What Else Can We Do?

Part 1: The Dreamers

Chapter 1:

'This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.'

~ 'The Hollow Men' by T.S. Elliot

1996

It was habit more than anything else that had Harry sitting on his window pane, staring out at the moon and the city skyline below it. The hopeful side of him was waiting, waiting for those familiar silhouettes of owls with letters and packages in their talons to appear like they always did when the clock struck midnight. But the resigned side of him knew they wouldn't come, not this year, not on this birthday. There would be no cake baked by Mrs Weasley, and neither would there be long and rambling letters from Ron and Hermione about their summer holidays. He would've even welcomed another Dobby stealing his post instead of the way things were now.

Harry pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He knew the letter off by heart so there was no need to open it again, but he did anyway, absently smoothing out the crinkles and the folds of the parchment.

Harry, my dear boy,

I know we last parted acrimoniously because of some truths I kept from you, truths I now understand were better told than withheld. I suppose this is an olive branch of sorts, an attempt to be more honest with you. There is no good way to say this. . . I have bad news, but I hope you'll accept the wisdom of my decision, one I find myself having to make since Sirius is no longer here to make it for you.

Voldemort is looking for you. This much is obvious after the events of last term, but I wish to impart the dangerous extent to which he is searching. It is with your safety in mind that we are upping the security at No. 4 Privet Drive. These security measures will mean that this is the last letter you'll receive before returning to Hogwarts for the new school year. Please do not attempt to contact your friends since they are being watched as well, even your Miss Granger.

Only leave the property if you are in mortal peril, more than you'd face at Death Eater hands.

Please try to understand,

Albus Dumbledore

Harry folded the letter and closed his eyes. He had tried to be gracious about this sentence because Dumbledore said it was for his own good, but as the days wore on and the silence ground down on him, the anger crept in. Slowly but surely, the excuses he made for Dumbledore lessened and finally seemed to ring hollow when placed next to the righteousness of his anger. He knew it stemmed from grief but it was easier to give in. He was tired of being understanding. He had very little left to give. The raw, raging grief he felt over Sirius' death, and the shame he felt for the role he played in it, had almost taken him whole those first few days afterwards. He hated the fact that is was Dumbledore – him, of all people - that'd left him alone with in this. As it was, he could barely keep himself together. But it wasn't only Dumbledore he was angry with – there were forces far older and stranger at play. The prophecy had him in its net and with his scar, the mark of being Voldemort's 'equal', he was far too tangled in it to ever be free. It would make him a murderer.

Would he be able to live with himself then? He wasn't sure. But the thought of what he would pay for not killing Voldemort terrified him.

Unfair, his mind started in its litany, the anger bubbling to the surface, battling a surge of hopelessness, unfair, unfair-!

He wanted to go home – to Hogwarts.

His days at the Dursley's had not gone by fast enough, his calendar a mocking tally of crosses. All he had were daydreams of what it would be like when this prison sentence was over. He wanted Ron and Hermione at his side again, chatting and doing their homework by the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room. He wanted to eat in the Great Hall, surrounded by people and conversation, and not have cold meals tossed through the cat-flap on his bedroom door. He wanted to cry without worrying that he'd wake the Dursleys at night after dreaming of Sirius going through the Veil. He wanted warmth, a smile, contact. He wanted out.

But out would mean people and their pity. It would mean an intrusion on his grief. It would mean answering their 'how are you's when he just couldn't do that yet. Sometimes, when he retreated far into his mind, when the grief shortened the spaces between his breaths and the panic skyrocketed the velocity and ferocity of his thoughts, the past few years felt like a long dream and he wondered when he was going to wake up in his old cupboard under the stairs. But the scars Umbridge left on his hand dismissed those thoughts.

I must not tell lies, he thought grimly. Not to myself.

He was tired of seesawing between this grief and anger, of being shoved to the side-lines, forced to be a spectator of their daily battle for first place. If he couldn't stop feeling like this, he was sure it wouldn't be long before he broke. The guilt over Cedric's death couldn't compare. He felt as if he were free-falling, plummeting straight to rock bottom. Fear loomed over him with watchful eyes. It saw every chink in his armour and waited ever so patiently for a moment to strike. And in that moment Harry was certain Voldemort would try again to take control.

A single chime echoed in the still night. The drone of traffic retreated. Harry opened his eyes and searched his room with a frown. At first it was soft and distant, merely a thudding that filled his ears, but it steadily grew louder and louder until it drowned out any other sound. It seemed so close and intimate, eerily like a frantic heartbeat.

Was this part of the upgraded security?

Just as he was about to stand, his chest was jerked forward, in time with a powerful beat. It left him disorientated, breathless, scared. The feeling of helplessness came unbidden, just like the pain. He grunted, instead of yelling like he wanted to, the pain silencing him as efficiently as any spell would do. He reached out shakily, trying to find something to support himself with, but his hands fell short of the window pane. He fell to the ground, his hands breaking the worst of the fall. For a second he was confused, he had not met with carpet but with stone.

It was so dark he could barely see. With another beat, greater than the last, another wave of pain swept through him. The thudding was a relentless drumming, an insistent heartbeat like his own - and with it came magic. Its sheer force struck Harry like a blow, leaving him stunned and suspended in the air like a ragdoll. His back arched when a beam of light shot forth from below and covered him, blinding him. The magic, which had seemed at first overwhelming, now felt alien, wrong. It sliced open a path into his mind, letting in what felt like clawed hands. They grabbed and clutched at something deep within his chest. Harry went rigid.

For a brief moment, there was a lull in the static of charged magic, like the calm before a storm. A spark of energy spiked agonisingly up his body, then another. Harry begged for it to stop in a broken whisper.

Then it unleashed.