This fic is set right after Sirius dies in Order of the Phoenix. Harry is quite cut up by the loss of a loved one, and as if that weren't enough, he now has to spend the summer with his beastly aunt and uncle and his subhuman cousin. But you know what really gets on my nerves? These fics about Harry having a long lost relative, say, a SISTER. Gee, those plots are just ridiculous! I mean, have you ever read one that was believable? One that actually went with canon? So this is definitely NOT a fan fic about Harry having a long lost sister.
1.
The inside of Vernon's car was stuffy with summer heat as they pulled away from the train station. An unlucky fly had found his way into the compartment with them and it buzzed frantically through the heavy air, throwing itself at the windows until Dudley smacked it flat against the side window with a rolled up boxing magazine.
"Good one, Dudley," said Vernon.
The rest of the ride was long and uncomfortable. Sitting diagonally from his aunt Harry could see her purse and unpurse her lips repeatedly; he watched her with detachment as his glasses slowly slipped down the sweaty bridge of his nose. He did not bother to push them back up.
Something hollow and cold had found its way into his chest. It demanded to be acknowledged, addressed, but Harry quelled its voice. Not yet.
The car eventually pulled up the short brick driveway of Number Four and came to a stop. Harry undid his buckle, with listless fingers that seemed not to feel what they were touching, and slid off his sticky seat and out onto the driveway to look up at the nauseatingly prim and unchanging front of his reluctant home. His legs felt like lead as he moved towards the front steps.
"Harry," Petunia said behind him. Harry turned around to face her.
"What?"
She looked at him through narrow, unfriendly eyes for a moment. "Nothing. Get in the house before one of the neighbours comes out." Harry complied and stumped up the brick steps to the front door. The door was unlocked and he let himself in as Vernon unloaded his things from the car. Rather than this being a demonstration of thoughtful kindness, Harry knew it to be a reaction to the encounter at the train station. He wasn't worried. He knew Vernon's uncharacteristic behavior would spend itself within the hour.
Inside the house little had changed. Perhaps the surfaces were a little more faded from the harsh cleaners Petunia sprayed everywhere, but that was it. Inside, it was all the same. Exactly the same. Nothing had changed. Despite all that had changed so dramatically in Harry's world in the past few weeks, nothing here had evolved an iota. How could it all possibly be the same as it had been a year ago? The same, except smaller. The walls of the hallway a little narrower, the ceiling a little lower. The air thicker in his throat, making it difficult to swallow.
He mechanically kicked off his shoes—Petunia's training was ingrained—and headed for the stairs. He needed to get out of the hallway—out of that tiny space—away from his relatives who were now mounting the front steps. He just needed to be alone and away from the world, so that he could pretend it didn't exist. The hollow coldness in his chest was demanding notice, but Harry denied it again.
At the landing Harry turned and went for the door of Dudley's second bedroom, the familiar bolts studding the left side. Below he could hear Vernon and Dudley shoving the trunk into the cupboard under the stairs. He reached for the doorknob.
A second later Harry backed out into the hallway again.
"Watch it!" Vernon shouted at him on the narrow landing as they collided.
Harry spun around and came face to face with his florid, bristling uncle.
"Who's—who's in my room?" he demanded, pointing in the direction of the suitcase opened on top of the dresser, the pajamas draped across the foot of the bed.
Vernon purpled. For a second he glared daggers and broken glass at Harry, then his mouth stretched into a horrid smile. "Why, my niece, Harry." He pushed Harry aside and went for the bathroom.
Leaning against the wall he had fallen against, Harry slowly slid to the floor. So Vernon's niece was visiting.
Merlin.
He had heard about this girl. Marge had brought her up around the dinner table more than once. "A fine girl," she had said. Well, if Marge approved of her, it was pretty much eternal and unconditional condemnation in Harry's eyes. The toilet flushed and Vernon reemerged.
"Get out of the way, boy!"
Harry was not one to argue with a sound idea. If his room were taken, he would have to be alone elsewhere. He darted down the stairs and around the corner. Ten more steps and he was at the back door leading into the yard. He kept going until he was at the far end of the lot. There, he sat against the trunk of the same tree he had been chased up by Marge's dog. A humiliating memory, but in this case it served its purpose in hiding Harry from the view of the kitchen window.
2.
At suppertime Harry crept into the house. He had considered himself summoned to dinner when he heard Petunia shrieking, demanding of some unknown party where "the boy" was. He carefully wiped the dirt off his bare feet and put his socks back on. He had been in such a hurry to get out of the house that he hadn't even put his shoes on first.
"You," said Petunia's head as it hovered around the jamb of the door to the kitchen. "In here now."
Harry followed her into the kitchen where he promptly began to count cutlery pieces to set on the table. His routine of setting the table, as old as he could remember, was numbingly familiar. He faced another whole summer of this, this and other tasks. He wondered if he would be allowed to eat in the same room as the rest of the Dursley's, considering the presence of their guest. He hoped not.
"The table's already set. Go in and sit down." Harry returned the cutlery to its drawer. "And Harry," Petunia hissed as she gripped his arm above the elbow and pulled him close to her. "No funny business." She dropped his arm and returned to pulling her casserole out of the oven.
Harry entered the dining room. It seemed that more than just his room had been appropriated. Vernon and Dudley were sitting in their usual seats at the table; Petunia's was still vacant; and in Harry's was the girl—Vernon's niece.
Harry hovered in the doorway uncertainly while Vernon glared at him and Dudley ignored him. Taking Dudley's delicate character in the face of wizardry into account Harry decided to pull a chair up next to the girl. Vernon continued to glare, and Harry wished to himself that he had been ordered to eat dinner alone in the kitchen.
The girl meanwhile remained still and silent.
Petunia entered as soon as Harry was seated, casserole held between two oven mitts. She narrowed her eyes when she saw Harry sitting next to the girl—Harry could not recall her name—and thrust down the soup pot onto the table and its contents welled over one side onto Harry's cutlery.
Slowly wiping his utensils with his napkin, Harry chanced a glance at the girl, only to find she was doing the same. She quickly ducked her head.
"Holly, the beans," snipped Petunia.
3.
Harry scraped the remains of dinner off the plates and into the garbage can. His benumbed brain was screaming to be away, to be back outside under the tree again where he could sit and do nothing, think nothing. One more second of being indoors after the ordeal of sitting through that dinner, barely pecking at his food, as Petunia glowered and Vernon simmered and Dudley mindlessly stuffed himself. And meanwhile, the girl, the long-lost cousin he had never had any wish to meet, sat stiffly beside him, staring at times, pretending not to at others, and barely touching her own food.
She was an odd little creature. She had bushy black hair—just like Vernon's moustache, Harry thought unkindly—but other than that she was a contradiction to the Dursley paradigm. The mental image of a large, beefy, purple-faced girl that he had entertained all these years was tossed out the window. Wiry and petite, she stood a few inches shorter than Harry, and aggression seemed an alien emotion to her quiet demeanor.
"Hi."
Harry looked up from the pot he was scrubbing and looked into the darkened windowpane above the sink. He could see Holly standing behind him.
She stepped closer and repeated herself, seeming to think that Harry hadn't heard. She spoke quietly as though she didn't necessarily want her aunt and uncle to hear. Too late, Harry thought. A quick glance over his shoulder and he could see that his aunt was watching them from over the magazine she was pretending to read in the other room while Vernon and Dudley watched the telly. Harry didn't respond to the girl's greeting, and she was too meek to make another stab at conversation. After a minute the girl awkwardly stepped from the kitchen.
Later, after the dishes were cleaned and his aunt and uncle and cousin had stopped making the routine noises that signaled their preparations for bed, Harry pulled out a set of pajamas and his toothbrush from his trunk under the stairs and made his way upstairs to use the bathroom. He was squeezing toothpaste onto his toothbrush when the girl walked in to stand beside the sink next to him.
"Hi," she ventured once more.
Again Harry did not say anything, figuring that the toothbrush in his mouth was as good an excuse as any not to talk.
"My name's Holly," she said softly. "I know who you are."
Harry couldn't keep from rolling his eyes. Of course she knew who he was. His aunt and uncle would have been filling her head full of stories about the delinquent nephew they were forced to house each summer, ever since her arrival at their house.
She blushed and fiddled with the tube of toothpaste a moment. "Yeah, I know, you already know my name. They would have told you. But I just wanted to introduce myself properly."
Harry continued his brushing, apathetic to the figurative hand she was extending. He had no clue why she should take an interest in him, but he didn't care either. He didn't care about anything.
"I've been wanting to meet you. A lot."
Harry spat into the sink and turned to her. "Listen, I don't know what you're getting at, and I don't really care. But you need to leave now because I have to change."
The girl blushed and left the room.
There was yelling that night like Harry had never heard Petunia and Vernon yell before. Muffled arguing continued even as he drifted off to sleep on his small cot under the stairs.
4.
Almost like a graceful dance, couples parried with their wands and spells across the floor, light shooting this way and that. Sounds seemed muffled, but he was aware that there was shouting. Someone laughed. Harry looked up to see Sirius smiling, dashing forward and back, ducking a spell and casting another, until suddenly, green light hit his chest. His smile vanished. Slowly, he began to fall backward—
Harry woke up with a jolt. He was in his closet. It was morning. It had been a dream.
Harry caught his breath and pressed his forehead to his knees. It wasn't fair.
When Harry recovered himself a few minutes later, he fished about in his trunk for some clean clothes and headed upstairs for the shower. Hot water streaming down his body almost banished the chilled lump in his chest. It was his fault. And now he had no one. His parents were gone. Now Sirius too. And there was no one else.
Descending the stairs he ran into Holly again. She was climbing upwards and on the narrow steps they momentarily blocked each other. Harry leaned against the wall to allow her to pass but she merely stood, as if wanting to talk.
"You didn't have any breakfast," she said.
"No one called me."
"Oh," she said. She looked at him a moment and then said firmly, "I'd really like to talk to you about things. Can we go upstairs?" At Harry's quizzical look she added, "They're downstairs. I don't want them to hear."
Harry was a little past curiosity. Why she should want to talk to him he didn't know. He didn't care. But it seemed as though the path of least resistance was to humor her, and so Harry shrugged and followed her to her room—his room. She shut the door tightly after him and turned to face him. She was staring at some point on Harry's chest, not making eye contact but not lowering her head either. In the brief seconds that they stood there, Harry was able to more closely examine her appearance. Carelessly kept dark hair framed a small face from which two muddy-colored eyes peered at him. A light smattering of freckles dusted her cheeks. There was something very gentle about her face that reminded him of Ginny Weasley.
She seemed to cast about for what to say. Finally, in a deflated manner, as though what she was saying was anticlimactic, she spoke. "I'm sorry I'm in your room," she said in an apologetic tone. "Auntie said you wouldn't mind so much. I don't know why she didn't just put me in the guest room."
Harry shrugged again. The truth was, he really didn't care either way anymore. He could feel miserable in his cupboard just as easily as he could in his bedroom. Besides, if he had his way, he would be spending as much time as was possible out of the house and away from the Dursley's this summer.
"I…I've been snooping a bit. I'm sorry. You have some interesting things in this room, and I wanted to find something out about you, since I got here two weeks ago and knew you wouldn't be coming home for a while." Harry didn't say anything. It felt like it would take too much effort to correct her misconceptions about who owned what in that tiny room. In a small, discouraged voice, Holly said, "Weren't you even a bit interested in meeting me when our aunt and uncle told you?"
"Told me what?" Harry asked disinterestedly.
Holly seemed taken aback. "Told you…about me."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "They didn't say anything to me about you."
Holly wilted visibly. "Oh," she said awkwardly.
The was a pained pause and Harry, feeling generous, decided to lend some of his own self-pity for her cause and found it within him to make small talk. Glancing around the room, he commented that she hadn't brought much, and asked her how Marge and Todd were. Todd was Vernon's younger brother and Holly's father, and Marge of course lived near enough that they often saw each other weekly.
"Um," Holly replied, "I don't know." She looked a little confused, and still preoccupied with what had been said before. "I think actually that Uncle Vernon said Aunt Marge would be coming for a visit. Perhaps you can catch up with her then?"
Harry scrutinized Holly with his gaze, his apathy of a moment ago replaced. "What? You're Vernon's niece, aren't you?" he asked, realizing as soon as he said it that she wasn't. "But you've been calling them aunt and uncle…"
Those peppery freckles, so like his mother's, so like his aunt's, although Petunia's were less pronounced because she spent so little time in the sun without a hat. Harry's head swirled with disbelief. But it was true. It had to be. Harry's stomach twisted. He felt cheated that he had never known of this relative before. All his childhood he had dreamed of some unknown relative coming and being a better family to him than his aunt and uncle, and all along there had been this girl, and this girl's parents and perhaps even siblings.
Holly took a deep breath and let it out. And tried to meet Harry's eye.
"BOY!" Vernon bellowed from below. Harry could hear his uncle banging on the door of the cupboard under the stairs. "BOY! UP!"
Harry stepped to the door and, he couldn't help himself, he smiled at Holly. "You'll have to explain later," he said.