AN: I haven't made up my mind about possible pairings, or if I'm even going to include a pairing, any ideas?
Harry spent the next two days impatiently waiting for some sign of a rescue. It seemed to him that life at the Dursleys' had become a ceaseless limbo, the days blending together in a blur of humidity and isolation. He tried to muster up the mental strength to begin his load of homework, which would take at least twice the height of him in parchment to finish, but found he couldn't concentrate on anything but his dreams. Increasing violence, committed by his own hand and to the people closest to him kept him constantly inside his own head, agonizing over their meaning. He had previously only dreamt of Voldemort's activity, and the cruel acts of the dark lord had left him with a sense of deep foreboding. These new dreams were something different; of that he was sure.
Harry had spent his entire Sunday afternoon in bed, still dressed in his pajamas, his hair unruly and unwashed. His curtains were pulled back and the window was ajar to let Hedwig in and out. He had been communicating with Ron on and off all summer, and their correspondence had taken a rather sour turn after Ron refused to divulge where he was or what he was doing. "You'll find out when you get here, Harry. Honestly, it's not very exciting, so don't get in a twist about it" Ron had scribbled in his last letter.
Anything is better than this, Harry thought bitterly. He had no one to talk to at the Dursleys, no reason to do anything but lay about and watch time slowly pass. Ron didn't know when they would come for him, said they weren't going to tell him because the Death Eaters could easily intercept their mail and stage a siege of Privet Drive. No one cares that I'm all alone here. I fought Voldemort! I can handle any truth Dumbledore tries so hard to keep from me!
Hedwig swooped in then, her white feathers catching the dimming violet light of the street outside. Setting down gracefully on the edge of his quilt-covered bed, she hooted softly at Harry in greeting. She had something clutched in her left talon, it twiched. A vole.
"Hedwig! Not on my bed!" Harry exclaimed, sitting up in bed and pulling his legs away from the dying rodent. She grabbed it up suddenly in her beak and flew to her cage to consume it. He heard the ripping and clicking sound and cringed. No letter from Ron. He felt a surge of anger and grabbed parchment from the floor beside his bed. He scribbled a furious letter to Ron, and a slightly kinder one to Hermione, pointedly mentioning his boredom and aggravation at his situation. He had never mentioned his new dreams, frightened they would be scared of him. He had dreamed of killing them too. Ron he had strangled with a curtain pull, Hermione he had choked with his bare hands. Harry shuddered at the memory, replaying the absurd dream in his head for the hundredth time. He wasn't this person, he wasn't dark like Tom Riddle had been. He took no pleasure in the suffering of others, and watching his friends die by his hands was almost more than he could bear. It had been horrible to watch them try to scream under him as they slowly went still, and Harry had wondered if he could look at them again. When he thought of his friends, however, he longed to be with them. He missed Ron's rough, sarcastic humour, and Hermione's endless helpfulness so much that he didn't allow himself to dwell on them for long.
Harry glanced at his alarm clock apathetically. 7:42 pm. Another day of no news, another day with no rescue. He hadn't been down for tea with the Dursleys all week, in fact, he'd hardly eaten. He noticed he had lost a significant amount of weight over the summer, even more than his first couple of years at Hogwarts when the Dursleys had practically starved him. He guessed it was due to both his neglect of his diet and the constant anxiety that plagued him since his dreams had started. His physical health was the last thing on his mind, exhausting all of his mental energy into separating his dreams from reality.
They're just dreams. Stupid nightmares that aren't connected to Voldemort. I'm not going crazy. I'm not going to actually kill any-
Harry was startled from his thoughts by a faint rapping on his door. Silence filled the room and pressed on his ears for a few seconds before he weakly answered.
"Yeah? Um, come in," Harry stuttered, and made a quick glance at Hedwig, who dropped the picked-apart rodent to the bottom of her cage and ruffled her feathers innocuously. The door swung open in one quick, awkward movement as his aunt entered carrying a plate of food, her hair set in rollers as it usually did after dinner.
"If you don't want to eat at the table then so be it but don't go starving yourself for attention, boy." His aunt glared through narrowed eyes. She did not step into the room, just reached forward and put the plate on the edge of his desk, never once moving her feet from the doorway. "Those people will say it's our fault you're like this. Well, they had better come for you soon, I won't have you brooding up here all day and wandering the house at night! Scaring my Dudders!" She exclaimed, her eyes wide.
"What are you talking about? I've barely said a word to Dudley and I haven't even left my room!" Harry said angrily, pulling the covers off his legs as he shakily got to his feet, head buzzing for a second. "I don't go wandering around the house!"
"You liar! Dudders told me you stood outside his door for nearly an hour last night, whispering things! In the middle of the night! You're lucky you didn't wake Vernon, he'd have put you right!" Her face was red and she looked very much like she wanted to cross the room and scold him an inch from his face.
Harry's eyes narrowed. "He's making it up! Why would I stand outside Dudley's door? For a laugh?" He took a tentative step towards his aunt, who quickly backed away so that half of her body was concealed behind the doorframe.
"I don't know what sick little game you're up to, Potter," she said venomously. "But the funny business ends here! You're wrong in the head and I won't have you hurting my Dudders! You write to those people of yours and tell them to take you!" She pointed around the doorway to Hedwig, who's black, glassy eyes stared back at her.
"They won't tell me when they're coming! I'd love to get out of this stupid house but no one will listen to me!" Harry exclaimed, his fists balling. He took another step forward.
"Y-you're out of here tomorrow whether they come for you or not!" His aunt stuttered, looking apprehensively at her nephew. "We won't have you here!"
"Fine! I don't care anymore!" Harry made a quick movement for his desk, and his aunt backed off quickly, shutting the door noisily behind her. Harry seized a dinner roll off the plate and threw it where her head had just been. He felt so angry. He wanted to punch something, break it.
He walked quickly back to bed and threw himself on top of it, grabbing a fragment of parchment from the floor below. His hands were shaking so badly that drops of ink stained the page, bleeding into the fibers.
Sirius,
The Dursleys are kicking me out tomorrow morning. I don't know what I did but I know I have to leave. What am I supposed to do?
Harry
"Hedwig!" Harry hissed, and the owl flew down from her cage and onto the bed. Affixing the letter, he followed her as she hopped up onto the window ledge and watched her retreating shape fall out of focus and disappear completely. He felt more angry than he could remember feeling, more angry then he had been with Ron last year or when he had faced Pettigrew the year before. This was new and it was scary.
Resolving to calm himself, Harry returned to his bed and lay down. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply, feeling his chest expand. Letting the air go, he felt some of the hotness leave his face. He was so confused by Dudley's lie. Why would his cousin lie to get him in trouble? He thought at least he would have grown out of telling on Harry, and thought he was doing his cousin a service by staying out of his way completely. He recalled the last time he had seen Dudley, briefly as he left the bathroom nearly four days ago. He wanted nothing more than to stomp down the hall and throw his cousin's bedroom door open and demand an explanation but knew his uncle would probably throw him out on the spot. Deciding it was fruitless to agonize over it, Harry turned over and fell into a restless sleep.
Harry felt his feet move lightly over the floor, hearing only the muffled shuffling of socked feet as he crossed the hall. When he reached the door furthest from the stairs he paused briefly, listening for sounds on the inside. It was dark enough in the house that if he opened the door quietly enough, this sleeping cousin would not be disturbed. He grasped the doorknob, and the door swung open soundlessly. Grinning at his luck, he entered the room, following the path of the walls to the large, plush bed where he heard soft snorting and snoring. He reached the bed, his knees grazing the down filled duvet and he climbed onto the bed slowly. Against his will, the mattress groaned slightly and he abandoned any guise of stealth. Crawling up the bed and leaning forward to look Dudley in the face, he exhaled over the boy's face, causing his hair to flutter slightly and beady eyes to flicker open in the darkness.
Before there was any time for him to react, Harry ripped the pillow from beneath Dudley's head and the boy opened his mouth to protest. Before any sound could penetrate the thick silence of the room, he pressed the pillow over the boy's face, hand crushing into his cheekbones and teeth though the pillow.
Hands came up to fight him and he let them. He let them tear at his hair and reach up for his eyes. He pressed into the pillow with all the strength he could bring from his body, leaning over the boy beneath him, his arms straining. A muffled cry seemed to go on forever and he pressed harder, trying to silence it. After several violent moments, the hands dropped away from his face, leaving it hot and bruised. Pulling back the pillow he saw his cousin's face, nose broken, mouth hanging open. His eyes staring blankly just as Cedric Diggory's had.
"Harry? Harry!" a voice broke through the dream, vaguely familiar. As the dream faded and consciousness returned, so did the nagging anxiety. He opened his eyes.
He was sitting at his desk, facing the wall. The forgotten plate of food was sitting beside him. What am I doing at my desk? Harry thought, I fell asleep in bed!
"Send me a note needing a rescue, and here I am to provide it, and I don't even get a "hello" or anything..." Harry's eyes widened and he turned around abruptly in his chair. His godfather stood behind him, long, wild hair falling into his eyes. Harry could have burst into tears.
"Sirius! You came!" Harry exclaimed, standing up to fall into a loose embrace. Sirius smelled like pipe smoke and mothballs. "How did I get to my desk?"
"You fell asleep, I guess. I just got here and you were sitting there mumbling." Sirius grinned crookedly. "Come on, everyone's downstairs trying to keep you're uncle's head on. Throwing a right fit about the Joneses seeing us walking up the front path..."
"Everyone? Who's here?" Harry asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes and grabbing the last of his belongings from underneath the floorboards.
"A couple aurors and friends you haven't met, Moody, Remus and Arthur Weasley." Sirius answered. Harry nodded, stretching. "God you're thin, Harry. Have they been feeding you?" He looked over to the untouched plate of food on the desk and then to the dinner roll lying on the floor by the door.
"Nah, I just haven't been hungry. It's been right boring here. They've barely said a word to me all summer," Harry said, feeling embarrassed. Sirius studied him for a moment longer before shaking his head slightly.
"No matter, once we get to headquarters then Molly can stuff you like a turkey." Seeing Harry's confused expression, he elaborated. "I'll tell you all about it when we get there. Moody will kill me if I go talking about things here..."
The door banged open then, and Harry heard the familiar buzzing of Moody's magical eye before he saw him. Looking scruffy and intimidating, Moody looked over at Harry with his wand out.
"Come on, Potter. We've got a portkey ready." Flicking his wand at Harry's trunk, it shrunk to the size of a deck of cards and came zooming into Moody's hand. He stuffed it into the folds of his robes. Harry realized that the real Mad Eye Moody was just as intimidating as the fake one he had known for a whole year. "Grab your owl, let's go."
Harry hadn't even been aware of Hedwig returning to her cage after delivering the letter. This was unusual, as Hedwig landing in her cage usually resulted in things loudly falling off his dresser. He closed the metal door to the cage and lifted it off the shelf, following Moody out the door, Sirius in tow.
Downstairs the atmosphere was thick with tension. Uncle Vernon was purple faced and was being magically restrained by a black wizard in colourful robes. Aunt Petunia stood beside him, looking angrily up at the group surrounding them. Upon seeing Harry, Uncle Vernon became more animated, yelling into the darkened living room. "That boy isn't right! He's gone funny! He's going to hurt somebody and then you'll all know to stay away!" He yelled, face scrunching up in hatred as he looked at Harry. Harry glared back.
"I haven't hurt anyone!" Harry yelled back, and the form of Professor Lupin stepped between them, facing Harry.
"Harry, ignore it. The portkey's ready." Another wizard Harry didn't know came forward, producing a quill from inside of his robes. The group around them closed in around the quill, hands out.
"NO MAGIC IN THIS HOUSE!" Uncle Vernon yelled from behind them.
"On three." Mr. Weasley said to his right. He didn't have time to greet anyone or say anything else. "One...two...three!" Their hands all came down on the quill simultaneously, and Harry felt himself free-falling away from Privet Drive.