The world, universe, fate, it's all very complicated. Too complicated in fact and explaining it would take far too long, better to move on. The important thing is that everything is connected. The Universe is like a living breathing organism, some cells harmful, cancerous, others benign and just like a tiny little virus can change a body, the universe can be changed by the simplest little things.
Harry Potter's life changed because of one simple thing: Homework.
The oddest thing was that it wasn't his own homework that changed everything, no it was Dudley's.
"Freak, do my homework." Dudley yelled, his red chubby face scrunched up like an ugly raisin.
Harry had been home for a mere few days then, still coping with seeing Cedric's unseeing eyes when he closed his own to sleep, seeing Voldemort rise from a cauldron, still waking from nightmares where he felt the Cruciatus as if it had been embedded into his soul. A few days later and he might have actually coped a bit, felt the need to do things, felt the desperation for information ruhs through him. As it was he was still numb and grieving and grieving takes place in many ways.
Now, Harry could have just told Dudley, 'I spend nine months learning magic, you think I know shit about trigonometry?'. But he didn't. Instead he said something very different.
"Yeah, alright, might as well."
A distraction, Harry thought to himself, was what he really needed. And that distraction turned out to be very important as his friends, family and godfather continued to ignore him as best they could.
And suddenly Harry had many new things to think of that put Cedric, Voldemort,Dumbledore, all out of his mind. First off he had to catch up on four years of maths. It was humbling to have Dudley have to teach him some of the stuff. All his life Harry had despised his relatives but without realising it himself, somehow he had begun to think himself above them, Dudley in particular. Harry had a mother who had loved him so fiercely she had left a blood protection so deep it would even shield the Dursleys. Dudley's mother didn't even love him enough to keep him from a life of obesity and heart disease. Harry had friends so loyal that they literally fought and bled together. Piers would grass on Dudley the first chance he got. And even if he didn't have any of that, Harry had magic.
Unfortunately he couldn't use it. Besides there was just something tangible about beating Dudley in something he was actually studying. Yes, the Dursleys had never liked it when he'd outperformed the piece of lard but still, he had at least known that he was better.
Now, nothing. No, this would not do. So channeling his inner Hermione, or rather, his true Harry Potter, he studied.
He studied. And he kept on studying. In the summer after Cedric died, Harry Potter never left 4 Privet Drive in any way and it turned into one of the better summers he had spent. Yes, his own textbooks were still packed away but Petunia and Vernon were just so glad that the boy was doing something normal that they treated him better. And Harry, now spending more time with his aunt without just tuning her out found himself listening to things about his mother that weren't entirely unsavoury.
Sirius and Remus told him all about his father and his pranks, all about Lily and her temper but Aunt Petunia sniffed delicately as he loaded up his tea with sugar and the barest hint of milk that he was 'Just like Lily,' with a tone that almost, almost verged on affection.
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever told me." He said, still in shock and she raised her eyebrow in a gesture that was so unlike her and so like Snape that he had to put the mug of tea down.
"I thought you were famous in your world?"
Well that was depressing. He'd been Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived for years and yet the nicest thing he'd ever heard came from his aunt who hated him. And now that he knew what was being talked of him in the Daily Prophet, he knew that it would only get worse. He used to go through those papers quickly, looking for any indication of Voldemort and his lot but that had changed once Dudley had pushed him into telling him why he suddenly wanted to get his hand on every bit of news he could.
The thought of there being some wizard out there who wanted to kill muggleborns and by extension muggles, had frightened Dudley enough that he'd talked to his parents about it and that had sparked off even more conversation. While Harry had his head bent over Dudley's old physics worksheets Petunia and Vernon had a harrowing fight about it all. While Vernon still kept himself away from all this 'freakishness', Petunia, Harry and surprisingly enough, Dudley went over the Daily Prophet everyday, looking for signs of Voldemort.
The Wizarding world had turned on him. When Harry first saw it, he was filled with a sort of incandescent rage,when he thought of Cedric whose murderer would go unnamed all because of the Ministry's idiocy, of Voldemort's laughter, of his mother's golden form coming out of that wand, still protecting him and Harry wanted to set the world on fire.
And then Petunia had sniffed while looking over her own section of the newspaper and wondered why on earth his people were selling exploding toilets and how they would install the plumbing for that and it ebbed away to nothing but laughter.
It was the first time he had laughed in so long and he needed that, he needed to remember that he actually could still laugh, was capable of it at all, that it hadn't died inside of him the way everything else seemed to have died with Cedric.
And when Dementors appeared out of nowhere Harry was still inside the house, within its protections and they all huddled into blankets and waited as Hedwig made her way past the ghastly creatures and to Dumbledore. It was a few minutes later that the Dementors disappeared, much to their gladness, but it had shaken everyone. Even Vernon who had till then refused to believe that 'His people' had any power at all, shut up about it and left them in peace for the rest of the days upon hearing of what a Dementor's kiss entailed.
They had all felt its effects, felt their worst memories played out over and over again.
And not once did Dumbledore appear to reassure them of their safety. Not in a single letter did Ron and Hermione, who'd been shite as friends this entire summer anyway, ask if he was okay, simply telling him that everything was going to be fine now that Dumbledore took care of it.
Took care of it. Riiiight.
And further still things changed. Harry supposed that some of Petunia's worst memories involved his mother because suddenly she wanted to talk about her as if desperate to exorcise herself of Lily Potter nee Evans' ghost. So now Harry knew of things. Knew of that boy, Severus Snape, who'd lived down the street half in love with Lily, learned of James Potter the man Lily wanted to marry who was still a boy in so many ways. She told him in a wistful voice of the moment she knew the Lily she knew was lost when her sister had preferred not to turn a key, so used to waving a wand and saying some words.
Was that how Hermione's parents felt, Harry wondered, as every year went on and Hermione spent more time with the Weasleys, at Hogwarts, spent more time on holidays than she did in her own home? He didn't even know their names, only that they were the Grangers and they were both dentists. He already knew how the Wizarding world saw muggles, amusement and toys, not really capable of much. Arthur Weasley's astonishment at what the muggles had achieved was enough of an indicator of it and half the time the technology he was fascinated by was as old as he himself was. And this condescension was from a so called 'Blood traitor', like muggles were little children who had managed to somehow potty train themselves.
Why did Harry love the Wizarding world so much anyway? It was magic, sure and there was something about it that he couldn't put into words that made him feel alive. But then there were so many times when it had also made him feel dead. Like all those times when Voldemort tried to kill him, or when he had a basilisk fang speared through his arm, when a werewolf chased him, when a dementor tried to take his soul. Yes there were many times when it made him feel so dead.
It was a way out of the Dursley's house but for the first time Harry had seen what life would be like for him if he hadn't any magic and it was almost...pleasant. If this was the house he could have come home to perhaps he wouldn't have leapt at the first chance to get away from them, hoping to live with a man that only twenty minutes prior he had known to be a mass murderer and the man who'd let his parents to their death.
But that just wasn't the case. And as tolerable as it was now, it still wasn't home. Nowhere was really. Hogwarts was sanctuary, the Burrow was his best mate's home but Harry had no real place he could call his own. The cupboard under the stairs came closest to it.
He should find one, a home that is. Course the way things were going in the Wizarding world that home might just be in the Muggle world. And considering that he had no actual qualifications and probably appeared to have dropped out of school altogether to Muggle authorities…
He needed to do something about that and the first step began now.
Harry Potter was going to take the GCSE's.
