Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor I am profiting from this little adventure into J.K. Rowling's world.
This story will follow a slightly different timeline than Shake My Hand: the Original. Some things will be revealed earlier, and more than a few plot points will be changing. It will still be eventual DMHP but the fluff will not be as physically excessive as it was. As for the rest, well, you're going to have to read and find out. ;)
Chapter start.
Harry prodded a spider along so it wouldn't be crushed when he rolled out of bed. The Dursleys hadn't woken up yet, but Harry knew it was only a matter of time before they crashed in and ruined the rare moment of peace. It had been the same way ever since some unknown Good Samaritan dumped him at his aunt's doorstep after his parents died in a drunk driving accident.
Thanks to his drunkard parents, Harry was taking his sweet time getting up, knowing that only a list of chores was waiting for him. He supposed it made sense, other kids at his school did chores, and it wasn't as if he had to ever re-shingle the roof or shampoo the carpets. Even if Uncle Vernon sometimes tried to make him help with those, Aunt Petunia would usually get him off that track soon enough. It just didn't seem fair that while he was helping out around the house, his fat lard of a cousin was sitting around marinating in his own juices.
Harry shook his head; it did no good to sit there thinking about how unfair things were. The fact of the matter was there wasn't anything he could do that wouldn't backfire on him. No use getting riled up before facing his family. It was a Thursday, though, so at least Vernon would be leaving soon for work. If Harry was lucky, Dudley might want to head out and see his friends directly following breakfast and Harry would be left alone with Petunia to finish his chores.
She might even let him watch the telly with her for a bit if he finished quickly enough. Cheered by the thought, Harry finally got the spider to stay in its corner and sat up to get dressed.
His clothing was folded haphazardly in a set of boxes surrounding his cot, and Harry hastily changed. The last thing he wanted was Dudley opening his cupboard and finding him half-naked with his knobby knees and awkward tan lines. The thought was enough to make him shudder with fear and revulsion; he caught enough flak about how skinny he was without the extra prompting that particular incident could provide.
Just after he had slipped into his trousers, the spider he'd saved meandered up onto his pillow and Harry brushed it irritably off. They didn't bother him since he'd been sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs since as long as he could remember, but he still felt a bit slighted that he'd gone out of his way to save one of them only for it to invade his beddings. It was never fun to wake up with spider bites. Speaking of spider bites…
Harry was deeply involved in checking the side of his arm for spider bites when Petunia rapped against the door, startling Harry back against the wall. "Are you decent?" She asked, a tinge of disapproval coating her words as it usually did when she was forced to address her unwanted houseguest.
"Yeah- I mean, yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry replied, trying to keep his manners straight with the possibility of a half hour watching the telly firmly in the front of his mind.
The door squeaked open and Harry squinted against the sudden influx of natural light, groping for and pulling the string to turn off the bare bulb hanging in the cupboard before he crawled out. Petunia sighed at how long it was taking him and turned away, "Join me in the kitchen when your eyes adjust."
"Yes, Aunt Petunia." Aunt Petunia was rather like a stork, long and thin, with a nice stretched neck so she could "catch sight of" the neighbors over the fence. Her face was always rather pinched looking and she often wore an apron, although the situation rarely called for it. Harry privately believed she wore it to rub their neighbor Mrs. Patterson's face in how dedicated a wife she was to Vernon and the smug looks Petunia had sent Mrs. Patterson at the last block party did nothing but back up his claim.
The shuffling of Harry's socks against linoleum alerted Petunia to Harry's arrival in the kitchen and she gestured sharply at the icebox, not bothering to look up from the two frying pans she was greasing, "I cut up some bacon yesterday evening."
Harry nodded in understanding and retrieved both the bacon from the refrigerator and the bread from the breadbox. Petunia, having finished with the frying pans, pulled down the toaster and plugged it in, leaving it on the spotless counter as acknowledgement, if not precisely approval, of Harry's forethought.
They spent a good amount of time engaged in silent work as Petunia scrambled eggs and watched the bacon while Harry painstakingly sliced the bread with the serrated breadknife, attempting to make each piece equal. Although he normally wouldn't care, he was still fixating on the possibility of downtime, and each chore he completed well would up the chances of that happening. However, when Vernon and Dursley came down the stairs to eat and they all sat down at the table, Petunia didn't even glance at Harry in recognition of all the extra work he'd put into the meal. The fork in his hand felt heavier each time Harry used it and he didn't bother to fight when Dudley took whatever was left from his plate. Honestly, he should have been used to the disappointment by then.
Contrary to Harry's beliefs, Petunia did notice the extent to which the boy had gone that morning and, as the day continued, how quickly he finished his work. Later that afternoon, as she was deciding on whether a reward would just harm the delicate balance she'd created in the household, a soft silvery light caught her eye.
Curious, and strangely calm, Petunia turned toward the only gift from Lily she'd ever kept. When Petunia was- oh- around Harry and Dudley's age, she and Lily had visited a secondhand shop that appeared to be new in town, and Lily had immediately fixated on a mirror in the far corner of the shop. The chipped silver paint and whirling design had been appealing to both girls, but when they asked the shopkeeper about it, he'd praised their taste and informed them of a price far beyond what either girl had in their little coat pockets.
Lily appeared to put the mirror out of her mind then and there, but everyday, when walking home from school, Petunia would convince her to take a detour so they could walk past the shop and see if it had been sold yet.
"We wouldn't even have to go in," Petunia remembered pleading to her younger sister, "I can see it from the window."
For two years, this was their daily routine, when one day, a week or so before Petunia's birthday, the two girls noticed the mirror was gone. With a faint smile, Petunia recalled how nervous Lily had been watching her sister deflate in disappointment at the apparent sale of the silvery mirror. On Petunia's birthday, Lily had all but shoved her gift into her older sister's hands with an anxious, "I'm sorry!"
Of course, once Petunia opened it and set it shakily, with wide eyes, on the table, Lily's nervousness was crushed in the tackle-hug Petunia gratefully bestowed upon her.
So when Petunia purged her house of the painful reminders of her baby sister, she hadn't been able to part with this one last memento of who Lily had been before she was stolen away.
Now, in present day, that reluctance to part with it was coming back to haunt her in a strange way. The smooth surface of the mirror was emanating the silvery light that had caught her eye, and as she turned to face it, graceful calligraphy flowed across its face.
For every world that is reflected.
Before Petunia could ponder the phrase's meaning, the silvery light engulfed her entirely, and Harry Potter sat down hard in the kitchen, waiting out his sudden dizzy spell.
Chapter end.
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