Sad Things, Made Bright
By Rey
Chapter 9: An Egregious Encounter, Part 1
21st December 1988
24.
Petunia Dursley sat contentedly nursing her cup of evening tea in the sofa in the living-room, relishing the not-so-quiet time relaxing with her boisterous boys, who were watching a rebroadcasted football match on the telly. The two days without the presence of her freaky nephew, therefore his hands for chores, had been odd and rather tiring, but she was sure she would be able to cope well quite soon. After all, she'd managed marvellously before the freak had been dumped on her doorstep like rubbish all those years ago, when her Diddykins had needed all of her attention. The added hassle and energy required to keep a good and enviable household were a worthy price, when all was said and done, now that she was rid of her sister's brat for good.
She couldn't have asked for a better Christmas gift, and Christmas was less than a week away at that.
So it was with much annoyance that she heard somebody knocking three times firmly on the front door, sounding just shy of banging rudely at the wooden plank.
"Uncivilised people," Vernon declared grumblingly as he hoisted himself up from his armchair. Petunia sniffed her agreement. – Visitors? At eight in the evening? Without prior engagement? Uncooth, indeed!
But there was no need to interrupt her boys' evening entertainment for the sake of this uninvited, unwelcome guest,, all the same.
"I'll get the door, Vernon dear. Just keep our Diddykins company. I'll make both of you an evening snack after this," she smiled indulgently at her husband over the blond head of their preoccupied boy, to which Vernon nodded with a delighted smile of his own, which sent flutters into her belly.
Her mood quickly soured, however, when the three-time knocking sounded again, just as insistant and loud as before. She flounced towards the front door, fully believing that, if it's not one or some of those unruly, uncontrollable brats playing with the doors of respectable home owners, then it must be one or some of those zealous religious door-to-door preachers, seeking another tactic to hook her and her precious boys into whatever dogma they were selling.
She jerked her front door open. But her lips, also opened in preparation of delivering a well-deserved tirade against whoever it was, closed instead with the snick of her teeth.
A tall, bulky something with two legs and two fingered arms was standing casually on her doorstep, filling in the doorframe with little margin vertically and horizontally, with one of its hands holding something that looked suspiciously like a smallish modified pistol right at her heart. It looked rather like a life-sized humanoid robot from one of those films and telly serials her boys loved so much, all metal with bits of leather in between the joints of the battered chassis, coloured silver and grey and blue. But she had a nagging suspicion that this one was fully intelligent, unlike those robots, and those odds and ends mounted on or hanging from the chassis, including the back of its metal-and-leather-gloved hands, were actual weapons – real, harmful weapons.
Her heart, still on the crosshairs of the casually held pistol-like thing, thundered painfully, as her mouth dried up and her lips twitched in a mighty effort not to show weakness by trembling. Petunia didn't know how long she was standing petrified there, frightened within her own home, but the crazy robot didn't seem to mind the stalemate, judging from how equally silent and unmoving it was.
This was mad! She thought she'd been rid of freaky folks and events like this when her sister had died. Just now, she'd even believed it, given how Lily's burdensome brat had been missing for two days and counting, tagging along after that unknown wog in overly nice winter clothes.
No, she couldn't accept this. She wouldn't. – This was her home. She had a say here, and nobody could threaten her in her own domain. She wouldn't let it happen, ever.
So, gathering her composure with a deep inhale of the chilly wintry evening, she craned her neck up, seeking the robot's eyes – or what might pass as eyes for this freaky thing; then she opened her mouth once more to give it a piece of her mind like a good brave, stalwart Englishwoman ought to.
It was a mistake.
Her mouth snicked close again, and her throat turned drier than she'd ever thought possible. But she could not look away, too petrified to move.
The robot had no mouth, had no nose, only a pair of large, vertically shaped dark eyeslots filling the front of its rounded-top head, divided in the middle by a black strip going up that might generously be termed "nose." As eerie as the sight was, however, she was not frightened by it. No, there had been far more frightful sights in the book about magical beasts that her sister had ever shown her nearly two decades ago.
But in all the detailed, lifelike moving pictures included in that book, none of those freaky beasts had shown human intelligence, intent and calculation in their eyes, however dangerous they were purported to be, whatever the shapes of those eyes were, and however many they were on one creature only.
This robot, on the other hand, although its eyes were flat and unremarkable, and actually rather unrecognisable as eyes, more like the eyeslots of a freaky helmet, seemed to pin her in place with deadly awareness, intensity and knowledge – and above all, intent. The flatness and shapelessness of those large eyes only made the sensation more frightening.
And then, it talked.
"Petunia Dursley."
A quiet statement, male-sounding, electronically filtered: slow like the pronouncement of a weighty verdict, deadly calm like the worst of the evilest characters in all the dramas she'd watched on various telly shows and films, and simple like she imagined pushing the trigger of a gun was.
She shuddered, hard. And still, she couldn't make her eyes look away, nor could she make her jaw to unhinge even a little, let alone to order her petrified tongue to move.
Her salvation came, unbelievably, when a cracking noise like the release of a gun broke the stillness of the winter night, followed by the second one almost right afterwards. It might be the sound of a gun indeed, or a car backfiring; but for once in her life, she wildly hoped that the noise belonged to the wizardfolk, and that they were here to help her, in time to help save her from this robot.
She managed to open her mouth now, emboldened by the assumed help that must be coming soon. The robot seemed to detect the shifting of fortunes as well, for it yanked a larger pistol out from its hip holster, though unfortunately without letting the one aimed at her heart waver for even an inch.
Then, in a fluid, graceful movement that she would've never thought a robot could ever execute, it whirled half about while backing away a little from its former position. It crouched down just as a jet of red light flashed past the spot it'd occupied half a second ago.
In answer, four jets of red light, this time each accompanied by a sharp whining noise and the tang of ozone, leapt from the larger pistol the robot held, before the essayer of the first red light could ever manage anything else.
And on the street before her home, she could see how Albus Dumbledore fell as if in a slow motion, with four scorched holes on the outline of his garish, freakish robe.
A tabby cat with square markings on each eyes, maybe the same as the one that had visited Privet Drive seven years ago, streaked away from behind the old man's crumpling body. It changed into a fierce-looking woman dressed in tartan, with her wand already brandished as she straightened from her freakish transformation.
And just so, four more of the ozone-smelling, sharply whining jets of red light downed her, just as easily as they had toppled Albus Dumbledore, the person whom Lily had claimed as being the only mainstay they had against Voldemort – the terrorist who'd then killed her and her husband, but not her child.
Petunia let loose with a shriek at last, as, with yet another graceful, fluid movement, the robot aimed both pistols at her.
Then a blue bolt lept out of the smaller pistol and struck her heart, and she blissfully knew no more.
25.
Kad watched as his new, tangible, caring father, back in armour and this time wearing full arsenal, confronted his aunt on the doorstep of Privet Drive number four. He'd been tasked to wait and guard Dad's back with his little blaster in his hand, with a white kiddy bike helmet covering his head underneath the hood of his winter coat, and with a pair of circular disk-like devises – supposedly for communication purposes – respectively slipped into the right earslot of the bike helmet and clipped onto its left strap. He'd made a snow fort all round him by the low wall running along the front of Privet Drive number four, with just a small slit for him to see through and provide a means to flee should it be necessary, just like when he'd had some time to hide from Dudley and gang when they'd played Harry Hunting this winter holiday.
At his feet were his pack and Dad's, sagging like a pair of misshapened clothes, having been emptied off their treasures, which had been stored – along with lots of other things – in the car before they'd left it at the end of Privet Drive. The bags were supposed to carry his most prized belongings, because they wouldn't ever return here; Dad had been oddly quite insistant on the keepsakes. So he dreaded the time when Dad found out that, after all, he'd got nothing to bring with him, save for his tattered blue baby blanket, stitched with silver HJP on one corner, stored lovingly on one corner of his cupboard by where his head usually lay, on the tatty dog-bed donated 'kindly' by Aunt Marge more than five years ago – so Aunt Tuney had said. Dad had drilled him about all the details and layout of Number Four that he remembered, and they'd formed a bemusingly serious plan for just retrieving the nonexistent keepsakes, so he hadn't had the chance to tell his father anything but what the latter had requested.
And then, accompanied by the sounds akin to the gun blasts from the telly shows Dudley and Uncle Vern liked to watch, two oddly attired people materialised from thin air on the street on the opposite end of Number Four, and one of them – a woman – even changed,into a cat!
Kad froze and gaped at their sudden appearance and the freaky things about them for a long moment. He couldn't help it! The Dursleys had always called him freaky for ever so many things that he might or might not have done or used or worn, and here a couple of grown-ups did a score of freaky things so blatantly.
His distraction cost him precious time, unfortunately. The white-haired, white-bearded elderly man, garbed in a neon-blue robe strewn with twinkling multicoloured stars, suns and crescent moons, raised a hand bearing something like a stick, and red light burst forth from its far end, straight at his father's back.
Kad's heart felt as if it had leapt into his throat. The red light which scorched once it hit–!
But to his relief, Dad managed to twist away in time, and the red light splashed harmlessly against the small stretch of wall beside the front door. Bafflingly, it didn't leave any scorch mark on the wall; but still! To Kad's further relief, Dad even managed to send four beams of red light at the sneak attacker!
Kad lifted his own blaster at last, although he wavered between the slowly falling old man and the cat who had been a woman, who now streaked away from behind the elderly body which would have crushed her. It pointed at the cat-woman at last, as she changed back into a human and raised a similar stick to the elderly man's.
Before he could press the trigger, however, after setting it to the blue-light "stun," since he's curious to know more about the shape-shifting, so maybe Dad could wake up her later when they're safe enough to ask her about that, Dad had already taken the threat in hand. Seeing the woman fall, faster and with more force than when the elderly man had fallen, Kad slumped in his little fortification, swimming in the sensation of relief that the potential threats were now incapacitated, and shame that he'd failed to guard his father's back as Dad had ordered him to do. He deserved no meal for a month and endless chores for the same length of time for this! He wouldn't be surprised if Dad caned, belted or spanked him severely for this, for that matter.
But his fate would have been much more horrible if the first beam of red light had impacted Dad's back, armoured though it was. Red light meant "kill," and his new father could have been killed by that first light!
He glowered at the bodies strewn on the snow-layered street, which were twitching feebly under the orange light of the street lamps. He paid double the deal to the pool of garish robe covering the taller body on the second sweep of his not-so-good night vision. He'd make sure they, especially the elderly man, wouldn't be able to hurt Dad or him ever again.
When the bodies sprawled on the street still hadn't moved after a while, Kad raised his head a little above the wall of snow he'd made, slowly and cautiously, and looked at all directions – including above, as Dad had instructed. Then, when he'd spotted nobody else loitering on the street and lawns as far as his eyes could see, and seen not even a sliver of light from behind curtained windows, nor anything unusual on the black starry sky above, he folded and stuffed Dad's pack into his own, and shouldered his own no-longer-so-saggy little pack. He'd see what he could glean from those intruders, take the strange weapon sticks, then stun them for his father.
And then, he would face his due.