Scandal - (skan-dal)
- Heedless or malicious gossip.
- Disgrace or reproach caused by outrageous or improper conduct.
- Censure or open disapproval
- One whose conduct results in disgrace or censure.
- A discreditable event, circumstance, or action.
# # #
Cold sunlight filtered through the pearl blue sky and wove its way down through the atmosphere to catch the droplets of water that had fogged up Harry's glasses. He swore softly and took them off his face to wipe them on his robes.
It was a bright clear December day, and Harry was waiting for the Hogwarts Express to be ready to load. Tomorrow was the first day of Christmas Break, and he was leaving.
"Oh Harry, it's only for a week," Hermione said with an air of cheeriness in her voice. Ron rolled his eyes and scuffed a sneakered toe in the slush that layered the platform.
"One day with that family of his would be too much," he muttered. Ron's eyes were round with anxiety when he righted them again. "I'll save your Christmas package for when you come back."
Harry didn't feel much like replying, but he personally agreed with Ron.
The large scarlet train thumped up to the concrete platform and came to a wheezing halt, blowing off waves of snow-white steam that shone gold in the December sun. The compartment doors flung themselves open, and Harry pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
"Merry Christmas," he grunted, hauling his trunk into the nearest open door. When he and his trunk were fully inside, he leaned against the doorframe, and continued grumpily. "Take good care of Hedwig, would you? Drop me a post if anything happens."
"We will!" Hermione called as the door cascaded back into its place. And then, very muffled; "A merry Christmas to you too, Harry!"
Harry could hear the rumble of Ron saying something as well, but the Express emitting another blast of white steam drowned it out. Harry grumpily pushed his trunk neatly into a corner, then found that that didn't suit him, so he pushed it to the other corner, releasing pent-up anger.
For fifteen years, he thought bitterly, they've been telling me they want me gone, want me dead, and they only put up with me for tax reasons, and I'm a burden... and then, out of the blue, they want me back. This is ridiculous. I should have refused to come.
Of course he knew he couldn't do that - since the Dursleys were his legal guardians, after all - but it felt better to brood.
The train peeped a cheery Christmas whistle before jolting into movement. The sudden shock knocked Harry off balance into one of the chairs in the compartment. It was completely empty save for his trunk, and the absence of people made him even grumpier, if that was possible. Angrily he drummed his fingers on the armrest and let his chin fall into his hands. He sat there for a while, as the train stopped jolting and settled into a smooth cascading movement. Then he decided to stop wasting useless time and do some schoolwork.
Snape was a slavedriver, and Harry had a four-scroll essay to do on the use of fennel in various sleeping potions. Due the minute break ended of course - Snape didn't care about schizophrenic relatives that shunned you away one moment, then ordered you back the next.
# # #
The sunny day had left when Harry emerged from his compartment in muggle London - it was now a bleak gray day, and large flakes of snow were falling. The platform was dreadfully slippery, as he found out when he attempted to huff out of the train - and ended up skidding over a patch of ice and falling on his bottom.
Choosing to ignore his fall, he lugged his trunk out of the compartment and stomped angrily - taking care to look for ice - over to the barrier into the muggle world. There were very few other people coming back from the school this winter and the person that regulated when they left the platform wasn't there. The students filed into a line and carefully stepped through the not-solid wall, and into the world of the muggles.
The snow was falling thicker now, and Harry's thin cloth coat was saturated with melted snow, and his black hair was completely covered in snowflakes that was nearly the size of large buttons. Shading his eyes, Harry squinted around for his relatives.
They weren't there.
Dumbfounded, Harry dropped his hand and stared around helplessly at the commuting muggle crowd.
"Hey, Harry! Harry!"
Harry whipped around and peered through the thick curtain of falling snow. Neville and his grandmother were flagging him down.
"What's up, Neville?" Harry asked half-heartedly, scanning the crowd for his not-present relatives.
"You looked lost."
"In a way, I am."
Neville scratched the top of his dark brown haired head and brushed the snow out of it. "I don't understand."
Harry shook his head and went on looking for the Dursleys. "I'm looking for my aunt and uncle - they're supposed to be here, but they're not..."
Neville's grandmother shook her head at the pair of them. "Frankly, I'm not surprised, dear. Here. Where do your horrid aunt and uncle live?"
Despite the cold, Harry couldn't help but feel a little cozy at that remark, and being called 'dear'. "Privet Drive, number four."
"Come then. Neville and I normally just joint appearate, but we can make a little side stop for you... but not right in front of the muggles, of course. Get your trunk."
Harry obeyed, slopping behind the pair in the dirty London gutter. His shoes were soaked to the bone from melted snow, and he was hideously cold, but he thought it better not to complain.
Neville's grandmother led them through a maze of alleys and side streets before stopping behind a book depository. The small area was concealed by a brick wall on the left side, a row of trees on the right, and the side of the warehouse - no muggles would ever think to look here. Neville's grandmother took out her wand in her wrinkly hand and muttered something while waving it in the air.
Harry blinked, and suddenly he was standing three doors down from the Dursley's house. So fast! And much more pleasant than Floo powder. No wonder so many underage wizards got in trouble for apperating without a license. Neville smothered a giggle behind his hand.
"Nice aim, Gran."
His grandmother bopped him on the head. "I'm not used to doing three. You're lucky I didn't drop one of us off in China." She turned to Harry and adjusted her wire spectacles with her right hand. "Is this okay, Harry?"
Harry had already taken up the handle of his trunk and was dragging it in the direction of the Dursley's house. He found a smile for Mrs. Longbottom. "Thank you very much. I would have had to walk, otherwise."
Mrs. Longbottom smiled at him and grinned, showing dentures. "Such a dear." Sighing, she glanced sidelong at the space between two houses. "Come along, Neville."
Neville, still grinning, followed his grandmother. Turning back to Harry, he waved. "Merry Christmas, Harry!"
"Happy New Year," Harry replied dully, watching Mrs., Longbottom and Neville wink out of sight again. Grunting, he lugged his trunk through the snow and ice, and bumped it up the three concrete steps that lead the way to the Dursley's front door. Out of cleaning habit, Harry brushed off the collected snow on the brass number '4' that was nailed to the side of the house, and then he knocked.
There were a few seconds of very loud; heavy footsteps before the door opened, and Harry was rewarded by Dudley's pink, fat features. Dudley glared at Harry, before slamming the door in his face.
Harry stood there, incredulously, on the step for a few moments, wondering how to react to that.
Whining sounds erupted on the other side of the thick red door, and it opened again, and this time Harry was grabbed roughly by his forearm and hauled inside by his uncle Vernon. Dudley made another whining squeal and ran up the stairs, knocking off a china figurine as he went.
"It's nice to see you, too," Harry remarked sourly to the broken china bits. Vernon grunted and looked at Harry, dripping melted snow and slush over his foyer. Using his normal tactic of pressing his large, purplish face up into Harry's, he spoke.
"Now listen here. I've got some... some friends coming over that are very interested in the drill firm, and..."
Hearing that, Harry groaned inwardly. Last time Uncle Vernon had had a possible business deal, things had not at all gone well. In fact, he had met Dobby.
"...and they've been doing some research on my files and they found that I had taken you under my legal care. And they want to meet you."
There was palpable silence that strung between the two. Color rose into Harry's cheeks, color of humiliation. He was going to have to memorize flattering and obnoxious lines - probably saying grossly amplified compliments about Vernon and Petunia - and be used as a tool to make his uncle look good. Harry's cheeks burned bright red, and then sallow from repressed emotion.
If Vernon noticed this sway of sentiment, he didn't say anything. Instead he pointed up the staircase. "Now go and put your things away - out of sight - and come back down for... dinner. You didn't bring that ruddy owl, did you?"
Harry swallowed and kept his gaze fiercely focused on a trampled floral runner that was in the hall. "No," he said quietly, afraid his voice might quiver, "I didn't bring Hedwig." Before his uncle could say anything else derogatory, he bumped his trunk down the hall and laboriously lugged it up the stairs.
His room hadn't changed very much since the summer before - with the exception of new toys that had been broken. Harry recognized the new computer the Dursleys had bought last summer - it had a baseball lodged in the screen.
Clearing his bed of broken knick knacks, he peeled out of his sopping wet clothes and redressed in 'normal' clothes, though it must be admitted that he wavered slightly, thinking of the reaction if he paraded downstairs in his green dress robes.
Finally he walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, where Aunt Petunia was tossing a garden salad - Dudley had finally gotten off of his grapefruit diet, it seemed, but was placed on a strict diet of only greens and protein supplements.
Aunt Petunia pointed to a stack of plates and napkins. "Set the table," she ordered. Harry looked at the pile of plates resentfully.
"Hello, it's nice to see you, Harry," he mimicked in a very high, albeit soft, voice. Wondering what was provoking all of these hostile emotions, he shook his head and started slapping plates on the table.
Dinner passed uneventfully, with Harry munching on his greens like a cow chewing cud, being very careful to keep quiet as Dudley rambled on about Smeltings. He had to bite his lips very hard when Petunia saw Dudley's report card and started to cry from pride - after all, his grade point average was a whopping 1.7 this semester. Uncle Vernon rumpled his son's hair and spoke fondly at the great things his son was going to do with his life, unlike some people, who wasted their lives pretending to be magicians.
Harry kept wisely silent.
# # #
By being inconspicuous and quiet over the next few days, Harry was able to learn a lot about the people coming to visit the day after Christmas.
"They're... Japanese," Uncle Vernon said one day, after a luncheon of salad. Harry noted with amusement that his uncle didn't look very pleased at the idea of foreigners.
"They're not coming over here, are they?" asked Aunt Petunia, with a healthy dose of trepidation in her voice. She leaned closer to her husband. "He's here," she whispered very loudly, clacking her large teeth together in anxiety.
Harry kept his head bent over his small empty bowl of salad, trying not to concentrate on how his stomach was rumbling from lack of nourishing food.
Uncle Vernon shot a look at Harry from under his thick eyebrows. "They want to meet him," he said with disgust. Aunt Petunia collapsed in her chair like those words had sapped her strength. Vernon nodded grimly. "They saw the sheet we had signed for being his 'legal guardians'" - he wiggled his fingers in the air to simulate quotation marks - "and were very intrigued by it. I think this would be a good opportunity to show them how Grunnings is a family firm - always open to strangers with a friendly attitude."
Harry, who had been sucking on his fork, nearly swallowed it.
"Do you have something to add?" Petunia asked in a shrill voice, her dull green eyes daring him to argue.
Harry, removing the sharp fork tines from the back of his throat, shook his head vigorously no, and resumed quietly sucking, playing that he was too fool to leave the room, even though Dudley had nearly ten minutes before.
"So they're coming here?" Aunt Petunia resumed, turning to her husband. To her and Harry's surprise, Vernon shook his head.
"They want us to meet them at a sushi restaurant just outside of town."
"Sushi!" Petunia lost all color. "I don't want to eat raw fish!"
Vernon slammed his fist down on the table, making the plates - and Harry - jump. Harry decided it was not a good idea to keep placing the fork in his mouth, as he nearly swallowed it again.
"Petunia, damnit, if we don't make this deal, we're not going to be eating anything!" Realizing that he had considerably alarmed his wife and Harry - not that he cared about the latter - Vernon uncurled his fist. "If we can force down raw fish, we won't have to do it again."
Harry got up from the table and started, by habit, clearing the dishes away and putting a pot of coffee on. He dumped the beans into the chopper, thinking about what a drag this Christmas was going to be, and how he was ever going to force raw fish down his throat.
# # #
Christmas morning dawned early and cold. Harry was woken on two levels - one because Dudley was noisily clomping down the stairs eagerly for his presents, and the other because Aunt Petunia was at the foot of his bed, yanking his covers off his body and wrenching his window open, letting in freezing puffs of air. Harry yelped and grappled for his bathrobe.
"What was that for?" he asked angrily, folding the terrycloth and knotting the belt snugly.
"I need to air your room out," Aunt Petunia snapped just as angrily, furiously stripping the bed of its sheets and throwing them to the other side of the room.
Fighting his temper, Harry grabbed some clothes and stormed off to the bathroom to take a shower. He didn't bother to go downstairs for presents - there would be none for him under the tree anyway. He would be getting his presents later when he returned to school - his friends promised to keep them there for him, since the Dursleys would have gone insane if Hedwig had come to the house laden with a wizarding gift.
After he had finished with his shower, Harry walked past his room and down the stairs, where Dudley was greedily tearing off hunks of purple wrapping paper from a box. The box contained the newest Pentium processor - and no doubt that he had also gotten the CD burner he had requested as well.
Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were enjoying a cup of Christmas tea and watching tearfully as their son devoured his presents. Harry rolled his eyes and went into the kitchen, where he quietly fried himself up his own Christmas present - French toast. He inhaled it almost as greedily as Dudley unwrapping presents; he had eaten nothing but unsweetened oatmeal and cabbage leaves for four days.
After washing up, he went to join the Dursleys watch Dudley unwrap more presents. From what he had gathered from the swatches of dinner conversation Harry had paid attention to, the Dursleys were in serious financial trouble.
After watching Dudley gloat over a new computer game, Harry decided that the Dursleys had no sense of economy.
An hour later, Uncle Vernon summoned him.
"We're out to buy Dudley some new togs for tomorrow," he told Harry, pulling on a sleeve of his wool coat. Harry watched him blankly.
"He can wear something of Dudley's," Aunt Petunia said briskly, pulling on her new mink. "We can't spare it to spend on him."
To keep his temper under check, Harry recited the names of the Royal Riders Quidditch club in his head, starting with the Keeper. Edmund Brady...
"Go find something of Dudley's," Uncle Vernon said, flapping his fat hand in Harry's face. "The maroon tuxedo is the best bet... the only stain is the mustard smear on the chest pocket."
Dudley sniggered as Harry's face darkened, imagining himself walking around in a hideous red with bright yellow smudged all over it.
Seeker, he thought desperately, Kellie Cooper. Reserve Seeker, Brandon Ashley...
The door closed with a click, and a moment later, the car backed out of the driveway. Harry watched the slightly tipped - thanks to Dudley's girth - Honda rumble down Privet Drive and around the corner.
With resignation he tromped up the stairs and into Dudley's room.
The few times that Harry had been allowed in there, he had not so much as gotten past the threshold. With that much, he was hardly ever left alone in the house. But now he was, and the room was still the pale blue color it had been since Dudley was little, but now the blue was covered in tacked up posters of destroying machines, men with bulging muscles, and - to Harry's great amusement - scantily dressed women.
After admiring the posters for a bit, he looked in Dudley's closet. He kicked the old stuffed animals that were piled in there out of the way and looked for Dudley's dress things.
There weren't many. The selection consisted of three pairs of dress pants, a dress shirt, and a maroon dress coat. Each was strained at the seams, and one of the three dress pants was ridiculously stained with food smears, the other pair was torn along the seams. The lapel of the maroon dress coat had a large yellow splotch on it. Harry, in disgust, dropped it on the floor.
"Wonderful," he muttered, slamming the door to Dudley's room behind him. He looked up at the ceiling and thought. His eyes met a swinging cord that was suspending from the ceiling. The attic.
Maybe there's a pair of pants or the like up there, he thought. Pulling the cord released a stepladder up. The hinges were very rusty and Harry had to attack a couple of them with a spray can of WD-40 before they would cooperate. More than ever he wished he were a trained wizard so he wouldn't have to rely on muggle contraptions.
After scrambling up the slightly moist wooden ladder, he had to stop for breath. The air was a lot thicker and moister than the downstairs, and it was very, very warm. He shed his large sweatshirt before standing up.
Everything was organized into labeled boxes and trunks. There were several boxes with a large letter 'D' on them, for Dudley. For amusement he opened one of these boxes - inside were lots of little white baby bonnets. Smirking, Harry closed the box.
Most of the boxes were labeled with 'D'. Harry only found one box labeled 'H' - and it was the size of a shoebox. When they were babies, Harry and Dudley interchanged clothes, so all of the clothes that Harry used to wear were in one of the 'D' boxes. This box contained the only things the Dursleys ever bought new for him - a pacifier and a pair of baby booties. Harry held one of the tiny shoes in his hand and smiled at it, a wave of nostalgia sweeping over him.
There were a few 'P' boxes for his aunt. These contained old dresses mostly, as well as a few dried nosegays. The 'V' boxes contained old clothes as well - no dress clothes that were suitable, though, to Harry's dismay.
In the back of the damp attic, there were two medium trunks. Harry turned one around to look for the letter - 'L'.
Harry's heart nearly thudded to a stop in his chest. L for what? L for... for..
I don't want to think about it, unless it's not. Maybe it's Uncle Vernon's mother. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it' L for...
L for Lily?
Harry opened the trunk slowly, expecting it to bite him. Right on the top was a picture that Harry instantly recognized - Lily and James at their wedding day. He had the exact same picture, except it was moving, because a wizard had taken it. There was nothing written on the back.
The trunk smelled delicately of dried rose petals and age, and so did the photograph. There was hardly anything else in the trunk, to Harry's great disappointment. He lifted out a bundle of white lace and spread it out over the floor.
It was a wedding veil.
His mother was a small woman, judging by the span of the headband that went around the skull. The veil itself was long and lacy, interwoven with pink ribbons... no, they were red. Now they were blue.
To Harry's immense delight, the ribbons softly melted into different pastel colors. The flowers embroidered in the delicate veil moved slightly, as if in a breeze.
Leaning close to it, Harry smelled rose petals again. Was that what his mother smelled like? Roses? His chest began to ache horribly, and his eyes were beginning to burn, so he folded the veil and placed it back gently.
Below the veil was a roll of black fabric. Taking out that produced a - to Harry's delight - a black tuxedo coat. It was in perfect condition, and Harry slid it over his shoulders. The coat smelled slightly different than the veil, slightly muskier, over the mothball-y scent that seemed to cover everything.
Beaming, Harry pulled the folds of the coat closer to his body and looked at the picture that had been in the trunk. The coat that his father wore and the coat that he was wearing now looked exactly the same.
Harry's view of the Dursleys brightened slightly. Petunia hadn't thrown these things away. He was willing to forgive this entire horrible week for this trunk. He lovingly placed the picture back in the trunk and shut it, still wearing the tuxedo coat.
The other trunk sat even further back than the 'L' marked one. Harry pulled it eagerly out, hoping to see another 'L' marked trunk, or a 'J' marked one. Wiping off a layer of dust with his hand, he finally found a letter.
'N'.
"N?" he said aloud, sitting back on his heels. "Who here is an N?"
Nibbling his thumbnail, he thought. From what he'd heard Petunia say about her parents - Jonathan and Ellie - neither of them were an N. Neither were Vernon's parents. Harry didn't know personally about his father's side of the family, but he seriously doubted that the Dursleys would keep anything of theirs.
Opening the trunk, Harry saw with great dismay that there was nothing inside. On closer inspection, however, there was a folded piece of paper in the corner of the small trunk. Prying it out, he unfolded it.
It was a black and white photo of three girls. It was very badly creased, but after smoothing it out as well as he could, he adjusted his glasses and took a closer look.
They were all in the sandbox, laughing and kicking sand in the air, and pounding it into a castle form. One of them was tall and plain, with a hooked nose and large braced teeth - she looked about twelve. Looking closer, Harry swore he recognized Petunia's conspicuous teeth. She had had braces?
The second one looked a little younger than eight. She was small and dark haired, thrusting a sand-encrusted fist in the air that held a flag. She was laughing. Harry was pretty sure that that was his mother. She looked a lot like the pictures he had in his moving picture album downstairs.
The third looked somewhere between the ages of Lily and Petunia. She had very long; light colored hair and light eyes. She was the skinniest of the three, and was smiling a Mona Lisa smile, not laughing uproariously like the other two.
Frowning, he flipped the paper over, where there was writing in loopy script.
July 18, 1965. Petunia, Lily and...
The writing was quite unintelligible. He could only distinguish that Petunia was Petunia because of the large loopy letter that must have represented a P was there, and 'Lily' looked like it had two Ls if you squinted. There was a third name there, though Harry was not at all sure what it was. It started with an 'N', then as most cursive letters do, they simply ran in to each other like waves.
Still frowning, Harry tucked the picture into his pocket. When he was back at Hogwarts, he could smooth out the picture with spells - maybe even coax some life and color into it. Or perhaps he could try and read that unintelligible writing.
He left the attic, pushing the attic ladder back up into the ceiling. With the picture in his pocket, he trotted off back to Dudley's room.
He could wear his father's tuxedo jacket, he thought as he picked up the shredded pair of black pants in the closet and the white dress shirt with the red punch stain on the back. Nobody could see the stain if he wore the jacket.
I'll have to borrow one of Vernon's ties, he thought with resignation. Picking up the shredded black pants, he went to go and find some thread and a needle. He had been darning socks ever since he was seven - sewing pants couldn't be that much harder, could it?
The picture would remain in his pocket.
Author's Note: Wow. It's been a while since I've last written. And yes, I know, there's no scandal yet, but I kind of had to get into the plot a little. and if you ALREADY know the scandal, then... -_-;... you're pretty smart. But, don't say what it is in your review (you are reviewing, right? Please?) if you know, because that would ruin it for everybody else!
Next chapter: Dudley eats raw fish! (Actually, I love sushi. Yummy! ::grins::)
~Moxie ^_^
Disclaimer: Um, nothing belongs to me. Right? ::grins evilly::