Tw: mentions of child abuse

Harry woke in an unfamiliar bed, unsure of the time. The curtains around his bed were drawn, the bed was softer than any he'd slept on before, and the room was chillier than his cupboard, although not quite as dark. He pushed back the curtain and noted that there was no way for him to tell what time of day it was, for there was no light coming through the small window at the head of his bed, only deep, dark water. He resolved to learn tempus, the clock spell, as quickly as possible. A quick glance about the room showed that Draco was the only other one awake.

"Draco," Harry whispered, "what time is it?"

"I suspect it's near breakfast time," he answered.

"Should we go out to the Great Hall, then?" Harry wondered.

"I suppose so," Draco sighed. "Would you mind walking together?"

"Not at all," Harry said brightly, hurrying out of bed and changing into his day clothes before pulling his robe over the top.

The two boys walked up to the Great Hall together and took a seat near the end of their house's table. The two of them happened to be the first there but were quickly joined by their housemates who were the same age.

Harry tried to hide his fascination with the sheer amount of food. Last night, he had brushed it off as whoever was in charge of the food serving an unusually high amount of food due to the welcoming feast, but this morning there was no conceivable reason. He found it difficult not to overstuff himself and caught himself wrapping food in a napkin to squirrel away in his school bag.

~P.O.V. change~

Severus was sitting at the head table watching his young mate eat. Madame Pomfrey, sitting next to him, nudged him.

"Severus, you need to eat," she said quietly.

"That boy is either unbelievably greedy or completely starved and as much as I don't want to consider it, he is far too small to be used to eating that much," Severus said.

Poppy followed his gaze and saw Harry Potter, the smallest boy in his year by far. He was eating like he expected it to be the last food he would ever get. As they watched, he seemingly subconsciously wrapped a few scones and sausages in a napkin and tucked them into his school bag. Before long, he leaned back, stretched his spine and shoulders, and rubbed his stomach. Then his eyes trailed up to the head table and locked with Severus'.

Severus felt the pull in his soul intensify and tore his eyes away from the boy. He kept his eyes on his plate as he finished eating, then swept out of the room.

~P.O.V. change~

After Professor Snape left the room, Harry turned to Draco. They had a few minutes of conversation while Draco finished his breakfast.

As Draco finished, some older students with badges on their robes came by with stacks of parchment, giving a single page to each student at the table. When Harry and Draco each had one, they looked at them and discovered that they were class schedules.

They checked them quickly and surmised that they were exactly alike as they left the room. Their classes were to begin the following day, Monday, with a morning potions class taught by their Head of House.

As neither of them had much of an idea of what to do for fun at Hogwarts, they walked back down to the dungeons. Draco took a seat near the fire while Harry returned to their dorm room to retrieve the textbooks he hadn't yet read through.

He took his books to the corner he had occupied during Professor Snape's orientation speech the previous night and settled down to read.

By lunchtime, Harry was ready to start the last textbook, the history textbook. However, Draco retrieved him for lunch and the history of magic was tucked into Harry's bag for later.

As he and Draco ate, Harry scanned the head table in search of Professor Snape, but the captivating Head of Slytherin House was absent from the meal. Harry again caught himself sneaking food into his bag and forced himself to stop. He would need to break this habit now that he would be guaranteed three rich meals a day and would be unable to eat whatever he managed to save for later before it spoiled. The meal was almost finished when a small black owl flew into the Hall and dropped a piece of parchment by Harry's plate, stealing a small piece of meat from the plate as payment before swooping back out the way it came.

Harry was too stunned to pick up the parchment until Draco asked, "What's in the letter?"

Harry looked at the letter. The handwriting was spidery, the lines long and thin, the curves smooth and the points sharp. Fully aware that most would think it looked creepy, he couldn't help thinking it was quite beautiful.

"Mr Potter,

"Madame Pomfrey and I would like to speak to you. Please report to the infirmary promptly once you have finished your lunch.

"Professor Severus Snape"

"I have to go to the infirmary after lunch and speak to Madame Pomfrey," Harry said to Draco.

"She's probably concerned about your weight," Draco remarked. "Ask a prefect to show you the way when you're finished eating," he suggested, pointing out the badged students who had passed out schedules at breakfast.

After Harry finished eating, he walked over to the student who had given him his schedule. "Excuse me," he said, "I'm meant to see Madame Pomfrey in the infirmary, but I've no idea how to get there. Would you please show me the way?"

The older student looked at him for a moment, then nodded and stood up, leading the way out of the Great Hall. When they reached the door to the infirmary, the older student opened the door for him before disappearing down the hallway.

Harry stepped into the infirmary and glanced around. The room was large, with many large, open windows and many beds with curtains draped around them. There was a small door on the nearest wall, and as there was no sign of anyone else being anywhere in the room, he stepped toward the door and knocked as loudly as he could, which was not very loudly, as Harry was quite small and the door was thick and solid.

However, after a moment a woman opened the door and greeted Harry pleasantly. "Do come in, Dear," she said, gesturing for him to enter the office. He did, and she continued, "Oh, you look so much smaller up close. Poor dear, look like you've never had a proper meal in your life!"

She slipped her wand from her sleeve and waved it over him in a complicated pattern, muttering something in Latin, and after a moment a roll of parchment dropped into her open hand out of nowhere. She opened it examining it for a moment before turning to Professor Snape, who Harry only now noticed was standing in the corner of the office, and whispering to him in an urgent voice.

~P.O.V. Change~

Madame Poppy Pomfrey was not surprised at the quietness of the knock on her office door, but she was surprised by the sheer smallness of the boy on the other side. It was truly much harder to believe exactly how small he was when seen from across the room, even considering how he compared to other children his age. She quickly cast a full diagnostic spell, waiting with her hand open while it worked. As soon as the scroll dropped into her hand, she had it unrolled, reading down a long list of improperly healed past injuries. She quickly turned to Severus.

"It's worse than we thought," she whispered, "the sheer number of broken bones and other severe injuries suggests abuse, and he has been severely malnourished for nearly ten years."

Severus shared a concerned look with her and held out his hand for the scroll. As he scanned the list of injuries, his fingers clenched against the parchment, his face thunderous. "That no-good, manipulative old man-" he stopped himself, taking a deep breath. "He will pay for this. I will make sure of it." He duplicated the scroll and took the copy, flooing to St. Mungo's hospital to retrieve help.

Meanwhile, Poppy turned to Harry, who was staring, wide-eyed, at where Severus had vanished into the fire. "Where did he go?" Harry's voice was panicked, as was his face.

"Have you never seen a floo before?"

"I know next to nothing about magic. My textbooks never mentioned people walking into the lit fireplace and disappearing."

"Who do you live with?"

"Aunt Petunia, my mother's sister; Uncle Vernon, her husband; and my cousin Dudley, their son. None of them have magic; in fact, they don't even believe it exists."

"Well, I guess you wouldn't know about magical methods of travel, then," she said, taking down the floo powder from the mantelpiece and removing the cover to show him. "This is floo powder. I don't know what's in it, as I don't manufacture the stuff, but it's a spell to travel or communicate from fire to fire. The Ministry has a list of place names connected to the coordinates of fireplaces in magical homes, which they call the Floo Network. It is somehow connected to the spellwork that goes into the manufacturing of the powder. Theoretically, one could travel to any fire, if one had the coordinates. One could definitely travel from any fire, at any rate. You throw a pinch of the powder into the fire and call out the place to which you are traveling, then step into the fire to be carried there. Of course, there are wards to make a fire inaccessible through the spell, but not many people use them."

At that moment, Severus swept out of the fireplace, a mediwix and a wix from the Magical Child Protective Services following close behind him.

~P.O.V. Change~

Harry was thoroughly questioned about his homelife, first without veritaserum, then with.

He didn't trust either of the wixen who had returned from the hospital with Severus, and the stories his aunt had given him for when people asked questions at school were much more convenient and easier to remember than the whole truth of what happened.

The veritaserum helped him to remember more, and compelled him to divulge it. He disliked the feeling of being unable to keep from telling people things, and vaguely hoped he would never have to take this potion again.

After telling them how his aunt verbally abused him, overworked him, and beat him if he didn't manage the work to her specifications and how Vernon beat him for his accidental magic and called him a freak and a whore while forcing him to touch parts of him he had never wanted to see, he moved on to how Dudley and his friends loved to chase him down and beat him, and how he was treated like a slave and had not even known his own name until he had started at school.

The wix from MCPS was understandably horrified. Never before had either of the St. Mungo's wixen seen such a bad case of malnutrition, and when added to the long list of improperly healed injuries and his story of being treated like a slave, it painted a torturous picture.

Harry didn't understand much of what the older wixen said as they were preparing to return to St. Mungo's, but he understood that he would never again have to see any of the Muggles who called themselves his family and treated him like nothing of the sort, and he wept with joy.

Madame Pomfrey prescribed a course of nutrition potions, to be administered by Professor Snape following every meal, and told Harry to return Friday night for a thorough repair of all the unhealed injuries he was suffering from.

When Harry was finally released from the infirmary, it was already time for supper, so, upon realizing that he was quite hungry, he hurried down to the Great Hall, quickly finding Draco and taking a seat next to him.

"Have you really been in the infirmary all this time?" Draco asked immediately after Harry was seated.

Harry nodded, already taking a bite out of a turkey leg.

"Whatever was wrong with you?"

Harry chewed and swallowed his bite of turkey. "I apparently have a lot of improperly healed injuries in addition to being 'severely malnourished', so Professor Snape went to get a wix from MCPS and they interviewed me, then put me under some sort of compulsion and interviewed me again to make sure I was telling the truth. I have to take nutrition potions after every meal, and this Friday after classes, I have to report to the infirmary to have my bones regrown."

"Why couldn't that have been done today?"

"Well, I suppose she'll have to regrow every bone I've ever had broken, which is quite a lot and would probably take a long time."

Draco considered that in silence for a moment. "You've had a lot of broken bones?"

"Yeah, quite a few." Harry did not elaborate further, so Draco didn't ask.

After they had eaten, they walked to the dorms together, taking a detour to Professor Snape's office to pick up Harry's nutrition potion. When they reached the dorms, Harry sat in his bed and took out his history book, casting lumos to read it with the curtains closed. When the lights in the main portion of the room went out, Harry had just finished the book and extinguished his wand.

Harry slipped the book into his trunk and got under the bedcover, quietly saying goodnight to his roommates before drifting to sleep.

Word count: 2,316

Hey, Strangers! It's been a while ! Sorry about that. Once I finally had the class schedules set I had to actually write the chapter, which was longer than I expected and needed the schedule less than I expected.

All the love,

Emmi

05/07/2021