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The Eyes of Dead Children

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If there had survived, in any appreciable fashion, anyone who remembered Harry Potter before he was struck with the famed curse that forever placed him as a minority of one, they could have testified that there was something vastly wrong with the boy. Oh, he did not suddenly grow scales, or foreboding wings, or a forked tongue, but something fundamental changed. Something possibly important, or potentially trivial. Sadly, no one could stand as such a witness.

Surviving that day was a tricky thing, indeed. Few who lived past the events at Godric's Hollow truly existed as they were before. Remus Lupin and Sirius Black for instance would till their dying day bear the scars of loss, forever changing them. Albus Dumbledore would shed the last vestige of his innocence, condemning a young child to a cold, hateful, unloving world. Tom Riddle would be left little more than an impotent spirit, locked tidally to a plane he could not now escape, and had nothing but fear for the idea of doing so. Harry Potter would sit between two worlds, no longer a child, not an adolescent, not yet an adult. Changed, but invisibly so except to the most prying eye.

In a strict sense, those people living or otherwise who saw the passing of Voldemort and lived were changed, and left behind who they were before in many ways.

Sadly, one of the few remaining Alchemists of the age had lost his passion for the art long ago or he would become terribly nervous, placing the events, even vague, in the terms of that noble skill. Death and change, after all, were empirically similar ideas. No equation sat unchanged with such a variable passed... but change was never its own value. Or was it?

No, it would be a long time before anyone suspected something was very wrong with Harry Potter. Curiously, the Dursleys knew it from day one.

–

"It isn't natural."

Petunia hissed to quiet her husband, lest he gain her curious nephew's attention. Oh, he wasn't curious in the expected way – though she could not deny his inquisitiveness. No, the curiousness she meant was a strangeness, an irregularity, a disturbing air about the child.

He did not whine, or cry, or fuss. He slept, though curiously she could never seem to catch him at it, and for the life of her, she couldn't recall him every being asleep when people were around him. It didn't matter so much, really – she cared for him at the same times as Dudley, and that worked out fine. And, strangest of all really she thought, he stared.

Her darling boy didn't train his eyes the way Lily's... boy, did. Babies were not meant to latch on with their gaze so steadily, so piercingly. As if they understood what went on around them already. And that color! Her sister had the most sickeningly radiant green eyes, so pretty and noteworthy, that it was always something people commented on. Petunia had met James Potter some time ago, and he had deep, secretive brown eyes, that she was sure hid much mischief.

Their son had eyes that, like Lily's own, were green... but there was something wrong with the color. It made her chest tighten, breathing go painful almost, and head go light if she held his gaze too long. She could tell it bothered Vernon as well, when the man was inclined to deal with him. Whenever he came back from doing so, he always had this far away look about him, a paleness.

And so, they stood and thought and considered, watching over the two boys as they supposedly slept. She knew Harry was awake, however. He never slept when there was someone nearby... "I don't know what to do, Vernon. I can't handle this much longer."

Vernon Dursley was not a stranger to compassion. There was a bounty of love and caring he shared with his family; with his wife, young son, and sister. There was no place in his heart for a penniless drain on their livelihood, a reminder that power of a real kind sometimes had nothing to do with how respectable you were, and last but certainly not least, an unnatural little cur that in-laws, dead or not, expected him to care for. "I know, pet. Perhaps the Orphanage...?"

Shaking her head and looking harried, Petunia wrung at the handkerchief she held. "No, no, no... they'd know, and only bring him back and make us forget. That wretched man of Lily's always threatened such things, and even did it to man who tried to court Lily on our street." And she was sure she could see the glint of twin wicked emeralds in the darkness, watching, judging her.

"Then perhaps..." sputtering a moment, the larger man cleared his throat quietly. "Perhaps the sprog'll have an accident-"

Petunia was many things, and few of them good. She was many things, but she could not hear this, regardless of what the boy was. "Stop, you stop that talk right now. I shan't hear it," and so saying, she sped from the room, looking for all the world like a woman who had seen a ghost.

Turning back to the two cribs, one new and painted with bright colors and with strong bars, the other a rickety old thing that was on a street corner in a rubbish heap, Vernon made a decision. "I won't do it myself, you little parasite. But I'll not stand in the way. I'll not have that damned vile deviltry infecting my home, so you better hope nothing looks out of place. Or I'll change my mind." Speaking more for himself than the child, the portly man turned to leave, content with his threats. "And you better pray things look up. I'll not abide charity that strains my true family."

Later, the man would never find the nerve he almost had that night, to end Harry's life. Later, he would not have the chance to make that decision, because Harry had no need to pray. Harry understood.

–

Harry's first clear memories were of a large man with a wet face and scratchy hair, lifting him from his mother's cold arms. He recalled the ride in the sidecar, the vague impression that another man, smaller, had done the same with him in the past.

He remembered an old man with eyes full of an emotion he wasn't familiar with, because his parents had both been joyous people, he knew and hated that their memories weren't as clear, asking for his forgiveness. "For what I must do... and where you must go, I am truly sorry." And then he spent a number of hours on a cold step, listening to those inside argue on if it would be illegal if he just froze to death out there.

He remembered hate-filled eyes, being handled none to gently by a woman he could have called aunt in another lifetime, but knew only as Petunia now. His memories were clear, crisp, with their words. Their threats, made to a supposedly ignorant child. But he wasn't.

And it drove him mad. He couldn't speak, though he understood how. Couldn't walk, though he remembered it. Could not... could not... shape magic.

Deep inside Harry's mind, things unraveled bit by bit. Things that were once Tom Riddle, but were now Harry Potter. Or would one day be so. Death had stolen part of the man, if not all of him, and because Harry was the conduit of such a fateful event, he was given a gift.

Like a filter, his undeveloped mind strained the experiences from that fragment of self that had been Tom Riddle. Imprinted in him were things that he had no right to, no justification knowing, no thoughts or feelings to tie them to. It was patchy in places, and Harry wouldn't understand for many years how curious it made people that he walked, began speaking, and reading by three, yet he got his name wrong as often as not and was yelled at quite a lot by his relatives for supposedly ignoring them.

By five, Harry was more certainly Harry – that is to say, he was no longer confused. Perhaps the person who was born Harry Potter, who was fated to be live that life had died. There was no way to say for sure, now. Much later in his life he would have suspicions, but they would mean little. As a child however, such thoughts meant nothing, for Harry was Harry, and that was all. Though his memories did little to help him in primary school. He recalled things about such places, but he didn't know, and it disturbed him somewhat. Those legacy memories, to anyone who had a sense of self and their own recollections to compare, would have seemed foreign and unusual. For Harry, they simply were and when they failed him, it was frustrating. In time, that too would pass and he would become more acclimatized to not knowing things that were new, rather than stalling as his mind froze up at such rifts in his knowing. Still, he was a quick boy with an agile mind. He would never be called slow, or simple, or held behind for his lack of wit.

His memories, however, didn't fade. All that was there before still remained, and sometimes he said the oddest things. Asking how other children didn't just know, for instance, how to ties shoes. Their Alphabet. Multiplication tables. After a time he began to understand that his memories were an oddity, and he hid them, growing introspective, quiet. Yet those memories, foreign and his own, never faded. He recalled all the hurtful words, the considerations of his death, the sorrowful blue eyes of a man he had no name for, and how that same man had made another steal him from his mother. These were indelible things. Forever things, that were his and his alone.

He was careful, though. More than just knowing, there was cunning within him. A vengeful child of five was nothing against the rage of a thunderous adult like Vernon. And he knew, somehow, that the wizened old man was even more dangerous. He would have time, later, to deal with these people that so casually undid his life. Until then, he would learn, and be the best he could, if only because new things now fascinated him. Things even outside his scope came quickly enough, and it was a joy.

And then, as if the idyllic settling of a curious boy in curious circumstances was an ill-fated thing, they came.

–

One minute the girl was alive and laughing with her friends, the next she was dead. Harry heard the words seizure and stroke bandied about, but he had only a vague idea what they meant. He had a vague memory, an unclear thing, of an older man writhing on the ground, a thin stick pointed at him, as he shook and shivered like his classmate did before her eyes rolled back and she stopped moving forever.

And when she died... there was a thrill, a wash of something that came over him and made Harry bite his lip to avoid making a small, unsettling sound. It was far from unpleasant, but his experience didn't teach him things, that much later in life he'd learn held a more intimate cast.

As he recovered from his own shivering, the girl stood up. But she also lay on the ground... and suddenly Harry knew fear. Her image was indistinct, frayed looking almost, as if she were a picture out of focus. The standing doppelganger did her best to get people's attention, to ask what was going on but of course no one heard her. Then, she saw her own prone form. And screamed.

He would remember that sound for the rest of his life. It went on and on, while all around him and the dead girl things began to move, as if in fast motion. Whatever grief held her in place, it also held Harry, as it seemed to make him sluggish and slow, unable to wrench himself from that macabre scene.

Others came, darker, less distinct, less human he realized, though they were once. Taking the newly dead girl by the hand, they pulled her away from her cold body and Harry's ears. His eyes never left her though, and one of the new ones, the older dead he assumed, noticed.

Drifting closer, the small gathering of souls paused, as the girl hiccuped and sobbed quietly. She noticed how Harry watched her, though, and a thrill of hope surged through her. "Y-You can s-see me?"

A mute nod, nothing more.

"Tell them! Tell them I'm not-"

She was cut off by an older woman, pulling her aside and speaking harshly. Cowed, the girl shrunk in on herself, dimming. A man, or rather an image of one, turned back to Harry. "So. You can see us. What a... strange burden."

Harry again nodded, though a sharpness was returning to his eyes. "Why can I see you?"

"I do not know," the man shrugged. "But I know that being one of the living, and yet company to the dead will not be an easy thing. She," indicating the girl who still shot him furtive glances, the man continued, "Is not the first, or last to rail against her fate. Do you understand?"

And Harry did. He wanted no part in being the dead's councilor, or harassed perpetually by them, just because he could see and hear them.

And so Harry changed again, with death.

–

Wraithspeaker

–

"Children of eight and nine should not be so morbid," the librarian thought to herself.

For a handful of hours a day, the young boy in the badly fitting clothes would come in, and settle in his little alcove, reading steadily through books he had no call to be so comfortable with. Really, what child willingly read through dictionaries? Medical journals? Encyclopedia?

Of course that was only the first few weeks, she recalled. Now it seemed the young boy's tastes had become more eclectic. Occult. Now, his arms were more often laden with records of foreign religions, mythology, and death. She would do nothing about it, of course, as it wasn't her place. The youth didn't damage anything – he was a wonderful patron, really – but it just unnerved her for someone so young to have such... dead eyes.

She shivered, recalling her first truly close look at them, the one day she said something to the boy about his choice in reading. The first and last. Those eyes may be dead, but they moved with an furious energy.

Sighing, she shook her head hard. Such musings, about a little boy! Really. Perhaps she needed to get out of the library herself, more.

–

Harry's predicament, that which lead him to trying to absorb a library, rested in those damaged memories. Even the less critical, in his mind, issue of the labels they were whispering around him paled in comparison to that drive. He didn't care about a lack of empathy, his ability to relate to others. He certainly didn't think his sharp wit qualified as a problem, either, but apparently it rated high enough to be mentioned behind closed – mostly – doors. Those things didn't matter, not in the scope of what Harry needed to do. What mattered was that those gaps and holes itched, needing to be righted, filled, healed. The problem of course lay between Harry Potter and what he attempted to fill them with.

Square peg, round hole.

Nothing fit. Nothing eased that itch, but he tried regardless. Oh, he found some of what he read fanatically interesting, but he didn't linger. A heading here, a snippet there. He wouldn't read entire encyclopedia, because there was no need, but he did linger on points that interested him. This lead him to the occult, the peculiar, and the unusual. Always at the back of his mind lingered a pulse of desire, of familiarity that rested in two words.

Magic. Power.

The closer his reading came to those ideas, the faster his heart would beat. The more he read, the more frustrated he became. "Nothing fits," he hissed angrily, closing a book with perhaps a little too much force.

"What troubles you?"

The ghostly, echoing, half-heard voice didn't startle him so much as set Harry's already frayed nerves on edge. However, he didn't lash out. He'd learned early on that doing so only garnered him odd looks, and the dead only laughed. The only weapons they had were words, and those swords were as immaterial as they were to one another. "I can't find what I'm looking for. Nothing in these books is what I need."

Beside him, the shimmering glint of an eye searched the titles, the open pages he pored over hungrily. "Perhaps I could help..."

Harry knew this game. The dead rarely did anything for free, and he was as rare a commodity as they could ever hope. "What cost?"

"My daughter. She is far from me, too far... I cannot find her. They took her-"

"I'm a little boy," Harry reminded the specter tersely.

Crossly, the apparitions form swelled then shivered. "As you say," it conceded unhappily. "Yet, perhaps... something?"

Sighing and rubbing at his temple, Harry nodded. "If, and only if you can lead me in the right direction. I'll see."

The two stared at one another, one in irritation and a hastily buried hope, the other in open contemplation. "Very well, speaker. My name is Sergei Mikhailovich Morozov... a bit long for your part of the world, perhaps," it was then that Harry placed the dead man's odd intonation, a different kind of flow from what he was used to. Considering the name, he assumed Russian, or something close. "Perhaps you should step outside? This may take a moment."

He had a point. It just wasn't done to have a conversation with nothing in the middle of a library, of all places. Sighing and excusing himself to the librarian, and promising to come back to shelve his books, Harry stepped out the library's back door, into the less populated small greenway that ran behind the structure.

His ghostly companion simply came through the wall, in the way the dead moved. "Alright. So, your daughter...?"

If Sergei had taken offense to his terse tone, he didn't show it, "We were not from this place, this Britain. My daughter... was special. Too special, maybe.

"Men came when she was little. Said things about potential, gifts, responsibilities to mankind. I cared nothing for their grand words," the ghost spat, a darkening of his form spreading from his heart. "I refused. Elena... my Lina, she was so broken though. There were things she needed that I simply could not help with, and it was so hard to hide.

"Eventually we fled. Left behind our home and everything we knew. But they came with us." Harry watched as the dead man's emotions surged through him. Most ghosts, newer ones anyway, were still very raw beings, full of emotion and a need to see some justice, some closure done for them. This much he knew, but what caused him trouble of course was that a very rare few could see or hear ghosts. Those that could were literally overrun with the spirits, who had only their own scope in mind. Until he had controlled his reactions, it was maddening. Every dead soul within miles knew he could sense them, and they ceaselessly came to him. Day and night, all the time. Pushing through walls, screaming when he wouldn't listen, threatening him impotently.

He learned quickly that the dead's problems never ended. If one thing was solved, another would come up. Such is the nature of ended lives, he began to understand. If you could not let go of life, then you would never be free of it, and so you lingered, haunted, until that futility became truth.

"Alright Sergei. I'll listen to you, and do what I can. I'm only eight, though. Don't expect much."

"Anything is better than this eternity of not knowing."

"Tell no others. Or I will not only forget about this Elena, but I'll do my level best to erase any other traces. Do you understand?"

Sergei looked torn, but nodded. "Alright." Sighing wearily, Harry settled in for what promised to be another long, drawn out, soulful tale of woe and loss. Sergei did not disappoint, and it actually turned out that maybe the dead man did have something he wanted.

Elena as it turned out, had something like magic. He couldn't be sure – the books on the occult in the library weren't the best resource after all – as nothing quite fit the way his mind would say was correct, but the devil was in the details or lack thereof. More of those damned square blocks... still. Sergei's descriptions seemed close, if not exact. "So, she can move things, just by thinking?"

Nodding gravely, Sergei seemed to draw in on himself. "I never learned why. Her mother was just a simple woman, like I was just a simple man. Elena though... there was nothing simple about her. Keen like a knife! But so very quiet. Always at your elbow, when you needed her. Such a sweet girl..."

Harry wasn't interested in the 'good daughter' angle. He had been a good boy as well, and look where it got him. Still, this opened up an interesting path. "Do you know how she did what she did?"

Almost immediately Sergei closed down. "No. I know nothing of it."

Damn. "Alright. So, how do you expect me to track or find or... whatever, your daughter?"

"I will show you the things you want. They will help you. And," the ghost paused here, looking distinctly unwilling to say more but continuing. "She still calls for me. I can hear her – I just cannot go so far from where I... died."

Well now. Perhaps this would be better than he'd thought.

–