Q: What do you get when you mix a long time ff.net lurker with a fanfic challenge and Spring Break?
A: A fanfic that has been written a thousand times before. (OK, maybe more like a hundred). Don't worry, I'll try to be at least a little creative..and if I fail at that, I'll just torture Harry some more, since we all adore HarryTorture (yes, one word).
This is a response to Severitus' wonderful challenge. :-) This was begun (and put on hiatus) eons before OOTP, and I've yet to get the emotional fortitude to be able to reread Book 5 again to shift this into a post-OOTP universe, so pretend OOTP never happened. That said, elements and concepts from OOTP might appear as I edit the first 14 chapters and pick up the story.
Oh, and Disclaimer: Anything you recognize is the property of J.K. Rowling. I'm just a poor college student.
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The Color Crimson
By Lady of Arundel
Chapter One: Crimson Summer
Harry gasped in ragged breaths, dimly aware of the retreating footsteps of his uncle. He lay crumpled on the floor or countless minutes, eyes closed and jaw clenched tight as he took stock of his injuries. A dozen new slashes across his back, the old cracked rib or two, a growing bump on the back of his head, and a collection of already-purpling bruises vivid against fading bruises along his upper arms, torso, and legs. But nothing that could not be concealed by clothing and thus threaten the Dursley's carefully-crafted image of normalcy.
It had been Uncle Vernon's last opportunity to properly discipline his nephew before those freaks whisked the boy away to that blasted school. Not that Uncle Vernon had wanted to send him back at all. A letter had arrived by owl, however, informing Vernon and Petunia that a professor would arrive in two days on the first to escort Harry to school. Having just put himself to the expense of securing the boy's room—new fortified bars for the window and a reinforced metal frame and lock for the door—and now further humiliated by having an owl sent to him in his own name (in daylight no less!), Uncle Vernon was positively livid. His plans to cure the boy once and for all dashed yet again, Vernon had made sure this final lesson of the summer holiday would not be quickly forgotten by his wayward charge.
Harry braced a bloodied palm against the floor and slowly rolled onto his back, hissing softly as the stinging welts crisscrossing his back came into contact with the cool hardwood floor. He greedily gulped lungfuls of air, eyes still squeezed tight against the ceaseless waves of dizziness, and struggled against the urge to give in to the sweet whispering darkness of unconsciousness.
Because he didn't deserve the release.
I deserve this.
He deserved the pain, deserved the hunger, deserved the overwhelming loneliness.
He had earned every lash that rained down upon his tender black, every well- aimed kick to the shin or ribs, every crack of a frying pan or the Smelting's stick against the back of his skull.
He deserved it all because Cedric couldn't feel pain anymore, his parents couldn't feel pain anymore, and Sirius and his friends felt entirely too much pain in their lives.
All because of him.
So what was a little bit of suffering on his part?
Murderers deserved to suffer.
After all, wasn't that what he was? His parents and Cedric had all died needlessly because of him; where others gave love and comfort in friendship he only brought fear and death. Wasn't Uncle Vernon right to punish Harry for constantly putting the Dursleys in danger? Wouldn't it be in the best interest of those he loved if he kept them all at arm's length?
Harry struggled to his hands and knees biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood—murderers did not deserve to cry out in pain—and eventually dragged himself to the spartan bed in the corner of the room. Purposefully ignoring his wounds, Harry pulling a sheet over his body and stared at the ceiling with glazed eyes.
Harry had not quite been prepared for this latest beating, having felt off since his birthday. It had started with a dull, persistent headache that throbbed at the back of his head, in time wrapping around his temples and pulsing hot behind his eyes. His stomach had come next—having long become accustomed to the ache of hunger these new stabbing pains and waves of nausea were something else entirely. Within the last week it had spread, until Harry could have sworn he could feel his very blood tingle with illness. This flu or sickness was not constant but came and went in bouts predictable only in their increasingly intensity. This morning the illness returned, his vision swimming and stomach rolling as he struggled through his daily chores. Chores which were interrupted, of course, by the arrival of a large brown barn owl carrying a scroll addressed to a Mr. Vernon Dursley.
Harry didn't want to go back to Hogwarts, not now. A month or two earlier and he would have given anything to go back. Why did no one come when he cried, screamed for someone to help him? Why did no one notice the uncharacteristic coolness of his owl replies early on in the summer, or notice when the replies stopped coming altogether? Why was someone only coming when all Harry ever wanted was to curl up in the corner of his room, completely forgotten by muggle- and wizarding-worlds alike?
Was he really only a tool to be fetched when needed and discarded when his purpose fulfilled?
Wasn't he a living, emotional being who deserved, no, who needed to be held, comforted, loved?
That there was his darkest thought, the impulse which made Harry give himself up willingly to Vernon's punishments. For while in those rare moments of clarity amid the waves of pain a small voice in the back of his mind reasoned that perhaps what happened to Cedric and the others could not be entirely his fault, that same voice fell silent and ashamed when Harry questioned why, in all his suffering, he had been sent away from all he held dear to suffer further.
Who was he to question Dumbledore's wisdom, who was he to deny Sirius and Ron and Hermione and all the others the respite of security provided by his absence? How dare he, a murderer, dare be so ungrateful and selfish?
Harry allowed his head to loll to the side, the stiff sheet cool against his fevered cheek. He clenched his eyes closed again, fighting against the tears of pain, fear, and loneliness threatening to spill from his treacherous eyes.
TBC.