Halve Of A Whole

Abby Ebon

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Disclaimer: I couldn't own it all even if I tried to claim it all.

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Prompt: LadyN13

Harry creating his first sparkling (as a child): I know in the first chapter you said that
Harry gained the powers to spark when he absorbed Voldemort's power, but can you tweak that a bit? Maybe Harry just didn't have enough power to sustain a spark when
he was little. So he created very young sparks when he was a child, but
couldn't maintain them and they died a few days later, making Harry very
said...a prompt somewhere along those lines :D

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Toys and Tots

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A discarded toy, that's all you are. Harry is lonely and little, he doesn't know his own age, because he's never had his own birthday to celebrate in telling. He does know what a birthday is, and secretly he counts Dudley's birthdays as his own, and Dudley is seven this year, so Harry thinks he's six, if only because Dudley is bigger, and bigger tends to be older, but only a little older, a little bigger.

It hurts Harry to see Dudley's this years birthday gift, broken and abandoned – as alone and lonely as he is. He crouches over it, hovering in thought as if a bird about to land or fly in fleeing. The toy does nothing, and nothing happens to stop him - so Harry snatches it up. He thinks about it, about how it looked when Dudley first got the toy, shiny and new in plastic packaging, there had been new batteries – now they weren't there. The batteries, still useful, had to have been taken out of the toy when it stopped working.

The hurt in him, it warms within him, with the broken toy in the hands of the abandoned boy, well, together they can't be lonely. Harry doesn't know what they are, but they aren't alone. Harry won't let the toy be alone, or broken, or lonely. It's his, if Dudley doesn't want it – it's his.

The warmth burns within him, and he realizes he's crying. The wetness on his cheek lands on the toy, and Harry feels as if it's as warm as he is. It stiffens suddenly as if the batteries are in it, forcing it to attention. It hadn't mattered to Harry what the toy was, only that it was abandoned, and needed him as much as he needed it, but as it blinks up at him he realizes it had been a robotic parrot.

Lifelike, it cheeps, chick like, up at Harry, its eyes bright blue and trusting.

"Hello there, little one." Harry greets it, grinning.

"Harry, you in here?" Harry realizes it's too late to hide what he's done, so he doesn't, but waits and holds tightly to it like a prayer. Soon enough this will be over, for good, or for worse.

Dudley stands in the doorway to his bedroom, frown on his face.

"What are you doing?" Dudley doesn't mean, in my room, because he knows that Harry usually pretends to 'clean' in here while he and Dudley's mom are home together while he's at school. And really, Dudley prefers Harry in here rather then his own mother.

"I…I fixed it." Harry feels hot all over, and Dudley comes closer as he usually does, as if he is supposed to, because Harry is in his room, he doesn't protest. Aching with worry, Harry shows Dudley, who is still and stiff, just like his toy had been in Harry's hands, coming to life. Harry isn't really aware that they are shaking, that he's shivering all over and the weakness he feels isn't only fear. Dudley notices it, notices too the tears on his cousin's pale face, they shine in the light, like glints of metal. His pale face that looks flushed red, and the tears aren't the only wetness, he's sweating as he shakes as if he's cold – Dudley reaches out, attentively, like his mom sometimes does, touching Harry's skin with his hand, it's hot – not cold. Something is wrong here, wrong with Harry.

He knows he's not imagining it, seeing the toy bird, life like, and snuggling in Harry's small cupped hands, as if they're a nest.

"You...you can't have, Harry – what've you done?" Dudley looks between the toy that isn't his broken toy, is like life, and Harry, and back again, the bird – toy or not – is licking Harry's tears, crooning. It is growing stronger as Harry grows weaker, living.

"I…I don't know, I felt…alone, then warm, burning, broken D' had to fix it, make it right…wanted it." Harry blinks at him, as if tying to focus, and Dudley is really worried – no, not worried – scared. He's scared of the toy – a toy that isn't behaving right – things like this, they happen around Harry.

It's magic, and his parents try to hide it from Dudley, but he isn't stupid and his parents can't keep teachers from reading to the class aloud about magic and wizards and witches – or from the magic of Christmas, or why there is a Halloween, all that history, they can't hide it and expect Dudley to be blind as well as young – so he pretends he is just that. To make his parents happy and keep Harry's secret safe: magic happens, and Harry is its catalyst – but it, magic – has never hurt him, and never hurt Harry.

Whatever this is, with the toy's bright blue living eyes and it's crooning, it's hurting Harry – Dudley knows it, because he isn't blind. Is anything but, and Harry is his first friend, and he's Harry's best friend, only friend – and more, his cousin, because his mom and dad don't, Dudley tries to keep Harry safe, tries to protect him.

He sits Harry down on his own bed, what once was a toy bird but is now looking about the room with intelligence – stolen, for Dudley knows that bright gleam for his cousin's own curiosity. It looks whole and healthy, though Dudley knows he'd snapped the wing off: he doesn't know his own strength, and there are accidents. It sees him, finally, and tilts its head – beak gapping, as if about to laugh.

"You can't have him." Dudley hisses to the living-toy, it's a threat, and he's never meant one more then in this moment.

It shrieks at him, flinging itself out of Harry's frail hands, its wings flailing about reckless and wild. It can't fly, just like the broken toy parrot that it was could not, and Dudley is grateful as he brings his foot down on the thing, the thing that's hurting Harry by being not-a-toy. Magic made it, but he's determined to destroy it, for it's feeding on Harry's tears, Harry's very life is slowly bleeding out of him with his tears which his once broken toy is drinking. If it was only a toy made life-like by magic, that'd be one thing, but this isn't that, this is real and it is hurting Harry, so he'd done as he's threatened, made good on his word, his vow, and kills it before it takes more from Harry then Harry can give.

It gurgles and screeches as it dies, but Harry is screaming, and sobbing, and his tears are like bits of silver.

"Harry, Harry, alright Harry? You'll be alright, I promise, I promise, please, please shush, you'll be alright now." Dudley rushes to Harry and curls his body protectively around his cousin as if to ward off blows. He cradles him, and rocks him, and hears the words Harry mumbles, panting as if he'd run away.

"Why, why, it hurt, it was like me, it was mine…" Harry's stopped crying silver, and Dudley vows not to break anymore toys, because that was what had started this. Anything is better then this.

"It was hurting you, drinking your tears, weakening you, that's not magic Harry, it's not, it's something bad, and I couldn't let you die and let it live." Dudley keeps his voice hushed, hoping his parents don't care enough to come looking for him and Harry if they are quiet, his dad will be home in an hour or two – his mom's in the garden outside. He doesn't think Harry screamed very loudly, he'd been lying on his side, screaming into a pillow as it…it died.

As Dudley killed it…

He's killed something of Harry's he realizes, and he can't take it back – can never take it back, he regrets it, and wishes it hadn't happened – but it had, and he's not sorry he's saved his cousin's life.

That night he tells his parents he wants to get rid of all his broken toys, and they get sent to the trash heap gathered all up in a black bag in his dad's car that morning. Harry glances at him during dinner, when he says he doesn't want broken toys, and that glance is full of pain. It's as if the broken toys were pushing them apart – it isn't that Dudley minds sharing his toys (the whole ones) it's just he thinks part of what happened, happened because the toy was broken. Harry isn't a toy, isn't broken, but if he thinks he is –he's wrong - and maybe playing with whole toys won't make him do what he had done. Whatever it was.

It takes two weeks for Dudley to realize that whatever he'd done in killing his too-life-like-not-toy had hurt Harry, and Harry isn't going to forgive him. Dudley is angry, because Harry simply won't talk to him, he's quiet all the time and avoids eye contact, avoids touch.

All summer long Dudley tries to make it right, giving Harry cake on his birthday, telling him he can share the toys he gets – it seems a mean joke on his part, but Dudley did it unknowing. Harry and he both start school, and with school comes another fear of Dudley's – Harry leaving him alone, Harry having friends who aren't Dudley (who might have broken toys, might give them to his cousin, who might accidently kill his cousin by waiting to do something).

Dudley does make friends, and telling them that Harry isn't to have friends…the result isn't what he'd expected. It works though, his little cousin is small and gawky, pale and dark haired, a oddity, and if Dudley learns one thing that year its that adults can be as cruel as children, and when they are – it's worse, because other adults turn a blind eye to it. His parents were wrong, were cruel, and Dudley saw it. He hated it, hated them, hated that a part of that wrongness was in him (and there was no getting it out) – and most guiltily of all, he hated Harry Potter, his cousin, for making him see it.

Dudley comes home one day, a day Harry kept home sick and his parents hadn't cared if he'd missed the tests Dudley had to take. The door to the cupboard under the stairs (where Harry sleeps) is shut, and Dudley knows his mom won't have cared to take care of Harry, to check on him. He goes to the door and puts his ear to it.

He doesn't hear anything, and that chills him, cold washing over him, he opens the door – and Harry is lying there in shadow, curled up on his cot. That's not what Dudley first sees, he sees the toys, and the little metal racecars he'd thought had gone missing. He hadn't really cared where they had gone, because he didn't really play with them anymore – and if Harry had wanted them, and hadn't told Dudley it was just one more hurt between them. They are scattered across the floor, changed and shaped strangely. He knows without looking at them closely that Harry had done it again, and this time Dudley hadn't been there to stop him.

"Harry?" Dudley says softly, his voice hushed.

"They died on their own, D." Harry's voice is whisper soft, drained. Dudley remembers the pain Harry had gone through when Dudley had done the killing. He'd gone through it on his own, this time, and he's stronger then Dudley ever thinks he can be. He can't see Harry ever killing something like them, something he made so life-like, maybe it is a life – and not magic making something that isn't as it is.

Dudley goes quietly to Harry as he lays on his side facing away from him, curled and helpless, and finds Harry holding a little misshapen racecar – he feels sure that it died last, with Harry crying over it, holding onto it and wanting it to live, but it hadn't – and Dudley is sickened that he's glad.

"Why…why do this Harry – you know what it does –did - to you?" Dudley asks softly, feeling the gap filled with pain that stretches between them.

"You didn't want them." Didn't want me, why do you care? is what Harry means, and Dudley knows it, knows too that Harry is wrong. He's too kind to say so to Dudley, and he takes a breath and really looks at his cousin.

"Come on, get up, we'll go and do something…like we used to, okay?" Harry looks to him, pale and sickly, and Dudley almost regrets the offer, knowing it will cost Harry dearly to do what Dudley wants. He gets up though, and goes with Dudley upstairs to play. Dudley goes down for a snack, surprising his mother, but it's really to make sure the little misshapen racecars, scattered on the cupboard floor like bodies, are gone before Harry goes down to sleep. He's just got his cousin back, and Dudley doesn't want Harry to remember them – that he can make 'friends' that hurt him. Dudley doesn't throw the little bodies away, but takes them upstairs in a shoebox to show Harry – and to tell him too, that he's sorry.

Before it gets dark, they bury the not-toys beside his mom's lilies.

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(I've always felt that Dudley had potential to be more: maybe and ifs, I guess.)