Alternity Heaven: Angelic Overture
by Slytherin Dragon
The house on Privet Drive looked like all the others on the street: run-down, shabby, and overcrowded. Dudley Dursley thought sometimes he could remember a time when the house had only had him and his parents in it, but probably that was only a fantasy. The truth of the matter was that the house was one of the few that barely leaked at all when it rained, and the more people there were in a house, the warmer it was in the winters.
The blond five-year-old kicked at a piece of broken pavement absently. Mum and Dad were already gone, of course, doing their work. Or whatever it was that grownups did during the day; Dusley found himself not all that interested in the matter. He himself was supposed to be on his way to the Place.
That was what it was called. Children who were too young to work and too old to need their mother's care went there for the day, so they wouldn't "run wild" or cause other trouble. All Muggle children within walking distance (and anything within two towns was considered walking distance) who had been deemed too young, or too sick, or too crazy to work with the grownups went to a big building that had been a school or something once, where they were "looked after" by witches and wizards deemed too old and infirm for much else than looking after Muggle toddlers and invalids.
If Dudley had been older, he would have appreciated the logic of the arrangement. The "useless" of both wizard and Muggle society had a place to be, and, in the case of the elderly witches and wizards, a purpose. As it was, he was a little frightened of his first day at the Place. The older children in the house had told him about the Place and what went on there; while he was sure they were purposely trying to scare him, a few of the stories had rattled even his stoic five-year-old fearlessness.
He sighed and walked faster. The faster he got there, the faster he'd be home with Mum and Dad and all the others again, he told himself firmly. While he walked, he inspected the pockets of his ratty coat to make sure nothing had taken up residence in there since the last time he'd looked.
Noise from ahead made him look up and shove his hands in the coat pockets. It didn't do to look distracted. He was one of the youngest in the house, he knew how things worked there, and they probably worked the same in the Place. If he didn't pay attention to what was happening around him, he ended up either being beaten up or locked in a closet by the older, bigger kids. If he was lucky. The best way to get by without contusions or claustrophobia wass to look attentive and eager to please, so that was what Dudley did.
The Place loomed in front of him, a huge stone building that positively teemed with children ranging in age from about Dudley's own five to possibly a few very scrawny, sickly fifteens. In reality, the crowd of kids wasn't confined to only the Place proper; they spilled over into nearby buildings and across the ruined street as well. In some areas, it more closely resembled a demilitarized zone than a "day care", with groups of kids facing each other across silently agreed-upon lines of territory, posing and snarling at each other.
With an effort not to look out of place (the older kids had told him that "newbies" got the brunt of the bullying), Dudley progessed into the Place itself. It was quieter, not so crowded as the streets and buildings surrounding it. Very few children were in evidence there, and those that were sat quietly and talked amongst themselves or curled up in corners and slept.
An old woman approached Dudley. She had a friendly-looking face, wore dark purple robes, and had an ancient wand stuck in her belt. Dudley recognized her immediately as a witch and therefore as his better, and bowed nervously. She laughed a thin old lady's laugh, then bent down and pinched his cheek. "Oh, no need to bow to old Louisa, duck. What's your name, then?"
"Dudley Dursley, ma'am," he replied shakily, bearing the pinching with good grace. "It's my first day."
"Why, so it is, duck, so it is," Louisa told him, smiling. "So you're the one we're supposed to look out for." She looked him up and down, taking in the unevenly cropped golden hair nearly brown with dirt, the smudged face, the large blue eyes. "I can't say you're particularly impressive, but your family history being what it is...." She shrugged.
Dudley blinked. "Family?" he asked blankly. "I've got Mum. And Dad. And the others at the house, but I don't think they're family, right?"
"Not really, no." Louisa peered at him again. "You don't know, do you." She shook her head and waved a hand dismissively. "Well, you're really too young for testing yet, aren't you? Go find something to occupy yourself for the day, dear." With that, the old witch tottered off to join a group of other oldsters.
Dudley blinked. It wasn't what he'd been expecting, certainly not from a witch. He looked around obediently. The group of oldsters huddled together by one wall, chattering amongst themselves, by and large ignoring their charges. There was very little furniture, and the few kids that were present huddled in groups against the cold, imitating the oldsters as best they could. Nothing looked interesting in this room, but the Place had lots of rooms for him to look into and around, so he left the main room with the oldsters.
The first few other rooms he came to were empty, with old chairs and tables scattered around. Broken windows let dead leaves and dust blow in on the wind and collect in piles on the floor. Dudley shivered and wrapped his shabby coat closer around him. Too cold, too empty, too boring.
A few rooms were occupied by groups of kids; some of them had built fires, and others looked like the groups outside, huddling together and glaring across hallways and out windows. Dudley stayed away from those rooms, although it was cold enough that the fires would have been welcome. Dudley knew from rough experience at the house that older kids were very possessive of their places, and if he didn't want black eyes or worse, he'd keep away and leave them alone.
There was one room that didn't have any windows in it, so it was slightly warmer than the first ones had been. No gang and no kids with fire, so colder than *those* rooms, but that much safer, too. It was also much darker... in fact there wasn't any light at all. Dudley stretched out a hand in front of him to feel his way around.
It didn't help. He crashed right into a large, boxy thing and fell backwards onto his rear. The thing twanged discordantly, protesting his clumsiness. Dudley scrambled backwards a few feet, then stopped when he realized that his head hurt from running into that thing, and if he smacked into a wall it wasn't going to make him feel any better. "I hope that thing's not alive," he said out loud, "Or mad, or something."
A voice laughed somewhere in the room. "Um...hello?" Dudley hated how his voice sounded, all thin and scared in the dark.
"Hello to you," an elderly voice cackled. "A wanderer, I see. And young." Another laugh.
"Who... who are you?" Dudley asked, getting to his feet. A little more boldly (if he couldn't see who was talking, they couldn't see him either!) he added, "Show yourself!"
"And brave." A light flared, and by it Dudley could make out a hunched over figure shuffling around. It lit a few candles and the room stood out in flickering pools of golden light. The boxy thing that Dudley had run into sat towards one end of the room, with chairs arranged on the other as if the boxy thing was holding court. A few of the candles were spaced on top of it so that their light shone across a sort of ledge, with tabs alternating small black wedges and bigger white wedges, across the entire length of the box. Dudley had never seen such a thing before, never in his life.
The hunched over figure who'd lit the candles was actually a little old man who grinned like a nearly-toothless maniac in the candlelight, in very shabby green robes, with an equally shabby wand shoved in his belt. "Emil. I'm Emil. And you would be...?"
"Dudley." He didn't bother with a last name; after all, 'Emil' hadn't. He pointed at the boxy thing, absently rubbing his head with the other hand. "What's *that*?"
"Hurt your little head, didn't it, when you ran into her?" cackled Emil. "That, dear boy, is my darling Antoinette."
"Ant-wan-ett." Dudley wrinkled his nose, sounding out the name. "What's an ant-wan-ett?"
"Antoinette is her name," Emil said rapturously, running his hands across the black and white wedges, causing the boxy thing to make very different sounds than it had when Dudley had run into it. Nice sounds. "Antoinette is a piano, boy. Hasn't anyone taught you anything?"
Dudley crept closer, blinking at the boxy Antoinette. I don't think she bites, he decided, although I'll keep my hands away for now, just in case. "I know stuff!" he protested. "Just not *this* stuff."
Emil cackled. "Come here. I'll show you." The little old man sat on a bench in front of the piano and backoned to Dudley, who shrugged after a minute and climbed up beside him. Emil took hold of Dudley's hand and pressed the fingers against a few of the wedges in a pattern. "Hear that, boy? She's singing to you."
Music... a lullaby Mum sometimes sang to him... Dudley snatched his hand back and stared at the old man in awe. After a moment, he carefully repeated the motions on his own and played the lullaby again. "A piano," he repeated, enchanted. "What else does she do?"
"That's it. A piano plays music. And Antoinette better than most, these days, because I take very good care of her, I do." Emil preened slightly.
"Just lullabies? That's silly."
"Not just lullabies. Any music." Emil shook his head. "Time was when everyone knew what a piano was meant for. Now, it's something you know if you're lucky. Times change, boy, times change." He cocked his head to one side thoughfully, then asked, "Would you like to learn?"
"Learn?" Dudley asked. "Learn to play this?" He nodded enthusiastically without waiting for a verification. "I'd like that very much!"
Emil cackled. "Well, then, boy, let's get started..."
*****
Lessons, between actual learning and endless practicing, ended up taking up most of Dudley's four years at the Place. The rest of the time was spent in the necessary activity of learning how things worked at the Place and how not to get beaten up.
All the kids, no matter their age, were expected to have a gang affiliation. If they didn't, they were fair game for anyone looking for a fight. Most gangs were lucky to have five or six members, a very few had more than that. They all had fanciful, poetic sounding names for their gangs, too. The Bad Moon gang was the largest, with nearly twenty kids, closely
followed by the Ash Raven gang in size.
There was a whole political structure to the gang system, Dudley found. The gangs outside of the Place were to be avoided at all times, while the ones who'd made their turf from old classrooms could usually be dealt with reasonably. By the time he'd been learning from Emil for nearly a month, Dudley found himself loosely affiliated with one of the nearby classroom groups, a gang who took to calling themselves the Celestial Chorus after Dudley joined and the piano-room was added to their turf.
If things had been different, he sometimes thought he could lead at least the nearest gang. But he was still the youngest at the house, and as such he pretty much got what the older kids were willing to give him of anything, so he was never as strong as them. It was fine with him, though; he was used to deferring, and he found as he grew older that the more helpless someone thought you were, the more they tended to think you weren't really worth the attention. Unless they were sadistic, of course, and in that case, all bets were off.
The gang Dudley found himself "with" was one of the better ones. The leader was big ond not too bright, but he wasn't sadistic or mean for the sheer joy of pounding smaller kids into the ground. Mostly, the gang left him alone and he left them alone, but to an 'outsider' he was one of them and not to be messed with. In return, the gang got to claim the music room as their turf in addition to their own room. Occasionally one or two of them would even hang out in the music room while Dudley played.
The years passed quickly enough. For the most part, Dudley learned hymns and slow pieces, as those were easy to memorize and very pretty to listen to. But every so often, as a 'treat', Emil brought out a piece of complex music, real classical music, for Dudley to learn, memorize, and play.
Dudley would never have left the music room during the days if he'd had a choice in the matter. But Emil insisted that he not only learn how to play the piano, but understand the music as well, so every so often, Dudley would have to leave the room to find paper or a pencil or some other set of writing tools. When he was five, the hunts could take all day, but at age nine, Dudley was so used to the Place and the way things worked that he was able to get enough supplies to last a week in the space of about ten minutes.
He'd just returned from one such trip to find Emil dozing in a corner and one of the Choristers, a weaselly-looking boy who called himself Piers, sitting crosslegged on the floor sharpening a knife. "Hello, Piers," Dudley said, shoving a lock of golden hair behind one ear, resigned to spending a day ignoring snide remarks from the floor. "What's the matter, you have another fight with Marshall?"
Marshall was the leader of the Celestial Chorus, as the biggest, the one with the sharpest knife, and the one with the most space in his brain to devote to leadership. Piers snorted. "Shows what you know, Goldilocks. It's the big day, someone come down from London for it an' everything. An' so what if I had a fight with Marshall? He's not gonna kill me. Needs all the help he can get. 'S why he lets you hang around, innit?"
Dudley sat at the piano and played an arpeggio that sounded faintly derisive, showing precisely what he thought of the gang's political state. Piers missed the meaning, of course. "What big day?" Dudley asked absently.
"You dope. It's the Day." Piers shuddered. "We're all going to be Tested, and if any of us're wizards, we'll get sent to the zones. The rest of us'll go to work like normal Muggles."
Tested. Dudley frowned slightly, remembering the old woman Louisa's reference to testing from when he was little. And her reference to his family... "So the Place'll be pretty empty come tomorrow," he said, and shrugged.
"Place'll be pretty empty," Piers mocked, putting on a worldly air. "Is that all you've got to say?"
Dudley played a questioning little melody. He'd gotten into the habit (since he was at the piano all the time anyway) of playing his mood and thoughts as music instead of talking about them. Most of the time it was more fun than talking, anyway. Sometimes people understood what he meant, but usually they didn't.
Piers didn't, so Dudley asked, "Neither of us're Testing age, so what else is there to say?"
"Too young, 'zat what yer thinkin'? As if wizards're gonna come down from London whenever somebody turns twelve. No, we all get Tested at the same time, and if you paid attention to anything 'cept that box of yours, you'd know that."
"Antoinette is a *piano*, not a box. How many times do I have to tell you lot that?" Dudley shook his head. "You call yourselves the Celestial Chorus, and none of you know anything about music!"
Piers waved his arms dramatically, narrowly missing slicing off a piece of one ear with his knife. "Worry about yourself, Dursley! 'Place'll be pretty empty'? Ha! What about you? You'll lose your precious *Antoinette* and be stuck shining wizard shoes or somethin' for the rest o' yer pathetic life. Don't that mean anything to you?" Piers bit his lip and dropped his voice to a near-whisper. "I heard they kill people in those zones. Just bam! And you're dead."
"Anything's possible."
"Nobody cares."
"I know." Dudley began playing a pavane he knew by heart; a slow, funereal piece to suit the gloomy atmosphere. "Why did you bring it up?"
"We gotta go, and I mean now. Marshall's gonna have our heads for being late-"
"I was getting paper for Emil." Dudley nodded in the direction of the sleeping wizard.
"Yeah, whatever. Point is, we're probably all gonna get it because of you, Goldilocks, so come along and shut up."
Dudley shrugged and got down from the piano. "You could have saved us both a lot of time by just telling me before you started complaining," he pointed out. "Sorry."
"Yeah, whatever. Move it."
They walked out of the music room, down the hallways towards the main room where the oldsters usually were. Neither spoke, each preferring to think private thoughts. Every so often, Dudley's fingers twitched as though he were playing something in his mind, and Piers kept switching his knife from hand to hand.
The smell hit them first, a sort of sickly-sweet coppery smell. Neither knew what it was until they walked into the main room of the Place. Blood covered the floor and speckled the walls, and that was the source of the smell.
Everyone, all the kids and the old witches and wizards, were lying on the ground, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Most of the bodies were just lumps of flesh with the bones shattered and poking out through their skin like bizarre pincushions. A few had simply had their throats slashed, or their wrists. It didn't really matter... they were all equally dead.
Piers gaped, dropped his knife. He looked wildly all around him. "What... who... why...." he stammered faintly. "I don't... understand... this isn't the Testing...."
Dudley didn't say anything, but walked around the room, carefully avoiding stepping on the bodies. Every few feet he stopped and bent down to close someone's eyes. Once he made it back to the front of the room, he collapsed next to Piers, not minding that he ended up sitting on his knees in a pool of someone's blood. Marshall's? Maybe.
After a few moments of dumbstruck silence, Piers turned to look down at Dudley and said solemnly, "We really are all going to get it, aren't we? Look, most of us already have...." His eyes were wide and terrified. He looked around slowly, retrieved his knife. "Now, I'm gonna leave... going that way." He stabbed in a random direction. "You were the one who made us late. Maybe the killers won't chase me. So don't you follow me, Dursley, I'm warnin' you."
Dudley shook his head and didn't get up. "So go. I'm not stopping you."
With one last glance around the room, Piers fled. Dudley watched him disappear out the door, catching a quick glimpse of a similar scene to the one he was sitting in in front of the Place, except out there it was only kids, and they were put in more creative places. Lampposts, fences, sewer grates... Dudley forced himself to stop thinking about it.
Suddenly, his head snapped up. The others, the ones not in this room... what about them? "Emil," he whispered. "I have to tell Emil to get away...." He leapt to his feet and tore down the hallways as fast as his legs would take him.
Every room he knew to be home to a gang, he stopped in, and in every room there was that smell and the sight of broken, bleeding bodies to let him know he was too late. After about five of those rooms, Dudley closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it, but the smell was still there, and so was the awful silence.
After what seemed like an eternity, Dudley reached the music room. It was a shambles. None of the candles were left burning, they had all been tipped over and drowned in their own wax. Antoinette the piano was lying in the center of the room, reduced to kindling that burned from the upset candles that had rested on top of her. "Emil?" he called softly, trying not to look at the bonfire that had been Antoinette.
No answer, just silence and the smell creeping around the edges of Dudley's senses. He looked around carefully, and spotted a lump in a chair facing the conflagration in the center of the room. Dudley almost laughed. That's right, Emil had been taking a nap, that's why he hadn't answered. He walked over to where the old wizard was sitting and shook him lightly on the shoulder. "Emil, wake up. We have to leave. Everyone's dead... I think because Piers and I were late for the Testing... and Antoinette's burning, Emil. We have to leave...."
The old man slumped out of the chair and fell heavily onto the ground. The smell assaulted Dudley's nose, and once Emil was on the ground it wasn't hard to see that he was dead. His head hung at a crazy angle to his body, and blood was leaking out a corner of his mouth.
Dudley felt tears stinging his eyes and sliding down his face. He hadn't cried over the other bodies; they hadn't seemed real, somehow. But this was different, this was too real, it jumped out at him and lodged in his chest so he couldn't breathe properly. "Emil, no," he sobbed. "Please, you weren't finished teaching me yet...." He knelt down and shook the old man. Emil's head flopped uselessly. Dudley gave up and started crying in earnest.
He wasn't used to crying, so he quit after a few minutes when he got a headache. "Why?" he demanded finally of the corpse next to him. "You were alive when I left the room with Piers! How did I miss the killer? We should have passed each other in the hallways...." He paused, then snuffled. "I'm sorry, Emil," he whispered. "I didn't mean... I didn't know... I...."
Dudley bowed his head, feeling the tears start up again. "Why? We never hurt anybody here. Kids and old people... and you were a wizard, Emil! Why you and not me?" He drew in a shuddering breath and got to his feet. "I can't stick around," he said apologetically. "I don't want to die, and I think that if I stay here I will. So I guess I'm going back to the house now."
He shifted his weight a few times, then took off out of the room at a dead run, shutting his eyes so he didn't have to see the corpses and doing his best to breathe through his mouth and thus avoid the smell. He ran all the way back to the house, not bothering to hide himself. If the killer was still around, then it probably wouldn't matter if Dudley were hiding or not.
He stumbled into the house on Privet Drive gasping for breath. He wasn't used to running, and the distance between the Place and the house wasn't exactly short. "Mum?" he called hopefully. "Dad? Anybody?"
Silence... Dudley sighed, then blinked and sniffed the air. Coppery, sickly-sweet. "Oh, no. No. Not here." He left the entry hall and went into the large main room, and there he found where the smell was coming from.
It was the same as it had been at the Place; everyone who had lived in the house stared up at the ceiling with all their bones shattered or their throats cut... sometimes even both for no discernible reason. A few bodies were still sitting in chairs, as though they'd been called into the room for some reason and had simply been killed where they sat.
The tears began to sting again, but Dudley began looking over all the bodies, looking fo rhis parents among them. If he couldn't find them, maybe they weren't there. Maybe they were still out doing their work, and that would be all right because these people weren't *family*, they weren't related to him, they were just people who lived there with his family because the house was one with a proper roof....
No such luck. His mother, Petunia (also called Pet, but only when she wasn't listening) was one of the bodies in a chair, and his father Vernon was crumpled into a barely-recognizable heap behind it. "Mum," Dudley whispered. Piers's words from earlier ran through his head, jumbled and accusing. *We're all gonna get it because of you... look, most of us have... you made us late... I'm going this way....*
Dudley fell to his knees beside the chair and laid his head in his mother's lap. "It's my fault," he whispered. "I made me and Piers late by talking, and now everybody's dead. I'm not dead, so it's my fault, right?"
Suddenly, the body twitched underneath his head. "No," a voice rasped.
Dudley's head jerked up. "Mum?!"
"Yes, dear... for a little while, at least." It seemed hard for her to talk, and she had to stop every few words to cough. "Now listen... Dudley... not your fault...."
"Then whose?" he demanded tearfully. "Whose?"
Petunia started coughing harder, bringing blood onto her lips. "Lily...!" she gasped, staring blindly into space. "My... sister... one of *them*... I always... knew...." She coughed a few more times, then fell back and didn't cough anymore.
Dudley shook his head, running fingers through his golden hair, never minding that his hands were leaving ugly scarlet streaks where they passed. It was too much. Everyone he knew, dead in less than an hour... and probably he would be too unless he took steps. He had to be quick and quiet... the quieter the better. If no one could hear him, maybe they'd believe he wasn't there.
He sneaked up to the room he shared with several others, absently noticing that it didn't smell so bad up there... all his roommates were dead at the Place instead of the house. Dudley hunted down a bag belonging to one of the others; they were dead, after all, they didn't need it. Quickly, he shoved a few things into it. His other outfit and a comb with several teeth missing. A very old picture album of his mother as a girl that he'd uncovered in the attic once and kept because everyone looked so happy. A very shabby book and some of the sheet music Emil had had him copy down. He couldn't read, except for the music, but the book was close at hand, so in it went. A ratty scarf.
Dudley considered that last, then quickly closed up the bag and wrapped the scarf around his head. It wouldn't fool anyone who was really looking for him, but it might fool someone who wasn't looking that hard. With that, he tossed the bag over his shoulder (immediately wishing he hadn't as the packing shifted and dug the comb into his shoulder blade) and returned to the main room.
He gave his mother's body a clumsy hug goodbye. He would have said something, but he needed to be quiet if he wanted to make a serious bid at getting away, and that meant no talking. After a moment, he left the house, head down and hands in pockets.
Dudley had no idea how long he walked. He only knew that he walked, and eventually the streets around him gave way to one street surrounded by barren nothing places. It was open, without anywhere to hide. Well, he didn't want to stop somewhere where he couldn't hide, so he kept walking.
It kept on like that. Dudley walked and walked, only stopping when he had to for sleep. When he was hungry, he usually did his best to ignore it and wait until he came to a place that had other Muggles, so he could mix in and be inconspicuous. He kept to himself and kept quiet, speaking to no one even if they spoke to him first.
Eventually, he reached a place where there were streets around him again, more than there had been back at the house or the Place. And more ruined... almost no buildings were left standing properly, the streets were torn up and needed to be carefully navigated to avoid tripping over rubble. Very few people were in evidence... a few girls wearing absurdly short skirts standing in groups on corners, a few boys and men wandering around looking dazed.
Dudley shrugged slightly and adjusted the scarf around his face. It wasn't the house, and it wasn't the Place, and it wasn't the road, but there were places to hide there and some people to hide among, so that was all he really needed.
He began walking the streets, trying to emulate the dazed look he saw on most faces to blend in better, looking for a place to sleep. There were any number of barren-looking buildings, but most of them showed signs of having been claimed by a street gang or the elements and was unsafe either way.
In spite of his pickiness, it didn't take him long to find a place that would do for a few days, at least; a section of one building had fallen in and formed a sort of lean-to separated from the rest of it. Dudley curled up inside his coat and against one wall, and fell asleep.
Life fell into an easy pattern at that point. Not to say that life was easy, but at least he always knew what he was doing and what was happening from one moment to the next. He only stayed in one shelter for two or three days maximum before moving on to another. Occasionally he found himself forced to stay in a place he'd been before, but as soon as he found a new place, he was out of there.
He always remembered that he was running, although from who specifically he couldn't say. Or even if whoever it was had noticed a child's escape from the killing ground. If they even cared whether one had. By the time he reached the city, the habit of moving and hiding, never speaking, never making himself easy to find, was ingrained and automatic.
Food was scarce. Mostly he scrounged what he could, resorting to the occasional housebreak when the pickings were thinner than usual. Begging was something he didn't allow himself to do; it required drawing attention to himself in a way that simple theft didn't.
Dudley avoided the gangs as best he could. There were enough street rats without gangs that he wasn't remarked upon, but gangs tended to fight amongst themselves, and that brought official attention. Some gangs were worse than others, of course, but to Dudley's way of thinking they were all too dangerous for him.
All in all, city life wasn't as bad as being dead. He spoke to no one, avoided people unless he wished to try and blend into a crowd, and in general kept himself to himself. The tactic worked for over six years, during which time he became rail-thin and as unkempt as any lifelong street rat.
*****
Julian, called Raguel and occasionally Rags, shoved his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose irritably. Something had been itching the back of his mind all day, and he couldn't pin down what it was. Not that there was any important gossip out on the streets that day, and it wasn't as though he hadn't had that sort of feeling before. It was just usually easier to get rid of.
His mind hadn't started buzzing until he'd finished listening to the gossip from Knockturn Alley and what was left of Diagon Alley, regarding the trouble young Harry Potter had gotten himself into with Angus Macnair. If he'd been lower in the social ladder, he'd have been executed for what he'd done (knocking the glorified murderer across the room in a fit of pique), but since he was the Dark Lord's little boy, he got away with a slap on the wrist. When the name Harry Potter had first come up, his brain had started nagging, and it hadn't stopped.
Julian had been a Seer, once, more talented than was strictly speaking good for him. His visions were so clear and immediate that they'd been driving him slowly insane. He even had visions while he slept, translated into murky nightmares and falling dreams. He was lucky he'd been with a street gang at the time, one that didn't mind dealing with his quirks and trances so long as he did his part. A freak accident during a raid on one of Lucius Malfoy's establishments had ended up in his capture by the Dark Lord's government, who had questioned him, forced him to reveal everything he knew, then blinded him and tossed him in the street.
At that point, the only thing that saved him was his Sight, which was muted and altered by the fact that he couldn't actually see anymore. He could sense what was around him, close enough to sight to make little difference when walking. He knew where furniture was and where people were, even if he didn't know what any of it looked like. Furniture and other nonliving things he sensed as just solid blocks, somehow, but people... people were bundles of emotion and thought. Julian couldn't hear the thoughts except as a buzz punctuated with an occasional word most of the time, but the emotions came through clearly.
The nightmares stayed, although they were less frequent and less intense. And from time to time, he got feelings when he needed to be somewhere or do something. Like he was now, with the itch in the back of his mind. And like he had back when he was first blinded, when the itch in his mind had guided him to the floating club called Heaven and its eccentric (some would say "idiotic") owner, Gilderoy Lockhart.
Julian swung his head around, "looking" from side to side, for all the world as though he saw perfectly what was going on around him. The itch had direction, sort of... it lessened in the direction of the need and got worse when he tried to go another way. "Wretched visionary cattle prod," he muttered, starting off in the direction of least resistance, as it were. "I almost prefer having nightmares." He didn't, of course, it was just something to complain about.
As always, the walk was uneventful. As Raguel, he was well-known enough on the streets to have more or less free passage wherever he went. Also, he had a couple of knives hidden up the sleeves of his coat that deterred anyone who*did* challenge his right of way. It was a shame he wasn't a better wizard; if he could handle more than simple charms and the occasional Apparation, he'd be a much more effective presence than he was.
As things stood, he had to be happy with running a network of eyes-and-ears throughout London and a lesser network in surrounding areas. It wasn't a bad life. He had a family of sorts up in Heaven to replace the one he'd lost to being captured, and some scraps of influence and respect.
After about fifteen minutes of walking and introspection, Julian found himself standing in front of what 'felt' like a building.
And there was someone in it. A tight little knot of emotion... fear, mostly, with a bit of resignation and acceptance thrown in. An interesting combination, Julian reflected, someone who accepts the way things are and is terrified, but not by that. He entered the building, holding a hand out in front of him in case he had to open a door. "Hello?"
No answer. "I'm a friend!" Julian said in the direction of the emotional bundle. "At least I'd like to be. I think."
Still no answer, but the emotions twisted into confusion and frustration. Julian frowned, moving closer to the person, then bending down to what he hoped was about eye level. "Hey, you okay? Talk to me."
A flash of quick anger, followed by more frustration. Julian cocked his head to one side, then laid his hands on the ground. "Touch my right hand for yes and my left hand for no," he instructed. "Do you understand?"
A moment of curiosity, followed closely by apprehension, then the emotional equivalent of a shrug and a resigned, "What the hell, I'll do it." A light touch landed on Julian's right hand. "Hmmm," Julian thought, "a young hand, and a male mind... it's something, at least."
"All right. Now we're getting somewhere." Julian kept his voice upbeat, friendly, and cheerful, which he could afford to do because the itch in his mind had apparently decided it had better things to do than mess with him and had disappeared. "Can you speak?"
For a moment, consideration and a little relief, then a hesitant tap on Julian's right hand. Almost immediately, the relief metamorphosed back into frustration and the left hadn was tapped as well.
"Well, which is it? Yes or no?"
A moment, then a tap on both at the same time.
"Yes *and* no. Well, you're certainly a font of nothing, my loquacious friend. Let's see... do you know who I am?"
Instant confusion: the boy hadn't been expecting that question. Also, a resurgence of stricken fear for some reason, but there was a game tap on the left hand.
"Name's Raguel. I work for a place called Heaven-" Julian broke off as the knot of emotion unwound itself into silent, comprehending laughter. A slight smile touched the blind boy's face. The silent kid was one of the first to understand or be amused by the joke of his street name. "A place called Heaven," he repeated after a moment, "that's up in the sky, for real . Now, I'm gonna level with you, kid, something about you's important. I was... I get hunches sometimes, and I just had one that led me to you."
The laughter disappeared, replaced by the ever-present fear and a sort of cautious hope.
Julian, encouraged, continued, "And since you're important, I think you probably need to be protected. I can... feel... how afraid you are, so if you want and if you think it's all right, I'll take you to Heaven. The boss's an okay guy, always willing to take in strays...."
*****
Dudley listened with only half an ear as the odd-looking boy calling himself Raguel continued speaking. On the one hand, he was only a year or two older than Dudley himself, judging from his voice and face. Too young to be the one he was hiding from. And he did see a bright place in the sky (too bright to be the moon) above the clouds at night sometimes, that could be this Heaven place.
On the other, Dudley couldn't remember the last time he'd seen someone who looked as odd as this other did. Sunglasses in a dark room when it was going on towards sunset. Sandy blond hair that was clean (a rarity at best on the streets of London and in most cases an impossibility) and carefully braided, and loose clothes in grays and browns that would have been standard, unobtrusive street-wear if they'd been patched or worn at all. The almost-contradictions (street person and not) in Raguel made him leery of accepting any offer, no matter how nice it sounded.
But he was tired of running all the time, and if Raguel was a killer, Dudley figured he'd have been dead by then. He reached out and tapped Raguel's right hand, mostly so that the other boy would shut up for a little while, wondering absently why the other hadn't merely asked him to nod or shake his head.
Raguel stopped his chatter mid-sentence and beamed. "You agree? You'll come to Heaven with me?"
Going to a place called Heaven with a weird guy named after an archangel. Why not? If he was going to be killed, it might as well be in that sort of style. He tapped the right hand again.
"All right! No more visionary cattle prod!"
Dudley frowned, trying to figure that out. After a moment, he shrugged and gave up. Sometimes, it just wasn't worth trying to understand some people. Raguel fumbled for a brief instant, then took Dudley's hand.
"Right then, all you have to do is come along with me. It's not far." They began walking, away from Dudley's building and into a section of the city even more rundown. "I wish you talked, you know. It'd make things a lot easier. Like what am I supposed to call you if you can't tell me your name?"
Dudley wanted to say that he wished he knew. He wanted to give Raguel *some* name to call him by, even if it wasn't his own. Which seemed fair, because Dudley was fairly sure Raguel wasn't his companion's real name either. But every time he opened his mouth to try and say something, the words just wouldn't come. Nothing had happened to his throat to take away the ability to speak... that he knew of... but all the same, he couldn't ay anything.
"Well, don't worry about it," Raguel said cheerfully, once again exhibiting an eerie awareness of what Dudley was thinking in spite of the lack of speech. "I'll find a name for you, and if I don't, someone else will."
Dudley shrugged as they walked into a building. A brown-haired girl wearing a white robe met them at the door. "Oh, Julian, it's you," she said, smiling at Dudley's companion. "You're back earlier than usual, aren't you?"
"I usually just Apparate directly," Raguel said calmly in the direction of the girl's left shoulder. It was like a bomb going off in Dudley's brain; that was the reason for the hand-tap method of communication and the sunglasses in the dark! Raguel was blind! "I can't today, because as you see, I've got a passenger."
The girl turned her attention to Dudley, wrinkling her nose. "He needs a bath, Julian. And some clean clothes. You're taking him up with you?"
"I said I was, didn't I?" Raguel asked, a little too sweetly. "And Pansy dear, you know what they say. If you can't say something nice about someone, keep your mouth shut."
The girl Pansy scowled. "Miss Clearwater's not gonna be happy with you, Julian. We've got enough staff."
"Well, this one's special. Now, if you'll excuse us...."
The girl flicked her hand irritably, muttering a phrase under her breath, and the dingy building dissolved around Dudley. His eyes went wide and he'd gripped Raguel's arm hard enough to begin to cut off circulation when scenery reformed around them, of a carpeted hallway, well-lit and cheerful-looking.
"Welcome to Grace," announced Raguel. "This's where we all live, underneath Heaven proper. We just came up through the service entrance, as it were." He began leading Dudley through a complicated maze of passageways, eventually stopping in front of a door. "Now, oh silent one, this is my place. You go in there, take a bath, and put on one of those white robes you'll see hanging up... somewhere. Can't remember where, since I never wear the bloody things. I'll come back in about...." Raguel wrinkled his nose, considering. "An hour, and then we'll go see Penelope, find you a place of your own and a job to do and such."
Dudley blinked, then shrugged. Whatever was happening, it hadn't been bad yet, and he was willing to go along with it for a while longer. And this place... Grace?... was really very nice, better than any other place Dudley'd been in in his life. He went into the flat, and heard the door shut and lock behind him.
It was well-furnished, a little bare by Heaven's standards and the lap of luxury by Dudley's. It wasn't lit very well, but Dudley counted himself as lucky it was lit at all, since the person who lived in it really didn't need light. A courtesy to guests? Maybe. There was a main room, which combined kitchen, dining room, and living room together in one, a bedroom, and a bathroom.
True to his instructions, Dudley took a bath and made sure he got as much dirt and grime off him as he possibly could. While he washed, he did some thinking. With all the talk about Apparation between Raguel and that Pansy girl, it was obvious that they both had magic. A wizard and a witch... he was uncomfortably reminded of his mother's dying words for the first time since leaving the house. *Lily...! My sister... one of Them....*
'Them' in Dudley's childhood had always meant wizards and witches. So his mother's sister... no, his Aunt Lily was a witch. Or had been a witch. Did that mean he still had family out there somewhere? This Aunt Lily, maybe? Dudley resolved to begin trying to find out somehow, although precisely how escaped him.
As soon as he was as clean as one bath would make him, which took about forty-five minutes, Dudley dried himself off and squirmed into one of the white robes Raguel had mentioned. It was too big for him, even though Raguel was not a particularly large person, but it would do. To finish off the look, he fished the broken-toothed comb out of his bag and began picking it through his hair to try and get rid of some of the more major tangles.
Raguel was late, so Dudley had nearly finished combing out his hair by the time he got back. "You set?" the blind boy asked, breezing in the door.
Dudley nodded, then stopped, feeling foolish. How did someone who couldn't speak communicate with someone who couldn't see?
"Well, if you are, follow me." Raguel left, and Dudley scrambled after, tripping on the hem of the too-big white robe. "It's a few hours yet to opening, so Penelope has a few minutes to see you before she has to get to real work. We're going to meet her in one of the rehearsal rooms."
The rehearsal room was plain, closer to what Dudley had been used to at the Place; bare floor, chairs in an attentive position, a few music stands. And in the center of the room... a piano.
That caught Dudley's attention immediately. He walked over to it, ran one hand along the keys, careful not to hit any of them. The piano was slightly different than Antoinette had been, of course, less worn, black, and without the candles dripping wax down the front. After a moment, he gave in to the temptation and seated himself in fornt of the piano and began to play, starting with warming up exercises (it had been over six years, after all) and eventually going into a heartfelt round of "Ode to Joy".
Dudley was so engrossed in the music that he didn't notice the young woman in the maroon robes come in and talk to Raguel, didn't notice the surprised expression on her face. He didn't see when the woman left, only to return a moment later with a beautiful girl who looked near to tears at the sound of the piano being played.
As he played, Dudley remembered Louisa and Emil, his parents and the others at the house, Marshall and Piers and the other members of the Celestial Chorus, and smiled for the first time since he'd left all of them behind him. Without thinking about it, he began playing the Hallelujah Chorus, one of the first pieces of really classical music Emil had ever taught him, and didn't notice when the throaty alto of the beautiful girl started singing along. *I think I'll call you Celeste,* he thought to the piano.
Home at last.
by Slytherin Dragon
The house on Privet Drive looked like all the others on the street: run-down, shabby, and overcrowded. Dudley Dursley thought sometimes he could remember a time when the house had only had him and his parents in it, but probably that was only a fantasy. The truth of the matter was that the house was one of the few that barely leaked at all when it rained, and the more people there were in a house, the warmer it was in the winters.
The blond five-year-old kicked at a piece of broken pavement absently. Mum and Dad were already gone, of course, doing their work. Or whatever it was that grownups did during the day; Dusley found himself not all that interested in the matter. He himself was supposed to be on his way to the Place.
That was what it was called. Children who were too young to work and too old to need their mother's care went there for the day, so they wouldn't "run wild" or cause other trouble. All Muggle children within walking distance (and anything within two towns was considered walking distance) who had been deemed too young, or too sick, or too crazy to work with the grownups went to a big building that had been a school or something once, where they were "looked after" by witches and wizards deemed too old and infirm for much else than looking after Muggle toddlers and invalids.
If Dudley had been older, he would have appreciated the logic of the arrangement. The "useless" of both wizard and Muggle society had a place to be, and, in the case of the elderly witches and wizards, a purpose. As it was, he was a little frightened of his first day at the Place. The older children in the house had told him about the Place and what went on there; while he was sure they were purposely trying to scare him, a few of the stories had rattled even his stoic five-year-old fearlessness.
He sighed and walked faster. The faster he got there, the faster he'd be home with Mum and Dad and all the others again, he told himself firmly. While he walked, he inspected the pockets of his ratty coat to make sure nothing had taken up residence in there since the last time he'd looked.
Noise from ahead made him look up and shove his hands in the coat pockets. It didn't do to look distracted. He was one of the youngest in the house, he knew how things worked there, and they probably worked the same in the Place. If he didn't pay attention to what was happening around him, he ended up either being beaten up or locked in a closet by the older, bigger kids. If he was lucky. The best way to get by without contusions or claustrophobia wass to look attentive and eager to please, so that was what Dudley did.
The Place loomed in front of him, a huge stone building that positively teemed with children ranging in age from about Dudley's own five to possibly a few very scrawny, sickly fifteens. In reality, the crowd of kids wasn't confined to only the Place proper; they spilled over into nearby buildings and across the ruined street as well. In some areas, it more closely resembled a demilitarized zone than a "day care", with groups of kids facing each other across silently agreed-upon lines of territory, posing and snarling at each other.
With an effort not to look out of place (the older kids had told him that "newbies" got the brunt of the bullying), Dudley progessed into the Place itself. It was quieter, not so crowded as the streets and buildings surrounding it. Very few children were in evidence there, and those that were sat quietly and talked amongst themselves or curled up in corners and slept.
An old woman approached Dudley. She had a friendly-looking face, wore dark purple robes, and had an ancient wand stuck in her belt. Dudley recognized her immediately as a witch and therefore as his better, and bowed nervously. She laughed a thin old lady's laugh, then bent down and pinched his cheek. "Oh, no need to bow to old Louisa, duck. What's your name, then?"
"Dudley Dursley, ma'am," he replied shakily, bearing the pinching with good grace. "It's my first day."
"Why, so it is, duck, so it is," Louisa told him, smiling. "So you're the one we're supposed to look out for." She looked him up and down, taking in the unevenly cropped golden hair nearly brown with dirt, the smudged face, the large blue eyes. "I can't say you're particularly impressive, but your family history being what it is...." She shrugged.
Dudley blinked. "Family?" he asked blankly. "I've got Mum. And Dad. And the others at the house, but I don't think they're family, right?"
"Not really, no." Louisa peered at him again. "You don't know, do you." She shook her head and waved a hand dismissively. "Well, you're really too young for testing yet, aren't you? Go find something to occupy yourself for the day, dear." With that, the old witch tottered off to join a group of other oldsters.
Dudley blinked. It wasn't what he'd been expecting, certainly not from a witch. He looked around obediently. The group of oldsters huddled together by one wall, chattering amongst themselves, by and large ignoring their charges. There was very little furniture, and the few kids that were present huddled in groups against the cold, imitating the oldsters as best they could. Nothing looked interesting in this room, but the Place had lots of rooms for him to look into and around, so he left the main room with the oldsters.
The first few other rooms he came to were empty, with old chairs and tables scattered around. Broken windows let dead leaves and dust blow in on the wind and collect in piles on the floor. Dudley shivered and wrapped his shabby coat closer around him. Too cold, too empty, too boring.
A few rooms were occupied by groups of kids; some of them had built fires, and others looked like the groups outside, huddling together and glaring across hallways and out windows. Dudley stayed away from those rooms, although it was cold enough that the fires would have been welcome. Dudley knew from rough experience at the house that older kids were very possessive of their places, and if he didn't want black eyes or worse, he'd keep away and leave them alone.
There was one room that didn't have any windows in it, so it was slightly warmer than the first ones had been. No gang and no kids with fire, so colder than *those* rooms, but that much safer, too. It was also much darker... in fact there wasn't any light at all. Dudley stretched out a hand in front of him to feel his way around.
It didn't help. He crashed right into a large, boxy thing and fell backwards onto his rear. The thing twanged discordantly, protesting his clumsiness. Dudley scrambled backwards a few feet, then stopped when he realized that his head hurt from running into that thing, and if he smacked into a wall it wasn't going to make him feel any better. "I hope that thing's not alive," he said out loud, "Or mad, or something."
A voice laughed somewhere in the room. "Um...hello?" Dudley hated how his voice sounded, all thin and scared in the dark.
"Hello to you," an elderly voice cackled. "A wanderer, I see. And young." Another laugh.
"Who... who are you?" Dudley asked, getting to his feet. A little more boldly (if he couldn't see who was talking, they couldn't see him either!) he added, "Show yourself!"
"And brave." A light flared, and by it Dudley could make out a hunched over figure shuffling around. It lit a few candles and the room stood out in flickering pools of golden light. The boxy thing that Dudley had run into sat towards one end of the room, with chairs arranged on the other as if the boxy thing was holding court. A few of the candles were spaced on top of it so that their light shone across a sort of ledge, with tabs alternating small black wedges and bigger white wedges, across the entire length of the box. Dudley had never seen such a thing before, never in his life.
The hunched over figure who'd lit the candles was actually a little old man who grinned like a nearly-toothless maniac in the candlelight, in very shabby green robes, with an equally shabby wand shoved in his belt. "Emil. I'm Emil. And you would be...?"
"Dudley." He didn't bother with a last name; after all, 'Emil' hadn't. He pointed at the boxy thing, absently rubbing his head with the other hand. "What's *that*?"
"Hurt your little head, didn't it, when you ran into her?" cackled Emil. "That, dear boy, is my darling Antoinette."
"Ant-wan-ett." Dudley wrinkled his nose, sounding out the name. "What's an ant-wan-ett?"
"Antoinette is her name," Emil said rapturously, running his hands across the black and white wedges, causing the boxy thing to make very different sounds than it had when Dudley had run into it. Nice sounds. "Antoinette is a piano, boy. Hasn't anyone taught you anything?"
Dudley crept closer, blinking at the boxy Antoinette. I don't think she bites, he decided, although I'll keep my hands away for now, just in case. "I know stuff!" he protested. "Just not *this* stuff."
Emil cackled. "Come here. I'll show you." The little old man sat on a bench in front of the piano and backoned to Dudley, who shrugged after a minute and climbed up beside him. Emil took hold of Dudley's hand and pressed the fingers against a few of the wedges in a pattern. "Hear that, boy? She's singing to you."
Music... a lullaby Mum sometimes sang to him... Dudley snatched his hand back and stared at the old man in awe. After a moment, he carefully repeated the motions on his own and played the lullaby again. "A piano," he repeated, enchanted. "What else does she do?"
"That's it. A piano plays music. And Antoinette better than most, these days, because I take very good care of her, I do." Emil preened slightly.
"Just lullabies? That's silly."
"Not just lullabies. Any music." Emil shook his head. "Time was when everyone knew what a piano was meant for. Now, it's something you know if you're lucky. Times change, boy, times change." He cocked his head to one side thoughfully, then asked, "Would you like to learn?"
"Learn?" Dudley asked. "Learn to play this?" He nodded enthusiastically without waiting for a verification. "I'd like that very much!"
Emil cackled. "Well, then, boy, let's get started..."
*****
Lessons, between actual learning and endless practicing, ended up taking up most of Dudley's four years at the Place. The rest of the time was spent in the necessary activity of learning how things worked at the Place and how not to get beaten up.
All the kids, no matter their age, were expected to have a gang affiliation. If they didn't, they were fair game for anyone looking for a fight. Most gangs were lucky to have five or six members, a very few had more than that. They all had fanciful, poetic sounding names for their gangs, too. The Bad Moon gang was the largest, with nearly twenty kids, closely
followed by the Ash Raven gang in size.
There was a whole political structure to the gang system, Dudley found. The gangs outside of the Place were to be avoided at all times, while the ones who'd made their turf from old classrooms could usually be dealt with reasonably. By the time he'd been learning from Emil for nearly a month, Dudley found himself loosely affiliated with one of the nearby classroom groups, a gang who took to calling themselves the Celestial Chorus after Dudley joined and the piano-room was added to their turf.
If things had been different, he sometimes thought he could lead at least the nearest gang. But he was still the youngest at the house, and as such he pretty much got what the older kids were willing to give him of anything, so he was never as strong as them. It was fine with him, though; he was used to deferring, and he found as he grew older that the more helpless someone thought you were, the more they tended to think you weren't really worth the attention. Unless they were sadistic, of course, and in that case, all bets were off.
The gang Dudley found himself "with" was one of the better ones. The leader was big ond not too bright, but he wasn't sadistic or mean for the sheer joy of pounding smaller kids into the ground. Mostly, the gang left him alone and he left them alone, but to an 'outsider' he was one of them and not to be messed with. In return, the gang got to claim the music room as their turf in addition to their own room. Occasionally one or two of them would even hang out in the music room while Dudley played.
The years passed quickly enough. For the most part, Dudley learned hymns and slow pieces, as those were easy to memorize and very pretty to listen to. But every so often, as a 'treat', Emil brought out a piece of complex music, real classical music, for Dudley to learn, memorize, and play.
Dudley would never have left the music room during the days if he'd had a choice in the matter. But Emil insisted that he not only learn how to play the piano, but understand the music as well, so every so often, Dudley would have to leave the room to find paper or a pencil or some other set of writing tools. When he was five, the hunts could take all day, but at age nine, Dudley was so used to the Place and the way things worked that he was able to get enough supplies to last a week in the space of about ten minutes.
He'd just returned from one such trip to find Emil dozing in a corner and one of the Choristers, a weaselly-looking boy who called himself Piers, sitting crosslegged on the floor sharpening a knife. "Hello, Piers," Dudley said, shoving a lock of golden hair behind one ear, resigned to spending a day ignoring snide remarks from the floor. "What's the matter, you have another fight with Marshall?"
Marshall was the leader of the Celestial Chorus, as the biggest, the one with the sharpest knife, and the one with the most space in his brain to devote to leadership. Piers snorted. "Shows what you know, Goldilocks. It's the big day, someone come down from London for it an' everything. An' so what if I had a fight with Marshall? He's not gonna kill me. Needs all the help he can get. 'S why he lets you hang around, innit?"
Dudley sat at the piano and played an arpeggio that sounded faintly derisive, showing precisely what he thought of the gang's political state. Piers missed the meaning, of course. "What big day?" Dudley asked absently.
"You dope. It's the Day." Piers shuddered. "We're all going to be Tested, and if any of us're wizards, we'll get sent to the zones. The rest of us'll go to work like normal Muggles."
Tested. Dudley frowned slightly, remembering the old woman Louisa's reference to testing from when he was little. And her reference to his family... "So the Place'll be pretty empty come tomorrow," he said, and shrugged.
"Place'll be pretty empty," Piers mocked, putting on a worldly air. "Is that all you've got to say?"
Dudley played a questioning little melody. He'd gotten into the habit (since he was at the piano all the time anyway) of playing his mood and thoughts as music instead of talking about them. Most of the time it was more fun than talking, anyway. Sometimes people understood what he meant, but usually they didn't.
Piers didn't, so Dudley asked, "Neither of us're Testing age, so what else is there to say?"
"Too young, 'zat what yer thinkin'? As if wizards're gonna come down from London whenever somebody turns twelve. No, we all get Tested at the same time, and if you paid attention to anything 'cept that box of yours, you'd know that."
"Antoinette is a *piano*, not a box. How many times do I have to tell you lot that?" Dudley shook his head. "You call yourselves the Celestial Chorus, and none of you know anything about music!"
Piers waved his arms dramatically, narrowly missing slicing off a piece of one ear with his knife. "Worry about yourself, Dursley! 'Place'll be pretty empty'? Ha! What about you? You'll lose your precious *Antoinette* and be stuck shining wizard shoes or somethin' for the rest o' yer pathetic life. Don't that mean anything to you?" Piers bit his lip and dropped his voice to a near-whisper. "I heard they kill people in those zones. Just bam! And you're dead."
"Anything's possible."
"Nobody cares."
"I know." Dudley began playing a pavane he knew by heart; a slow, funereal piece to suit the gloomy atmosphere. "Why did you bring it up?"
"We gotta go, and I mean now. Marshall's gonna have our heads for being late-"
"I was getting paper for Emil." Dudley nodded in the direction of the sleeping wizard.
"Yeah, whatever. Point is, we're probably all gonna get it because of you, Goldilocks, so come along and shut up."
Dudley shrugged and got down from the piano. "You could have saved us both a lot of time by just telling me before you started complaining," he pointed out. "Sorry."
"Yeah, whatever. Move it."
They walked out of the music room, down the hallways towards the main room where the oldsters usually were. Neither spoke, each preferring to think private thoughts. Every so often, Dudley's fingers twitched as though he were playing something in his mind, and Piers kept switching his knife from hand to hand.
The smell hit them first, a sort of sickly-sweet coppery smell. Neither knew what it was until they walked into the main room of the Place. Blood covered the floor and speckled the walls, and that was the source of the smell.
Everyone, all the kids and the old witches and wizards, were lying on the ground, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Most of the bodies were just lumps of flesh with the bones shattered and poking out through their skin like bizarre pincushions. A few had simply had their throats slashed, or their wrists. It didn't really matter... they were all equally dead.
Piers gaped, dropped his knife. He looked wildly all around him. "What... who... why...." he stammered faintly. "I don't... understand... this isn't the Testing...."
Dudley didn't say anything, but walked around the room, carefully avoiding stepping on the bodies. Every few feet he stopped and bent down to close someone's eyes. Once he made it back to the front of the room, he collapsed next to Piers, not minding that he ended up sitting on his knees in a pool of someone's blood. Marshall's? Maybe.
After a few moments of dumbstruck silence, Piers turned to look down at Dudley and said solemnly, "We really are all going to get it, aren't we? Look, most of us already have...." His eyes were wide and terrified. He looked around slowly, retrieved his knife. "Now, I'm gonna leave... going that way." He stabbed in a random direction. "You were the one who made us late. Maybe the killers won't chase me. So don't you follow me, Dursley, I'm warnin' you."
Dudley shook his head and didn't get up. "So go. I'm not stopping you."
With one last glance around the room, Piers fled. Dudley watched him disappear out the door, catching a quick glimpse of a similar scene to the one he was sitting in in front of the Place, except out there it was only kids, and they were put in more creative places. Lampposts, fences, sewer grates... Dudley forced himself to stop thinking about it.
Suddenly, his head snapped up. The others, the ones not in this room... what about them? "Emil," he whispered. "I have to tell Emil to get away...." He leapt to his feet and tore down the hallways as fast as his legs would take him.
Every room he knew to be home to a gang, he stopped in, and in every room there was that smell and the sight of broken, bleeding bodies to let him know he was too late. After about five of those rooms, Dudley closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it, but the smell was still there, and so was the awful silence.
After what seemed like an eternity, Dudley reached the music room. It was a shambles. None of the candles were left burning, they had all been tipped over and drowned in their own wax. Antoinette the piano was lying in the center of the room, reduced to kindling that burned from the upset candles that had rested on top of her. "Emil?" he called softly, trying not to look at the bonfire that had been Antoinette.
No answer, just silence and the smell creeping around the edges of Dudley's senses. He looked around carefully, and spotted a lump in a chair facing the conflagration in the center of the room. Dudley almost laughed. That's right, Emil had been taking a nap, that's why he hadn't answered. He walked over to where the old wizard was sitting and shook him lightly on the shoulder. "Emil, wake up. We have to leave. Everyone's dead... I think because Piers and I were late for the Testing... and Antoinette's burning, Emil. We have to leave...."
The old man slumped out of the chair and fell heavily onto the ground. The smell assaulted Dudley's nose, and once Emil was on the ground it wasn't hard to see that he was dead. His head hung at a crazy angle to his body, and blood was leaking out a corner of his mouth.
Dudley felt tears stinging his eyes and sliding down his face. He hadn't cried over the other bodies; they hadn't seemed real, somehow. But this was different, this was too real, it jumped out at him and lodged in his chest so he couldn't breathe properly. "Emil, no," he sobbed. "Please, you weren't finished teaching me yet...." He knelt down and shook the old man. Emil's head flopped uselessly. Dudley gave up and started crying in earnest.
He wasn't used to crying, so he quit after a few minutes when he got a headache. "Why?" he demanded finally of the corpse next to him. "You were alive when I left the room with Piers! How did I miss the killer? We should have passed each other in the hallways...." He paused, then snuffled. "I'm sorry, Emil," he whispered. "I didn't mean... I didn't know... I...."
Dudley bowed his head, feeling the tears start up again. "Why? We never hurt anybody here. Kids and old people... and you were a wizard, Emil! Why you and not me?" He drew in a shuddering breath and got to his feet. "I can't stick around," he said apologetically. "I don't want to die, and I think that if I stay here I will. So I guess I'm going back to the house now."
He shifted his weight a few times, then took off out of the room at a dead run, shutting his eyes so he didn't have to see the corpses and doing his best to breathe through his mouth and thus avoid the smell. He ran all the way back to the house, not bothering to hide himself. If the killer was still around, then it probably wouldn't matter if Dudley were hiding or not.
He stumbled into the house on Privet Drive gasping for breath. He wasn't used to running, and the distance between the Place and the house wasn't exactly short. "Mum?" he called hopefully. "Dad? Anybody?"
Silence... Dudley sighed, then blinked and sniffed the air. Coppery, sickly-sweet. "Oh, no. No. Not here." He left the entry hall and went into the large main room, and there he found where the smell was coming from.
It was the same as it had been at the Place; everyone who had lived in the house stared up at the ceiling with all their bones shattered or their throats cut... sometimes even both for no discernible reason. A few bodies were still sitting in chairs, as though they'd been called into the room for some reason and had simply been killed where they sat.
The tears began to sting again, but Dudley began looking over all the bodies, looking fo rhis parents among them. If he couldn't find them, maybe they weren't there. Maybe they were still out doing their work, and that would be all right because these people weren't *family*, they weren't related to him, they were just people who lived there with his family because the house was one with a proper roof....
No such luck. His mother, Petunia (also called Pet, but only when she wasn't listening) was one of the bodies in a chair, and his father Vernon was crumpled into a barely-recognizable heap behind it. "Mum," Dudley whispered. Piers's words from earlier ran through his head, jumbled and accusing. *We're all gonna get it because of you... look, most of us have... you made us late... I'm going this way....*
Dudley fell to his knees beside the chair and laid his head in his mother's lap. "It's my fault," he whispered. "I made me and Piers late by talking, and now everybody's dead. I'm not dead, so it's my fault, right?"
Suddenly, the body twitched underneath his head. "No," a voice rasped.
Dudley's head jerked up. "Mum?!"
"Yes, dear... for a little while, at least." It seemed hard for her to talk, and she had to stop every few words to cough. "Now listen... Dudley... not your fault...."
"Then whose?" he demanded tearfully. "Whose?"
Petunia started coughing harder, bringing blood onto her lips. "Lily...!" she gasped, staring blindly into space. "My... sister... one of *them*... I always... knew...." She coughed a few more times, then fell back and didn't cough anymore.
Dudley shook his head, running fingers through his golden hair, never minding that his hands were leaving ugly scarlet streaks where they passed. It was too much. Everyone he knew, dead in less than an hour... and probably he would be too unless he took steps. He had to be quick and quiet... the quieter the better. If no one could hear him, maybe they'd believe he wasn't there.
He sneaked up to the room he shared with several others, absently noticing that it didn't smell so bad up there... all his roommates were dead at the Place instead of the house. Dudley hunted down a bag belonging to one of the others; they were dead, after all, they didn't need it. Quickly, he shoved a few things into it. His other outfit and a comb with several teeth missing. A very old picture album of his mother as a girl that he'd uncovered in the attic once and kept because everyone looked so happy. A very shabby book and some of the sheet music Emil had had him copy down. He couldn't read, except for the music, but the book was close at hand, so in it went. A ratty scarf.
Dudley considered that last, then quickly closed up the bag and wrapped the scarf around his head. It wouldn't fool anyone who was really looking for him, but it might fool someone who wasn't looking that hard. With that, he tossed the bag over his shoulder (immediately wishing he hadn't as the packing shifted and dug the comb into his shoulder blade) and returned to the main room.
He gave his mother's body a clumsy hug goodbye. He would have said something, but he needed to be quiet if he wanted to make a serious bid at getting away, and that meant no talking. After a moment, he left the house, head down and hands in pockets.
Dudley had no idea how long he walked. He only knew that he walked, and eventually the streets around him gave way to one street surrounded by barren nothing places. It was open, without anywhere to hide. Well, he didn't want to stop somewhere where he couldn't hide, so he kept walking.
It kept on like that. Dudley walked and walked, only stopping when he had to for sleep. When he was hungry, he usually did his best to ignore it and wait until he came to a place that had other Muggles, so he could mix in and be inconspicuous. He kept to himself and kept quiet, speaking to no one even if they spoke to him first.
Eventually, he reached a place where there were streets around him again, more than there had been back at the house or the Place. And more ruined... almost no buildings were left standing properly, the streets were torn up and needed to be carefully navigated to avoid tripping over rubble. Very few people were in evidence... a few girls wearing absurdly short skirts standing in groups on corners, a few boys and men wandering around looking dazed.
Dudley shrugged slightly and adjusted the scarf around his face. It wasn't the house, and it wasn't the Place, and it wasn't the road, but there were places to hide there and some people to hide among, so that was all he really needed.
He began walking the streets, trying to emulate the dazed look he saw on most faces to blend in better, looking for a place to sleep. There were any number of barren-looking buildings, but most of them showed signs of having been claimed by a street gang or the elements and was unsafe either way.
In spite of his pickiness, it didn't take him long to find a place that would do for a few days, at least; a section of one building had fallen in and formed a sort of lean-to separated from the rest of it. Dudley curled up inside his coat and against one wall, and fell asleep.
Life fell into an easy pattern at that point. Not to say that life was easy, but at least he always knew what he was doing and what was happening from one moment to the next. He only stayed in one shelter for two or three days maximum before moving on to another. Occasionally he found himself forced to stay in a place he'd been before, but as soon as he found a new place, he was out of there.
He always remembered that he was running, although from who specifically he couldn't say. Or even if whoever it was had noticed a child's escape from the killing ground. If they even cared whether one had. By the time he reached the city, the habit of moving and hiding, never speaking, never making himself easy to find, was ingrained and automatic.
Food was scarce. Mostly he scrounged what he could, resorting to the occasional housebreak when the pickings were thinner than usual. Begging was something he didn't allow himself to do; it required drawing attention to himself in a way that simple theft didn't.
Dudley avoided the gangs as best he could. There were enough street rats without gangs that he wasn't remarked upon, but gangs tended to fight amongst themselves, and that brought official attention. Some gangs were worse than others, of course, but to Dudley's way of thinking they were all too dangerous for him.
All in all, city life wasn't as bad as being dead. He spoke to no one, avoided people unless he wished to try and blend into a crowd, and in general kept himself to himself. The tactic worked for over six years, during which time he became rail-thin and as unkempt as any lifelong street rat.
*****
Julian, called Raguel and occasionally Rags, shoved his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose irritably. Something had been itching the back of his mind all day, and he couldn't pin down what it was. Not that there was any important gossip out on the streets that day, and it wasn't as though he hadn't had that sort of feeling before. It was just usually easier to get rid of.
His mind hadn't started buzzing until he'd finished listening to the gossip from Knockturn Alley and what was left of Diagon Alley, regarding the trouble young Harry Potter had gotten himself into with Angus Macnair. If he'd been lower in the social ladder, he'd have been executed for what he'd done (knocking the glorified murderer across the room in a fit of pique), but since he was the Dark Lord's little boy, he got away with a slap on the wrist. When the name Harry Potter had first come up, his brain had started nagging, and it hadn't stopped.
Julian had been a Seer, once, more talented than was strictly speaking good for him. His visions were so clear and immediate that they'd been driving him slowly insane. He even had visions while he slept, translated into murky nightmares and falling dreams. He was lucky he'd been with a street gang at the time, one that didn't mind dealing with his quirks and trances so long as he did his part. A freak accident during a raid on one of Lucius Malfoy's establishments had ended up in his capture by the Dark Lord's government, who had questioned him, forced him to reveal everything he knew, then blinded him and tossed him in the street.
At that point, the only thing that saved him was his Sight, which was muted and altered by the fact that he couldn't actually see anymore. He could sense what was around him, close enough to sight to make little difference when walking. He knew where furniture was and where people were, even if he didn't know what any of it looked like. Furniture and other nonliving things he sensed as just solid blocks, somehow, but people... people were bundles of emotion and thought. Julian couldn't hear the thoughts except as a buzz punctuated with an occasional word most of the time, but the emotions came through clearly.
The nightmares stayed, although they were less frequent and less intense. And from time to time, he got feelings when he needed to be somewhere or do something. Like he was now, with the itch in the back of his mind. And like he had back when he was first blinded, when the itch in his mind had guided him to the floating club called Heaven and its eccentric (some would say "idiotic") owner, Gilderoy Lockhart.
Julian swung his head around, "looking" from side to side, for all the world as though he saw perfectly what was going on around him. The itch had direction, sort of... it lessened in the direction of the need and got worse when he tried to go another way. "Wretched visionary cattle prod," he muttered, starting off in the direction of least resistance, as it were. "I almost prefer having nightmares." He didn't, of course, it was just something to complain about.
As always, the walk was uneventful. As Raguel, he was well-known enough on the streets to have more or less free passage wherever he went. Also, he had a couple of knives hidden up the sleeves of his coat that deterred anyone who*did* challenge his right of way. It was a shame he wasn't a better wizard; if he could handle more than simple charms and the occasional Apparation, he'd be a much more effective presence than he was.
As things stood, he had to be happy with running a network of eyes-and-ears throughout London and a lesser network in surrounding areas. It wasn't a bad life. He had a family of sorts up in Heaven to replace the one he'd lost to being captured, and some scraps of influence and respect.
After about fifteen minutes of walking and introspection, Julian found himself standing in front of what 'felt' like a building.
And there was someone in it. A tight little knot of emotion... fear, mostly, with a bit of resignation and acceptance thrown in. An interesting combination, Julian reflected, someone who accepts the way things are and is terrified, but not by that. He entered the building, holding a hand out in front of him in case he had to open a door. "Hello?"
No answer. "I'm a friend!" Julian said in the direction of the emotional bundle. "At least I'd like to be. I think."
Still no answer, but the emotions twisted into confusion and frustration. Julian frowned, moving closer to the person, then bending down to what he hoped was about eye level. "Hey, you okay? Talk to me."
A flash of quick anger, followed by more frustration. Julian cocked his head to one side, then laid his hands on the ground. "Touch my right hand for yes and my left hand for no," he instructed. "Do you understand?"
A moment of curiosity, followed closely by apprehension, then the emotional equivalent of a shrug and a resigned, "What the hell, I'll do it." A light touch landed on Julian's right hand. "Hmmm," Julian thought, "a young hand, and a male mind... it's something, at least."
"All right. Now we're getting somewhere." Julian kept his voice upbeat, friendly, and cheerful, which he could afford to do because the itch in his mind had apparently decided it had better things to do than mess with him and had disappeared. "Can you speak?"
For a moment, consideration and a little relief, then a hesitant tap on Julian's right hand. Almost immediately, the relief metamorphosed back into frustration and the left hadn was tapped as well.
"Well, which is it? Yes or no?"
A moment, then a tap on both at the same time.
"Yes *and* no. Well, you're certainly a font of nothing, my loquacious friend. Let's see... do you know who I am?"
Instant confusion: the boy hadn't been expecting that question. Also, a resurgence of stricken fear for some reason, but there was a game tap on the left hand.
"Name's Raguel. I work for a place called Heaven-" Julian broke off as the knot of emotion unwound itself into silent, comprehending laughter. A slight smile touched the blind boy's face. The silent kid was one of the first to understand or be amused by the joke of his street name. "A place called Heaven," he repeated after a moment, "that's up in the sky, for real . Now, I'm gonna level with you, kid, something about you's important. I was... I get hunches sometimes, and I just had one that led me to you."
The laughter disappeared, replaced by the ever-present fear and a sort of cautious hope.
Julian, encouraged, continued, "And since you're important, I think you probably need to be protected. I can... feel... how afraid you are, so if you want and if you think it's all right, I'll take you to Heaven. The boss's an okay guy, always willing to take in strays...."
*****
Dudley listened with only half an ear as the odd-looking boy calling himself Raguel continued speaking. On the one hand, he was only a year or two older than Dudley himself, judging from his voice and face. Too young to be the one he was hiding from. And he did see a bright place in the sky (too bright to be the moon) above the clouds at night sometimes, that could be this Heaven place.
On the other, Dudley couldn't remember the last time he'd seen someone who looked as odd as this other did. Sunglasses in a dark room when it was going on towards sunset. Sandy blond hair that was clean (a rarity at best on the streets of London and in most cases an impossibility) and carefully braided, and loose clothes in grays and browns that would have been standard, unobtrusive street-wear if they'd been patched or worn at all. The almost-contradictions (street person and not) in Raguel made him leery of accepting any offer, no matter how nice it sounded.
But he was tired of running all the time, and if Raguel was a killer, Dudley figured he'd have been dead by then. He reached out and tapped Raguel's right hand, mostly so that the other boy would shut up for a little while, wondering absently why the other hadn't merely asked him to nod or shake his head.
Raguel stopped his chatter mid-sentence and beamed. "You agree? You'll come to Heaven with me?"
Going to a place called Heaven with a weird guy named after an archangel. Why not? If he was going to be killed, it might as well be in that sort of style. He tapped the right hand again.
"All right! No more visionary cattle prod!"
Dudley frowned, trying to figure that out. After a moment, he shrugged and gave up. Sometimes, it just wasn't worth trying to understand some people. Raguel fumbled for a brief instant, then took Dudley's hand.
"Right then, all you have to do is come along with me. It's not far." They began walking, away from Dudley's building and into a section of the city even more rundown. "I wish you talked, you know. It'd make things a lot easier. Like what am I supposed to call you if you can't tell me your name?"
Dudley wanted to say that he wished he knew. He wanted to give Raguel *some* name to call him by, even if it wasn't his own. Which seemed fair, because Dudley was fairly sure Raguel wasn't his companion's real name either. But every time he opened his mouth to try and say something, the words just wouldn't come. Nothing had happened to his throat to take away the ability to speak... that he knew of... but all the same, he couldn't ay anything.
"Well, don't worry about it," Raguel said cheerfully, once again exhibiting an eerie awareness of what Dudley was thinking in spite of the lack of speech. "I'll find a name for you, and if I don't, someone else will."
Dudley shrugged as they walked into a building. A brown-haired girl wearing a white robe met them at the door. "Oh, Julian, it's you," she said, smiling at Dudley's companion. "You're back earlier than usual, aren't you?"
"I usually just Apparate directly," Raguel said calmly in the direction of the girl's left shoulder. It was like a bomb going off in Dudley's brain; that was the reason for the hand-tap method of communication and the sunglasses in the dark! Raguel was blind! "I can't today, because as you see, I've got a passenger."
The girl turned her attention to Dudley, wrinkling her nose. "He needs a bath, Julian. And some clean clothes. You're taking him up with you?"
"I said I was, didn't I?" Raguel asked, a little too sweetly. "And Pansy dear, you know what they say. If you can't say something nice about someone, keep your mouth shut."
The girl Pansy scowled. "Miss Clearwater's not gonna be happy with you, Julian. We've got enough staff."
"Well, this one's special. Now, if you'll excuse us...."
The girl flicked her hand irritably, muttering a phrase under her breath, and the dingy building dissolved around Dudley. His eyes went wide and he'd gripped Raguel's arm hard enough to begin to cut off circulation when scenery reformed around them, of a carpeted hallway, well-lit and cheerful-looking.
"Welcome to Grace," announced Raguel. "This's where we all live, underneath Heaven proper. We just came up through the service entrance, as it were." He began leading Dudley through a complicated maze of passageways, eventually stopping in front of a door. "Now, oh silent one, this is my place. You go in there, take a bath, and put on one of those white robes you'll see hanging up... somewhere. Can't remember where, since I never wear the bloody things. I'll come back in about...." Raguel wrinkled his nose, considering. "An hour, and then we'll go see Penelope, find you a place of your own and a job to do and such."
Dudley blinked, then shrugged. Whatever was happening, it hadn't been bad yet, and he was willing to go along with it for a while longer. And this place... Grace?... was really very nice, better than any other place Dudley'd been in in his life. He went into the flat, and heard the door shut and lock behind him.
It was well-furnished, a little bare by Heaven's standards and the lap of luxury by Dudley's. It wasn't lit very well, but Dudley counted himself as lucky it was lit at all, since the person who lived in it really didn't need light. A courtesy to guests? Maybe. There was a main room, which combined kitchen, dining room, and living room together in one, a bedroom, and a bathroom.
True to his instructions, Dudley took a bath and made sure he got as much dirt and grime off him as he possibly could. While he washed, he did some thinking. With all the talk about Apparation between Raguel and that Pansy girl, it was obvious that they both had magic. A wizard and a witch... he was uncomfortably reminded of his mother's dying words for the first time since leaving the house. *Lily...! My sister... one of Them....*
'Them' in Dudley's childhood had always meant wizards and witches. So his mother's sister... no, his Aunt Lily was a witch. Or had been a witch. Did that mean he still had family out there somewhere? This Aunt Lily, maybe? Dudley resolved to begin trying to find out somehow, although precisely how escaped him.
As soon as he was as clean as one bath would make him, which took about forty-five minutes, Dudley dried himself off and squirmed into one of the white robes Raguel had mentioned. It was too big for him, even though Raguel was not a particularly large person, but it would do. To finish off the look, he fished the broken-toothed comb out of his bag and began picking it through his hair to try and get rid of some of the more major tangles.
Raguel was late, so Dudley had nearly finished combing out his hair by the time he got back. "You set?" the blind boy asked, breezing in the door.
Dudley nodded, then stopped, feeling foolish. How did someone who couldn't speak communicate with someone who couldn't see?
"Well, if you are, follow me." Raguel left, and Dudley scrambled after, tripping on the hem of the too-big white robe. "It's a few hours yet to opening, so Penelope has a few minutes to see you before she has to get to real work. We're going to meet her in one of the rehearsal rooms."
The rehearsal room was plain, closer to what Dudley had been used to at the Place; bare floor, chairs in an attentive position, a few music stands. And in the center of the room... a piano.
That caught Dudley's attention immediately. He walked over to it, ran one hand along the keys, careful not to hit any of them. The piano was slightly different than Antoinette had been, of course, less worn, black, and without the candles dripping wax down the front. After a moment, he gave in to the temptation and seated himself in fornt of the piano and began to play, starting with warming up exercises (it had been over six years, after all) and eventually going into a heartfelt round of "Ode to Joy".
Dudley was so engrossed in the music that he didn't notice the young woman in the maroon robes come in and talk to Raguel, didn't notice the surprised expression on her face. He didn't see when the woman left, only to return a moment later with a beautiful girl who looked near to tears at the sound of the piano being played.
As he played, Dudley remembered Louisa and Emil, his parents and the others at the house, Marshall and Piers and the other members of the Celestial Chorus, and smiled for the first time since he'd left all of them behind him. Without thinking about it, he began playing the Hallelujah Chorus, one of the first pieces of really classical music Emil had ever taught him, and didn't notice when the throaty alto of the beautiful girl started singing along. *I think I'll call you Celeste,* he thought to the piano.
Home at last.
