Harry hadn't quite forgotten where he was. He was at a dining table in a dining room with bizarre walls. More importantly, he was on the other side of the door and possibly making the worst mistake of his brief, young life. But he couldn't help it that he was shoveling down food prepared by the better mother.
"Nom," Harry murmured as he crammed down a sizable hunk of chicken that was still clearly steaming. Such a tasty mistake he was making. If there was poison in the sauce, at least he would die on a happy stomach. Or maybe, they were fattening him up.
"My, you grew up fast!" his button-eyed dad exclaimed. "Slow down, rascal! You're puttin' me to shame." His dad was only halfway through his portion of shepherd's pie.
"Poor darling," the mom cooed. She picked up her napkin and cupped Harry's chin to wipe at the crumbs. "Doesn't your aunt ever feed you?"
Going pink in the ears, Harry loosened the fork clenched roughly in his hand and willed himself to chew before gulping his forkfuls. "Sorry. Aunt Petunia doesn't cook anything like this," he sheepishly admitted. "Well, sometimes, when Uncle Vernon has his bosses come over, but I'm to stay under the stairs, no funny business."
She reached her hand out and ran it through his hair, which embarrassed him enough that he tried to duck out of her reach.
"None of that now," the dad said sternly at the mom, before cracking a wide grin at Harry. "Imagine our son shy. Shy!"
Despite the dad's light teasing, the mom didn't stop frowning. "I don't know how long you've been with those people, but you're not going back to them. They will never put you under the stairs ever again."
Seeing that all of their plates were empty, the mom sprang from her chair and almost instantly had them piled up neatly. She removed the domed cover on a platter, which had a chocolate cake neatly centered on a doily. As the mom pushed the chocolate cake to Harry, candles sprouted from the pink frosting and the cake began writing on itself! In green icing, Harry read the looping words: "Happy Birthday, Harry."
"How did- I forgot my birthday. How did you know?"
"I'm your mother," she said, tapping his nose. "Don't be silly, of course I'd know."
"She knows you like the back of her hand," said the dad.
"What are you waiting for, silly? Make a wish, and then we can have a proper celebration. Cake, presents, then games," the mom said, her button eyes flashing. Her fingers, each nail curved and red, drummed impatiently on the table.
Harry was briefly mesmerized by her long fingers, but then the dad, looking as though someone had glued a bright red cone to the his head, fastened a similar golden party cone on Harry's head. "Go on, Harry."
The mom started up the birthday song. "Happy birthday to you..."
"Ack! Uh, birthday dear Harry, Happy..." And she'd kicked the dad into joining her, by the sounds of it.
Harry closed his eyes in earnest before puffing up his cheeks and snuffing the candles at one go. Not only did the flames go out, but so did the candles, blinking out of existence as though they'd never been. He opened his eyes to the parents standing at each of his shoulders and clapping.
"Did you make a wish, darling?" the mom asked. She had produced three miniature plates, and cut a generous slice. Harry pushed his forward to assist her, partly to make it easier on her and partly out of greed. He was a bit surprised that she ignored him and plated the dad's plate first. This upset him, slightly. Until the mom pushed the rest of the cake at him.
"Whoa, all for me?" Harry squeaked.
"I decided not to risk it," the mom said, smiling knowingly.
"I'm not that hungry anymore," Harry muttered. "I can't finish this whole thing."
"At least a bite," the mom said. "I baked it myself, with love."
The first bite, and the third, and the final one that topped off his grossly sated appetite all went down agreeably, what with the caramel center. This cake could have taken Miss Figg's stale chocolate biscuits and kicked them around the block. As he finished, Harry felt a bit self conscious with how eagerly they watched him eat. This was way more attention than he got with the Dursleys, and it was positive attention, too. Whenever Harry had this much attention, his ears and arms usually were sore from being twisted.
"Done?"
In response, Harry put down his fork. The dad promptly shoved a little box onto the table, with enough force to knock the cake on to the floor. "Oops-y," the dad trilled. "Open it, Harry! But don't..."
Harry put his finger on it as the dad trailed off weakly,"...touch. Woo hoo hoo!" It looked like a baseball, only the stitching shined a deep golden color.
Knife-like wings popped out of the stitches, and then the baseball flew out of the box in moments. Its wings buzzed so crazily that when it collided with the leftover cake, frosting and caramel mucked the chandelier and the walls. Then, unbelievably, the baseball flew into the wallpaper, and kept going. Right into the blue sky-like part of the wallpapering and gone in brush-stroked clouds.
Harry smiled sheepishly at his dad, who placed his thoroughly pink frosted glasses on top of his frosted hair to look at the mother.
The mother pursed her lips in a way that strongly reminded Harry of Petunia. "You're going to have to clean this up, Harry."
Moments later, Harry was up in the air and in the wallpaper. He was flying on, of all things, a broomstick and became very pleased with himself as he was better than his dad at it. Much better. Another burst of speed put him too far ahead to hear his dad's whooping.
Far below, Harry could see a speck that was the mother. She was demurely seated on a chair that rode on thousands of bristles that left a shining trail of foam. When Harry bothered skimming the ground on his broomstick, she tried to hit him with a cannon that fired bubbles the size of footballs and smelled like anything but soap. To tease her, Harry had rolled in the scum of the foam trail and took off so fast (that a Harry-shaped bubble boy lingered briefly) that she couldn't force cleanliness on him.
The only Dursley who interacted with Harry when he cleaned was Dudley, and that was to dunk Harry's head into the toilet bowl while the little boy scrubbed.
Eventually, Harry was too soaped up to properly catch hold of the winged baseball, and the dad used that to his advantage, stealing back the baseball and throwing it at Harry repeatedly. Then Harry was too slippery to hold on to the broom and he fell off at hundreds and thousands of miles (or however many miles it took for a small boy to fall from the stars) to a purple lake below.
Before Harry hit the water, he was grabbed by his ankle and watched his wobbly taped glasses splash.
Rather than letting Harry up onto the broom, the dad maneuvered his broom slowly back and forth until he swung Harry in gentle arcs. "I seem to remember a shiny new 10 year old boy telling his old man to eat scum."
"Who me?" Harry cried, oddly taking joy in being dangled helplessly. It was fun to relax his arms and feel them go and go. "I'm going to throw up!" Harry declared quite happily.
"Say that I'm the best, and I'll let you go scott-free. Maybe."
"I'm the beeeeeeeeeessst..."
"Off with you then."
He was dropped unceremoniously to his purple doom.
Harry's assumption that the lake would be full of water was, like most assumptions, extremely wrong. The purple was actually a huge colony of jelly fish, or rather, fish that bent and wiggled around him and complained about the soap. One of them jammed his glasses back onto his face. The colony of fishy jellies unanimously swam away from him, which caused a huge, jiggly tunnel to form around Harry, permitting him to fall away from them.
Harry landed in his bed just in time for the door to open.
"I thought you might be sleepy. Can I tuck you in?" asked the mother. She wore a long and white and pretty dress and her red hair was tied to the side with a black ribbon.
"How did I...?" Harry looked down at himself and saw that he was in jammies, with dinosaurs and planets fighting each other.
"Shhh..." The mother hushed him. "You'll need your rest for playing tomorrow."
"But we played today," Harry whispered. His voice was hoarse from so much.
"No darling, we cleaned," she said. She pulled on a string that dangled from the bed post and a blanket glided on down. Harry could feel her long nails poking him as she tucked the covers snugly around him. With utmost care, the mother plucked the glasses from his head and set them on the nightstand. Again, Harry was helpless and blind, but it was soothing to feel his back realign itself against such a soft bed and be aware only of the lullaby she hummed.
"La la... dreaming... dreaming of...la la la la..."
Though he didn't ask her to, the mother sat in her chair and asked him if he wanted a story.
"No," Harry breathed. "I want to stay forever."
She halted and he could hear her fingers clicking on the arm of the chair. Through his reduced sight, he couldn't see her buttons.
"That's what I wished for," he said, in a smaller voice. "Candles."
Now would have been the perfect time to sleep, and be out before she would break the news to him and send him packing. But there was fear in him, hard and small and fluttering its bent-up wings.
"I won't ever let you go," she said, and she raised her left hand in the air. "Swear on it."
Harry closed his eyes and allowed his breathing to slow and deepen, as though he was sleeping. He expected her to leave him after making that sort of promise. If there was one thing the Dursleys had taught him, it was that you had to notice what an adult does more than what one says.
Though she had no reason to believe that he was awake and listening, the mother sat in the hard-backed chair and began the strains of another tune.
"My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary. Long is the way and the mountains are wild..."
As though she were weaving a spell, Harry felt the lead in his fingers and toes. And the sudden certainty that he hadn't done what he was supposed to do. Far from it. And the right thing to do. It was... not this. Harry was happy, and this...
"Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary. Over the path my poor orn'ry child..."
Harry gave up and followed her song into the heart of slumber.
The mother ceased her chirping at some point and her hands worked furiously in her lap. In the many twists and turns of her mind, she knew that six broken pieces of hard, black plastic stretched and thinned into needles, manipulated by the push and pull of her skilled fingers. She willed three of the needles into the electronic windows.
Her mind expanded further, to include three angles of two horrified looking people.
"Hello Coraline," she whispered. "You need a hair cut."
Amused as she was by Coraline's coarse language, the mother turned her button eyes to the boy beside Coraline. "Oh, and you. We remember you." Very casually, the mother raised first one hand, and then the other in a graceful wave.
"That's all in the past now, of course. You were a child. We forgive children," the other mother continued. Despite her long red hair and rosy cheeks, her coal-black eyes flashed as malevolently as Coraline remembered. She smiled and her face cracked one of the electronic windows. "Thank you for my son."
"You mean your sundae, evil witch? I know you finished off the Dursley kid with Harry on top!" Coraline grabbed one of the screens and knocked it over. With a spark, the mother was left to glow in only one electric window.
"Don't talk like that about your brother," the other mother whispered. "It upsets mother."
Coraline choked back a cry as she felt the ice-cold tips of two black needles prick her throat. Two red drops went down her neck when Wybie tried to get closer to Coraline. As he stepped back, glaring hatefully at his computer, the needles hovered a respectful inch from her thin white neck.
The mother raised her hand again and made a vague snipping motion. The two red-tipped black needles scissored against each other, and an inch-thick lock of blue hair fluttered on to the floor. A long, thin cut on the side of Coraline's neck bled red.
"Woops. Meant to snip, not slip." She laughed softly, and the third monitor to Wybie's computer blackened. However, her voice crackled from Wybie's speakers. "Hmmm... I promise you, next time mother is upset, she will slip. With all my love, dears."
Coraline stared at her red streaked fingers, only looking away when Wybie grabbed her around the shoulders and started pushing her out of his living room to the door.
"Stop! What the crap?"
"You're not safe here. She just used the Internet." Wybie held his head stiff and high.
"Don't be an idiot," Coraline said, wiggling out of his grasp. "If she can pull off that hocus pocus in the real world, I'm not safe anywhere and you are definitely not out of her clutches either."
"Go back to school, Jonesy." He was looking at her so angrily that Coraline wanted to punch out at least one of his eyes. "You do not fucking know everything that you need to know."
"Ooh, you swore," she said, crossing her arms. She tossed her head unconsciously and the now shortened stub of hair stuck to her cheek. "So she attacked me. Big whoop. I say we do things my way and take a hammer-"
Wybie gave her plenty of chances to react. Stubborn as she was, Coraline would not retreat as he took big steps into her personal bubble. Her lip stuck out in a pout as she glared up defiantly. He gave her plenty of time to see where his eyes were going. His neck creaked out a warning as it craned forward.
He should have had a shiner in each eye after an eon of hovering his mouth that close to her nose. He didn't even go as far as her mouth, more stunned by the lack of knuckle in his eyeball.
In the strictest technicalities, Wybie did not kiss Coraline.
In actuality, he wussed out and huffed onto the skin over her lip.
"Meow?" The Cat peered interestedly at the goings on of his humans.
Before striding magnificently out of the Pink Palace, Coraline smacked him so hard upside his head that Wybie could have sworn his head spun a couple of times. Wait, no, that was him twisting and falling to the ground. That was his brain doing flips.
"Merr," said the Cat. It dropped a stiff mouse on to the carpet. The Cat bent its head and nuzzled the little dead thing with a whiskered smooch.
"Har har," Wybie grunted.
Knowing that this was a completely unfair thought, Wybie realized that Harry would probably learn to be very, very afraid of women after the Beldam got through with him.
A/N: DON'T OWN HP, Coraline, or songs. Now this be a crazzzy chapter. Humor, angst, and romance abounds. With no small magic involved.
Thanks for reading this far. Thank you soooo much. Hoping to wrap this all up in two chapters.
To my reviewers: You guys have such great ideas about the Beldam. Soul magic! Real love for the Beldam! I'd love to read stories from you!