Disclaimer: I'm not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
Warnings: minor swearing
Wow, sorry for the delay! I have a bunch of school work until winter break, so updates will be a little slow until then.
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Harry pouted, shoulders hunching forward, "Why do I even have to go to these anymore? We both know that it wasn't even my fault."
Snape sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose inbetween his forefinger and his thumb, "You were so adamant that no one else be let on the secret about your trip to the forest, not even the Headmaster, that it would be far too suspicious to immediately stop these detentions."
The boy's frown deepened. "But, I mean, I haven't come for a few days anyways, so doesn't that already blow my cover and make this useless?"
"Which is why I've told the Headmaster that you skipped detentions." The man sat back in his desk, perusing lazily through a potion's journal, "Now, get to it. May I remind you that you did destroy hundreds of galleons worth of potions last week, and these new crystal phials need restocking."
With an exaggerated sigh, and one last pleading glance towards an oblivious Snape, Harry intentionally dragged the small stool against the floor in such a way that it caused an irritating screech. A tawny, auburn feathered phoenix blinked at him from his designated perch above the cabinetry. 'It's not so bad, is it?'
Harry inspected the ribbed patterning of the phial in his hand carefully, realizing that it was meant for soluble solutions, and sliding it to the back of a cabinet on the far left."It's just annoying, I guess," he whispered, glancing towards the professor. "I could be doing other things like..."
The boy trailed off, getting lost in the task, as he picked up more assortments of differently shaped phials. Some were smooth, shaped to be exquisitely curvilinear for softer potions like Amortentia, while others were more bulbous or angular for things like Boil Cure. He supposed this was entirely for labeling purposes to tell the difference between acidic or basic solutions and not necessarily because the potions mandated this sort of storage in order to be usable, but he wasn't quite sure. They were all brewed in spherical cauldrons, so what would the difference be? Preservation?
Humming quietly to himself, the boy picked up a particularly large phial that jutted outwards like a bowl but sloped back inwards and seemed to funnel itself to a fine point at the very top. He edged it towards the back of the cabinet, and thought secretly to himself that this wasn't so bad. It was kind of nice just getting distracted in something for a long while.
It was thirty silent minutes later when the scratch of quills on parchment stopped, the sound of a chair creaking as if someone were leaning backwards, and the boy could scarcely tell that Snape had left the room.
'Harry?'
He jolted slightly in shock at the unexpected voice in his head, the step stool trembling beneath him at the abrupt and unexpected movement. He leaned forward and grappled onto the open cabinet door to balance himself, not having realized that the hinges were weak until they broke under his weight and sent the wood tumbling.
It was almost comical watching the domino effect- the wooden slab rocketed to the ground, leaving Harry with nothing to hang onto, until he leaned backward, arms whirling manically in another fruitless attempt at balance. The step stool trembled, slipping at the odd pressure in such a way that it propelled him forwards to stagger on the table and bash into the cabinets at the momentum. As he ear collided against the handle on the cabinet door, he could hear the sound of glass falling, bumping into other phials and causing them to fall too, until they broke in a heap. Startled, he retracted, forgetting that there was very little table underneath him and grabbing once again at the top of the cabinets. They creaked against the walls at the added weight, breaking and crashed onto the table surface which then caused Harry to jump atop them reflexively.
He gasped, chuckling forcefully, and eyed the damage with a rapidly paling expression. Abruptly the tops of the cabinets that he rested on gave way underneath him, causing the slab of wood to cave into the cabinet filled with broken glass. The slab protected him from most of the impact, yet he yelped when he felt something poke into his arms that had rocketed up from the force of the wood colliding into it at just the right angle.
The boy jolted like a cat, scrambling off of the table and landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor. He rubbed at his arms, feeling the sting of something poke into it, and looked back at the utterly destroyed cabinets and expensive glass phials.
Oh no. No. No. No. No. No. Harry jumped to his feet, groping at it, trying to find some way to fix it. Thank god Snape wasn't here.
His mind barely registered a weight on his shoulder, 'Child, are you okay? What are you doing!'
"Gotta fix it. Gotta fix it," he griped, skin paling to the color of cottage cheese, "Before he gets back..."
His hand reached forward, the sleeves of his robes pooling at his shoulder. The auburn phoenix said something that sounded vaguely exasperated, but the boy wasn't really listening.
'You're hurt, I must get the professor...'
The weight left his shoulder, giving him the freedom to pace around the mess and push futilely at the pile of wood of glass. He choked in a rush of anxiety, feeling like his body was filling with liquid and slowly drowning him as memories brimmed to the top of his head- he waded through them, brushing them off.
Have to fix it. Have to fix it.
His magic swelled with the same liquid anxiety that filled him too, and zipped out of his eager hands without restraint. Immediately the cabinets wobbled, moved by some unseen force, until they steadily rose in the air and bashed with a little too much force against the back wall, causing some of the glass from the phials to jump out of the open doors. He ignored it though, focusing solely on getting it to stick- if he could only get it to stick...
Like there was a strong magnetic attraction, the cabinets popped obediently onto the wall like they had never fell off at all- but they were crooked. Harry unlatched them with his magic, the only sound he could hear was the pulse of blood in his ears. Have to fix it. Have to fix it.
It was simple to get them to dislodge from the wall, but keeping them steady with his trembling hands was a problem.
Have to get it perfect. Have to get it perfect.
As if an invisible hour glass whizzed in his mind, he could innately feel that time was running out.
Have to fix it. Have to fix it.
He can fix it. He can do it. Before Uncle Vernon gets home. Aunt Petunia's china plates aren't broken... he didn't do it. He didn't do it. He can fix it.
Past the swell of blood that rushed through his ears, Harry thought that he could hear footsteps.
No. No. No. Oh no. God no. Please no.
The cabinets, no longer under the concentration of his magic, stilled in the air for a moment before they crashed into the tables again, making the room shake with the sound of a small explosion.
The steps got closer, louder, and more frequent until...
BOOM.
The door slammed open, rebounding on the wall with a great clang, making the ringing in Harry's ears swell to a crescendo.
He could scarcely recognize the tall, looming figure in his tunneling vision, his own eyes narrowing to fearful slits.
A gasp, a noise, a name- the figure grew in his vision, and he jumped three feet in the air as it grabbed his arm.
Rather than feeling the sweaty, meaty fingers of the man he had expected, he was almost startled back to reality when he realized the grasp was unusually gentle.
He squeaked, "Sorry."
"Daft boy..."
He scuttled backward, trying to wrench his arm out of the man's grip, gasping. "Sorry. Sorry. I didn't mean to."
"Are you okay?"
His trembles subsided as the three words, spoken so poignantly and with such a level of the concern, rang in his ears. His vision expanded, and he now only realized where he was after the state of panic. The two weights on his shoulders were now apparent.
Fawkes. And the auburn bird, who had yet to tell Harry his name. And then Snape was there. And the vicious sting in his arms returned.
His eyes focused downward, face coloring with a rush of red, and suddenly the sting evaporated when Snape incanted something. Right afterwards liquid, perhaps phoenix tears, were dripped onto the open wounds on his arms.
"Potter, are you okay?"
He glanced up at Snape, frowning. "Yeah. Sorry." he paused, relishing the silence, "I thought... I just thought..."
"What?"
The boy ducked his head, shoulders hunching protectively, "Nothing. I'm sorry. I'll just go now or..."
He could sense concern laced in the man's irritated voice, "Are you insane? Sit down."
He plopped him into a chair. "How is it that you always manage to get yourself into these messes?"
Harry didn't reply, eyes hovering slightly above his line of vision.
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*This chapter was reposted, had to fix a tinsy tiny mistake along the lines of using dollars instead of galleons XD
"Trouble follows you like a lost puppy..." the man grumbled to himself.
A potion was shoved into his hands a moment later, a pink viscous concoction that radiated warmth from the vial, which he could only assume was a Calming Draught. He downed it eagerly in one gulp, shoulders feeling like they were collapsing and lurching forward. The warmth spread from his toes to his head, making him feel like he had just been dipped into a vat of honey and making his mind pleasantly fuzzy.
It was a moment before the man spoke again, "What is it that you were going to say?"
"Say what?" Harry could feel his face burn.
The man's eyes narrowed, "You know what I mean."
Harry swallowed the remnants of the sticky pink potion in his mouth, gulping awkwardly at how it fused uncomfortably to his throat, "It doesn't matter."
"To me, it does."
The boy sighed, Fawkes nuzzling into his shoulder yet saying nothing, "I just thought that I was, that I was, back there again."
Keeping his eyes firmly planted on Snape's nose, he could tell by how his lips pursed into a thin line that the man knew exactly what he was talking about. "Back where, exactly?"
Fawkes stilled entirely.
"With my uncle," he admitted quietly.
"What do you think caused this?"
The boy almost hissed vehemently at the continuing interrogation, yet stilled. "When I broke the..." he trailed off, arm wavering over to the unsightly mess at the other side of the office, "Yeah, well, when I broke that over there, I remembered something from when I was younger."
Snape goaded him on, leaning closer intently.
"I thought I was back there again because...well... my aunt, she has this shelf where she puts all the nice porcelain dishes," Harry said, "She liked them so much that she wouldn't ever let me touch them or even wash them 'cause they were so valuable; I think once I even looked at them a little too long and she hit me over the head with a newspaper..." he laughed.
Snape shifted uncomfortably, watching the boy.
"So, anyways, once when I was six-or seven- I was finishing up my chores and Dudley- that's my cousin- came home with his friends; I was in the kitchen and..." Harry paused, eyes looking at some undefined point, "he knocked into me, and I knocked into the shelves, and the plates at the very top wobbled. He ran out of the house, and the plate tipped; the glass doors weren't open, so it didn't end up falling or breaking... but I know if my aunt saw it tipped over from its stand like that... that there would be consequences."
The boy shook slightly, "I opened the doors, and I grabbed a chair from the dining room table. I tried to reach to the top but I was too short, so I was balancing on my toes and accidentally wobbled the shelves again. The plates wobbled again and a lot of 'em fell out..."
He trailed off, "They broke... most of them, anyways."
The boy stopped abruptly and Fawkes nudged him. "And, what happened after that?"
"I got up and I ran to my cupbo..." Harry stopped, flushing red.
"Your what?" the man hissed. "Cupboard? Were you going to say cupboard?"
His voice dropped so low as to be deadly, lingering on the damnable word like venom would linger in the veins of a viper's crushed prey.
Harry said nothing, his eyes oddly drawn to the professor's. "No..."
Abruptly a scene flashed in his mind involuntarily, staying there, before shifting to a new scene.
His cupboard. Vernon tugged on his hair throwing him into his...
"Get to your...!",
"You'll be lucky if you come out of there before Christmas, I swear on my life, boy!", peering through the crack in the...
a messy crayon scribbling tacked on the small wall adjacent from him...
HARRY'S ROOM, it said.
He pulled himself back, hissing, and forced the intruder out of his mind. What was that?
He heard the man rise to his feet angrily before he saw it, "They made you stay in a... in a... closet! They made you stay in a place meant for brooms and mops!"
Harry's face turned redder than a beet. The embarrassment was so thick that it engulfed him like he was in a giant cauldron full of marshmallowy, billowing goop from a failed potion. He couldn't say anything. He couldn't breathe.
"Those... those beasts..." the professor paced, steps clattering against the floor and his hand itching to practice all sorts of illegal magic.
Harry rose to his feet dizzily, head stuffed with cotton balls, and ran out of them room with his hands squeezing into his face.
Merlin. He was never supposed to find that out. No one was ever supposed to find that out.
One thing, that was all he asked for, all he wanted was to keep one measly scrap of dignity but that was ripped away from him like everything else. One more secret gone. One more secret exposed. One more thing out in the open. One more thing that would inevitably leak. One more thing that everyone would know. One more thing that everyone would laugh at.
Fawkes and the other brown phoenix were jostled off of his shoulders and flew overhead, 'Please, child, stop...'
Not looking, the boy bumped into someone, stumbling backwards and carefully eyeing the indignant figure in front of him.
Malfoy glared at him, brandishing his wand, "Watch where the hell you're going, Potter!"
Great. Just great.
He shook in anger, "Go away."
"Hey! These are my dungeons, Potter, you go away..." the boy muttered, glaring more balefully, "What is it that you are doing here, anyways? Quite suspicious."
Harry didn't trust himself to speak.
Malfoy raised an elegant eyebrow, raising his chin in the air, "What would a Gryffindor be doing here, making his way through the snake den? Detention, perhaps, with Snape?"
"There's already one Lucius Malfoy in the world, there doesn't need to be a copy. A bad one at that," the boy remarked.
His face reddened, "I'm the one who's got something over you, if you don't remember our little talk in the hallway."
"You don't know half of my secret. No, you don't even know a tenth of it, so don't bother even trying."
Draco smirked, "Oh, really? Even if I don't figure out what little secret you've got- which is highly unlikely, I might add- others will."
The boy remained silent.
"Everyone's suspicious of you, even the Hufflepuffs aren't so oblivious as to not see it. There are those birds around you all the time, the sudden power you show in class..." his voice grated on Harry's ears, "In time, everyone will know what you are."
Malfoy glanced over to Harry, waiting for a prompt, before continuing. "In time, I will have what you have that, at this moment, makes you just a titch more talented than I am."
Harry breathed through flared nostrils.
"I'm already onto you, Potter; I've heard certain whispering in the hall about a certain... ah, what was the world? Old Magicks?" Draco laughed, voice nasally and shrill in a mocking tone.
The boy suddenly felt the blood disappear from his face, angry expression faltering.
Malfoy chuckled again, "You really should be more careful where you say things."
He looked searchingly at the boy, fixed his tie and walked briskly past Harry as if he had never run into him at all.
The boy trembled, "Shit."