Hermione."
"Everyone." Ron pulled Harry's sheet over himself. "Someday you'll
probably marry her."
Harry wasn't sure this time if Ron meant Hermione or Ginny. He wasn't
sure he wanted to know. "Why do you think that?"
"Everyone at Hogwarts marries someone else at Hogwarts," Ron said,
sounding as if this particular tradition didn't thrill him much. "All
the wizards and witches in the country come here, after all. Who else
is there?"
It was true, although Harry had never really considered it. A wizard
couldn't marry a true Muggle unless he was prepared to lie for the rest
of his life. You might learn to believe in magic if you had never seen
it before. Once you had, you couldn't go the other way. Harry found
Ron's hand without looking, without meaning to. "There are other
countries," he said.
"Fair point. You could marry a witch from India. Or Australia."
"Or America."
"There aren't any wizards in America."
"They've got everything in America," Harry said; it was a fact that
everybody knew.
"Not wizards. They've got superheroes instead. I've read about it.
And they have cowboys and Indians and spacemen. Motorcycle gangs and
surfers and the lot, and a million McDonald's restaurants. They don't
have room to grow their own wizards."
Harry tried to imagine cowboys and aliens eating cheeseburgers together
at a picnic. "Well, we could always be the first."
"We're weird enough," Ron agreed. His face was inches away, close
enough that Harry could see his freckles, could see his smile even
without his glasses on. Later, when Ron's hands and mouth were on him
and Harry's eyes were closed, he could still see the smile.
The two children slept with their arms draped around each other. They
snored in rhythm, and they had the exact same dreams.
*
On Privet Drive, everything was as bad as he thought it would be,
except when it was worse. They resented him for coming home, and
especially for looking happy, healthy, well-fed and clean and strong.
They sat at the dinner table, his first night back. He nibbled a
forkful of burnt pudding while Dudley shoveled the tasteless stuff into
his gaping mouth. Uncle Vernon was praising Dudley's performance in a
football game--he'd conveniently fallen on an opposing player--and
Harry imagined trying to explain Quidditch to them. They'd never
understand, he thought. They were about a mile too thick. For them,
it would always be impossible to fly.
Later that night, but before he went to sleep, Dudley tried to boast
about his girlfriend, a chubby, grubby girl who lived down the road.
"She let me put my hand right up her," he bragged to Harry, a knowing
leer on his face. "She'll let anyone do anything to her."
Harry wasn't really listening. "That's nice," he murmured.
Dudley's small eyes held intense annoyance. "What do you know about
it? You're only a stupid virgin. You're pathetic." He stomped out of
the bedroom. "I'm not going to talk to you anymore," he hollered as a
parting shot. Harry hoped it was a promise.
He was twelve years old, going on thirteen. He wasn't stupid, and he
was cautious about what he chose to believe in. He was still a skinny
kid in huge glasses. But he wasn't going to live on Privet Drive
forever.
We could go to America someday, he thought before he fell asleep.
They've got everything there.
And he thought if their luck held, it might actually happen.
*
End. Any comments? Let me know.
lilyokb@yahoo.com