Harry was only five when he was hit for the first time, a slap across the face. Gully had expected it sooner, but Harry was nothing if not obedient to Gully's instructions. Still, he was only a child, and children cried when they were in distress or pain. All it took was a small trip down the last few steps of the stairs while Gully was called away to serve Alecto, and the boy couldn't keep to the silence demanded of him.
Until that point, the Carrow's had mostly forgotten the boy existed. Out of sight out of mind was a house elf motto and way of life. The Death Eaters were too concerned with staying free from the law and finding the Dark Lord – wherever he had gone. Four years was a long time to be running, and eventually the world began to calm its search. People moved on, the Ministry had new problems to deal with, the last of the trials were finished on those who had been captured.
Families began to work their ways back into the good graces of society, elbowing their way in with little actual grace and more flaunting of power. If one could bring stability back to their world, one could reclaim the power they had lost. While everyone else settled into stability and began writing the war into history, only the Ministry Aurors still kept up the hunt. Battles were waged in the shadows and now the sun had come out there were little grounds left to wage war upon.
The Carrows returned to their house more and more often, less in hiding and more involved in their actual family. There were still branches of their family tree that hadn't fallen entirely and been thrown in Azkaban for good. The Carrow estate and its many abandoned properties were once again safe for Alecto and Amycus to roam at their pleasure.
Harry however was unaware that that meant he could no longer roam about as he wished.
The pain stinging his cheek didn't help his tears, Gully whisking him away before Alecto could tell her otherwise. It was rule that Harry was best never seen or heard from, so it was easier to forget they'd kept him around. Any day might be the time when the Carrows decided they should just kill the boy if he seemed more trouble than he was worth.
If the Dark Lord wasn't coming back to kill him anytime soon then why bother? But the idea of the reward they would get for keeping the child for their Master's own punishment glittered in their minds like jewels shining just out of reach. It sparkled in their eyes, that greed, whenever they started thinking of the "good old days". They lusted after the power they had lost and were reluctant to give up any chance of regaining it.
It was inevitable that Gully discovered the truth of the matter listening in on her Master and Mistress. They argued often when they both occupied the house. The two of them were violent creatures, always clashing with everything around them, looking for a fight. The enemy in question didn't even have to be living. If a piece of furniture got in the way of their path they'd shatter it to bits with the same ferocity and pleasure as they enjoyed torturing people.
It was a terrible miracle that the Aurors didn't manage to catch the two. A terrible, terrible miracle indeed.
It had finally been accepted that Voldemort would not return, at least not soon. Amycus was adamant they kill the boy. There was no use in keeping him around if Voldemort wasn't returning to finish him off as Alecto had once thought. Dust had gathered on their greed, so poor and dull now after years of hopeless searching.
"Don't you get it, you idiot!" Alecto swiped out at her brother, aiming to hit him upside the head as he ducked. They were seconds away from throwing curses at each other, Gully knew it.
Gully hid in the hallway, well in earshot, peeking around the bend of the wall to watch them. She could easily dodge any curse flung from that vantage point. Though... if something went flying through the wall. Well, at least she'd see it and pop right out of the way then.
"He's nothing! Why keep him?"
"Because we can still use him! Imagine brother, if one or both of us were to be captured," She grinned with a wicked smile of yellowing teeth. "Those Aurors drag us to trial in the Ministry and what do we have to defend ourselves with?"
Amycus stared at her blankly, not getting it. His head and heart were both woefully empty after all.
"The boy!" Alecto howled, smacking him hard on the arm. "The boy you dimwit. We have him, alive and well. Think of the people who would fall to their knees begging for the boy back."
"His parents..."
"And all their little Order friends would help them. We could trade him for our freedom!"
"Then let's trade him now!" Amycus demanded, looking up at the ceiling towards the second floor. The by then six year old was sitting quietly in his cold, empty room on a pallet of torn up blankets and a single stolen pillow like a lost puppy someone had abandoned on the street. Lost, with more enemies than any six year old rightfully ought to have.
"And face the wrath of our fellows? They'd know us for deserters. We'd be targeted by every follower of the Dark Lord left if we traded him now. They'd go out of their way to kill us. Or they might take the boy and kill us on the spot. The only advantage we have is that we hold the boy's life in our hands... Gully!"
Gully Apparated quickly to her Mistress' side. "Yes, Mistress?"
"Should Amycus or I ever be captured and arrested by the Ministry or anyone, you are to take the boy and hide him where you will not be found until you are called for." Alecto's stare bore down on Gully the threat of death in her eyes. "Should any Ministry fellows or any of the like come here with or without us, you are to do the same. No one finds the boy until we say so."
"Y-yes, Mistress..." Gully gulped, cowering away from Alecto.
"You are never to tell anyone about him, never to give him over to anyone else. Understood you worthless maggot?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"Get out of my sight."
Gully was gone in an instant, out of sight and out of mind in the cellar where she could think. Oh, how glad Gully was that the Carrows cared not at all for overseeing the raising of the boy. Gully could do it right. Gully could help Harry, help him stay safe until he could get back to his family. Yes, Gully would help Harry, no matter what.
Gully taught Harry to read in secret, made sure he learned how people talk in the books since Gully knew wizards didn't talk like house elves. They spoke all proper like and didn't cower or stumble or stammer when they spoke. She popped into the Carrow manor kitchen, taking what the house elves there could give her to keep him fed, sneaking books and things back and forth. She couldn't take things like toys since those would be missed, but clothes thrown out when the twins get too old could be kept. No one missed old clothes, the twins went through them so quickly and Gully could take them apart and put them back together to fit the boy.
Harry didn't care if his clothes were patchwork pieces. He quite liked the different colors and patterns – even if they were mostly shades of green and gray and black. The Carrows were a Slytherin household after all, very proud of it, only the occasional Ravenclaw whose brilliance could not be denied as overpowering their cunning aptitude. Gully thought the green looked very good with Harry's eyes anyways.
Flora and Hestia were quiet children, not very active or even very happy. They dressed alike always in their blacks and greens, and they were smaller than Harry. The other Carrow house elves didn't mind much that Gully took the baby clothes, after all they rarely had need for new clothes – and even if they did they hardly changed them. It wasn't for house elves to have nice things after all, but human children got colder than elf children so it had to be okay since it helped Gully keep the child alive.
They were all aware that Gully's mission was to keep a child alive, and that the child was about the same age as the twins. They'd helped give supplies and things to Gully when she was first tasked with the boy after all, and they need not break the rules by asking questions to know things. House elves knew many, many things, but their masters need not know that. The Carrows and their like especially need never know.
It was a good thing Harry didn't mind looking much like a house elf himself, since it took a while for Gully to get anywhere near good at sewing whole pieces of clothing. Harry had only ever seen the Carrows and Gully that he could remember, so he had no reason to care about how he looked. He was a happy child, so much happier than the twins, resilient as any house elf child to all the terrible things that happened to him.
However, sometimes he did cry, wail and howl at night and dream terrible dreams that Gully didn't understand. They sounded happy after all, when Harry explained, full of smiling happy people whose faces he couldn't quite remember, but who made him so sad he would wake up crying. Eventually, after a few years, he stopped dreaming or thinking of those faces altogether as the memories drifted away with time. Whatever family had loved him was gone, and he could not waste his many thoughts on things that were gone.
A problem did arise as Harry got older that Gully wasn't sure how to fix. He struggled to read words on pages, sometimes tripped over things he couldn't see. While he didn't say anything of it, Harry's eyes tightened in a show of painful of headaches as he squinted at the house. He could navigate the house and immediate surrounding woods with his eyes closed if he needed, but it still didn't stop the problem of needing glasses.
Gully was not going to ask either Carrow for money to get Harry glasses. That meant, she dreaded the thought, she'd need to steal them or barter for them. Two tricky tasks for a house elf. Gully didn't dare ask the other elves for help. House elves didn't need such things and they never ever took them.
She would have to take the chance though that somewhere there was a house elf just as peculiar as she who could help her. Gully started with bartering, asking around, letting word spread down the gossip chain of house elves. Another fact of house elves not well known by their masters was their penchant for gossip and information. House elves after all hear and see everything that happens in their houses. They would never betray their families, no not even to the Ministry, but that didn't mean they didn't know absolutely everything about them.
Eventually, word came back through the Carrow manor about a free elf who worked for a wizard who made spectacles of all sorts. The gossip had had to spread through many a confused house elf who couldn't see why an elf would need glasses so the information had taken a while to circle back and forth before making it to Gully. Still, Gully was glad that the first method had worked before the boy did something while half blind that got him beat or worse.
She went to the wizard's shop to speak with the house elf, explaining as best she could that she was under order not to explain the circumstances, but that she needed glasses for a child of which she had no money to spend on. It was the wizard in the end who took pity on Gully when his elf partner told him of her situation. He told Gully that if she could not bring the child to him, then he would give her a few pairs to try out and then she could give him measurements for a proper pair.
Gully liked the glasses wizard. Herman, he said his name was, Herman Ficklewart – a terribly wizard name to have in Gully's opinion. At least Harry's name was the slightest bit elf-ish.
He was a kindly wizard, with a soft spot for the downtrodden and the overlooked it seemed. The free elf was his partner, a right craftsmen in his own right though neither would ever let word get out of it. Gully suspected the wizard had many types of friends he wasn't supposed to and only liked him more for it. The world needed more open minded wizards who didn't look down their noses at the smaller folk about them. She bet Herman Ficklewart even liked muggles.
The wizard gave her a box of little disks of glass, telling her to keep them in order, and remember the one which helped the child see the best.
Gully, so entirely thrilled, had gone through the disks with Harry at once and Apparated back within the hour, disk selected and measurements ready.
"What do you think of style, madam elf?" The old wizard waved a hand to a wall of frames, squares and rectangles and circles, all in lines down the wall. "I can make any sort of shape, why I even had a woman the other week who wanted triangles. Triangles, can you believe it?" Herman shook his head in amusement, watching Gully look carefully at the glasses before looking nervously about the room as she thought.
She had no idea what Harry might like, though she figured he'd be rather excited about anything she brought back with her. Gully smiled a bit at the thought of the boy's grin and turned, ready to pick when Herman exclaimed a loud noise of disappointment down towards the Daily Prophet on his desk. He had taken to reading while she browsed, giving her space to think.
"Is something the matter, sir?"
"Oh, just slanderous reporting, madam elf." Gully blushed at the title's use again, subtly trying to glance at the paper only for Herman to turn it to show her.
The picture was of a woman in her late twenties, smiling dimly beside her husband who had an equal look of measured happiness. They seemed very sad for smiling people, Gully thought.
"Another of those Rita Skeeter articles on the Potters, such a vile woman," Herman commented, glancing at the article beside the picture. "She's got gnomes in her head if she thinks the Potters will ever end their marriage." He scoffed, waving off the whole thing.
Gully tilted her head curiously at the page – Potters' Practically Parted? It wasn't the worst title, but it was still as trash as the article itself according to Herman, speculating if Lilly and James Potter were going to be divorced soon due to the strain of losing their son despite having deciding to have children again several years after his death. Gully tilted her head at the photo, squinting at the faces that seemed almost familiar. Gully couldn't recall seeing them before though. Certainly such nice looking people who appeared in papers never hung about with the like of the Carrows.
However, she did like the look of the glasses on the man, round and well fit to the shape of his face.
She handed back the page, turning back to the frames on the wall. Gully pointed to a pair of round, black frames.
"Those? Get a bit inspired, did you?" Herman questioned. Gully nodded shyly. "Well alright. If you say so."
The glasses fit Harry perfectly, just a little loose so he could grow a bit, but not too much to slide off his head when he looked around. Gully tied a bit of string to each of the ends so it would hang off his head should they actually slip and fall. Beneath the scruffy head of black hair that covered the lightning bolt scar across his forehead, his green eyes shone brightly rimmed in glasses that made him look much more like the man in the Prophet photo.
"Perfect, Mister Harry!"
He grinned, looking at his reflection in a left behind shard of a long since broken and removed mirror – another victim of Alecto.
"They're brilliant. Thank you, Gully!" He lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the house elf in a tight hug – not very strong of one regardless since he was far too skinny for his age.
Gully made a note to herself that she needed to get more food for the boy if he was going to be strong enough to... Gully didn't like to think about the day Harry might have to fight back against the Carrows or even Gully herself if he needed to get away and escape. She couldn't even tell him the truth due to the order silencing her, but she could raise him right.
She would help Harry if it killed her – and it would likely kill her. But he was her boy now. Gully would raise him to be a proper human, with all the manners and skills and magic he needed to survive the Carrows and the whole world. He would be the strongest child of any house elf who ever lived.
Even better, while he would have to follow every order the Carrow's gave him, while he was still a prisoner of their house just as much as Gully, one day... one day Harry could leave. One day Gully could help Harry go home.
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