P.S. Happy Birthday
Tremors shot from his shoulders through to his calves, shaking him. Making every inch of him quake uncontrollably. Cracking his back and resettling on the floor, Harry Potter resumed his work. History of Magic was always extremely dull, but if there was one thing that was even more excruciating, it was History of Magic at 3 am with no television and a head cold. Or was it hay fever? Harry couldn't tell any more, he was too sick.
He only had so much time to finish his essay; it wasn't so much that he was procrastinating as much as he hadn't found the time. Now he was pressing himself to get it done in time to meet Hermione in Diagon Alley. Undoubtedly she would ask him about it, demand it from him under the guise of help, and then scold him furiously for not having done it properly.
"Achoo!" Harry suffered a terrific sneeze and threw down his quill in frustration. His face was splattered with errant ink droplets, and though he couldn't see it yet, he could feel dawn, just below the horizon. The sun was slowly creeping towards him, inevitability. Harry didn't necessarily want the sun to rise, the longer he got to sleep the better, but it would happen anyway wouldn't it? With a groan, Harry pushed himself off the cold, threadbare carpet that helped to somewhat pad the hard wood of his bedroom and crawled on his bony knees to his bed. His eyelids felt like sandpaper grating over peeled grapes every time he closed them. If he slept now, he could just catch 5 hours of sleep before he had to wake up and avoid getting his toes stepped on by Dudley. Then he might have an hour to shower, get dressed, and hop the Knight Bus to Diagon Alley.
It was so strange to be thinking about tomorrow – today – like an ordinary day. The truth was, nothing was ordinary any more, nothing had been since…
Another shudder wracked his body so Harry gave into it and pulled his quilt around him, and did his best to fall asleep.
~
The putrid stench, it wasn't far from his face, right on top of him, grasping, clawing, tearing at his mind like a rabid animal. Seeking an escape, seeking a victory, but he wouldn't let him get away again. His skin was cold, clammy, like wet pie dough under his fingers as he grappled with it, trying to find purchase, a tiny rupture, even a molecule that wasn't as cohesive and tough as this snake's skin. His assailant's hair was trapped under his fingernails as he pulled against that thick doughy skin, finding a hold, pulling, ripping it apart like half congealed glue. Was there screaming somewhere? Who was screaming? He was calm wasn't he? Cooly ripping apart his mortal enemy. No, surely he was screaming, for his entire body burned, his head ached, flashed and tore with a searing agony. He was screaming, he was crying, his bones were humming with a power that wasn't his own, and Voldemort was screaming with him. They couldn't escape, trapped, pressed together in this airless void, with his stink swarming his nostrils and clogging his senses. He was dying, he knew it, they were both dying, it was just a question of who would go first. Even his teeth seemed to glow white fire, hot blood dripped into his eyes, he could taste Voldemort's sweat, everything was sweltering, loud, crackling fire, acrid smoke, building to the climax, one of them would win….
Everything was cold. Icy, frigid, lonely he was dead, but which he? Voldemort of course, the other… he might have been dead, he couldn't tell, he couldn't remember what it felt like to be alive. All he knew was emptiness, all he knew was loneliness, all he knew was that he knew nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. If that were possible. It was cold in nothing, cold, freezing, piercing, white cold, like ammonia it bit into him. Penetrating every inch of him, were he to cry his tears would turn to ice before they left his face, but he had lost the ability. His heart felt like it was encased in ice, each vein, capillary, every valve and muscle wall had become like more solid than meat in an ice locker. He wanted to die…
A pair of arms snaked around his waist, holding him, warming him. He was so comfortable as the embrace tightened reassuringly, he felt safe, wanted. One mysterious hand moved up, securing itself around his shoulder, gently massaging the fresh scar with a thumb. The other moved down to rest on his jutting hip bone, he shuddered against the touch, though it wasn't disgust, fear, or cold that induced this shiver. He sighed in contentment, slumped against the body that owned those hands, he was warm here, he was cold here, he was everything that he hadn't been before…
~
With a gasp, Harry shot out of bed, his chest heaving. "What the hell was that?"
"Are you up boy?!" His uncle bellowed, thumping on Harry's door as he passed, the man had been unable to attain anything quieter than a roar, and he never gave much effort for Harry.
Harry was up, more alert and awake than he'd been in weeks; every inch of him was standing at attention, including an embarrassing six. Harry groaned, "Aw, what the hell…?"
~
"Harry! Harry you made it!" Hermione cried, rushing towards him. She stopped just short of him, physically restraining herself from launching at him. She managed to hold herself back for all of two seconds before wrapping him in a crushing hug. Harry stiffened, then squirmed out of it as soon as possible, unable to palate physical contact anymore, her warmth was nauseating. But for all that he escaped her grasp as soon as possible, no one could escape being subjected to Hermione's scrutiny. "Oh, Harry, you're too thin! I can feel your ribs, have you been eating properly? My you've gotten tall!"
Harry smiled wryly at her, every day she got more and more like Molly Weasley, as though her own parents had no bearing on her up-bringing. He had gotten taller, much to his relief, while he was no towering monster like Ron, he was no longer the shrimpy 5'4" he had been. In the two months that he'd been away from school, he'd grown four inches, and was now checking in at a respectable 5'8", though the food he ate could hardly compensate for the rapid change, and he was inordinately thin. Without his shirt on he could easily count his ribs.
Molly Weasley's sixth son, and Hermione Granger's beau of late came loping up to them, significantly slower than Hermione herself had done. His long legs carried him across Diagon Alley towards them, and as he neared, Harry could see he had grown as well. He towered over his friend, a silly grin on his face, and his red hair shining like a torch. "Hey Harry!" He called, finally reaching them, Harry noted with much chagrin that he had to look up. "How are you?"
Harry's grin vanished at the sight of his friends' eager eyes, they were sincerely worried, glowing with a desire to care for him, it made his skin crawl, but he carefully considered the question for their sake. How was he? Was he happy, unhappy, great, miserable? There were a lot of options open to him, he really could have been anything, but at the moment he wasn't any of it. Nodding along with the rhythm of his own thoughts he said, "I'm okay I guess." It was vague, but he was feeling rather vague. Of course, everything was vague now.
"Okay Harry…" Ron said tentatively, "Hey! I almost forgot! Happy Birthday!"
A package was thrust in Harry's direction, a box-like thing, poorly wrapped up in paper and ribbon. The brunette took it tentatively and unwrapped it, something scrabbled inside the box and Harry almost dropped it in shock. Inside were two, lumpy little shells that were… moving. There was a pregnant pause, then Harry began to laugh, it started as a mild chuckle and developed into a somewhat hysterical belly laugh. Ron had bought him hermit crabs. "Oh god."
"What?" Ron looked panicked, "What did I do?"
Hermione was chuckling silently, eyes twinkling with mirth, "You bought him a Muggle novelty gift."
Ron looked smug and happy, "Good, it was supposed to be a novelty."
Hermione shook her head good naturedly, Ron was an idiot sometimes, but he was a good hearted idiot, and he loved her. "Here Harry." She said gently as she pressed something into his hands.
Harry carted the object to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor and sat on the stoop before opening it, setting the hermit crabs to the side. They really were too cute, in an ugly, awkward sort of way. It was a book of course, with some strange symbol on the front and on the back, a picture of some old hag. The title read, "The Missing Piece: A Novel."
"It's an allegory." Hermione began immediately after the wrapping had been discarded, "The author is a councilor for people who've suffered losses."
Harry's incredulous look turned into a glare, he didn't need Hermione's unsubtle attempts at self-help propaganda, especially not on his birthday! Hermione coughed nervously and shot to her feet, dashing into Fortescue's with an excuse of, "I'll uh… get us some ice cream."
Ron didn't say anything as he poked at the crab cage, he didn't say anything until Harry sighed heavily and muttered, "He's dead. Everyone's dead. Big deal."
"She cares about you." He fell into silence for a moment, letting one of the crabs touch one of his long fingers, "She doesn't mean to be insulting you know, but it's just like Hermione. When you've got a problem, throw a book at it."
Harry tried to grin but didn't quite succeed, it was difficult to grin when there was nothing to smile about. He just wanted to run, clear his head, it might be good for him.
Ron, when he wasn't being an insufferable prat, was wise in his own way. He'd gained his father's gift of being able to diffuse almost any situation, but he'd gained his father's temper too. "Thanks Ron," Harry said obligatorily.
Hermione returned with mounds of ice cream, heaped upon waffle cones. Harry blanched and forced down a gag at the sight of the ice cream, his stomach refused to accept the offering. There was no telling what he would do if actually forced to eat it, vomit, scream, faint. The ice cream dripped in the heat as he accepted it, the pink melt of the strawberry tracing a fine line across his skin. He couldn't even bring himself to lick it off, the thought sickened him, and suddenly he found himself thinking about brussel-sprouts and half rotted corpses, desperately trying not to show his friends how repulsed he was. The whole situation stunk too-sweet perfume, like the kind Pansy Parkinson wore, cloying and revolting.
Neatly disposing of the ice cream in a near by bush, and miraculously avoiding his friends' notice, he excused himself to wash his hands free of the Pepto-Bismol-pink gunk. Apparently ice cream had lost its appeal as well. Just thinking of the sugary-sweet strawberry flavored cream sent Harry to the nearest cubicle, retching up the minimal contents of his stomach. Everything was so deplorably nice, the sun was shining, the grass was green, the birds were singing and everyone in Diagon Alley was delightfully happy.
Harry felt immensely out of place as he slumped against the cubicle wall, was he the only person that missed Voldemort? The man had been such a powerful force in his life for his entire school career – for as long as he had been alive. He'd been building himself up for the sole purpose of destroying the bastard. Now what was he supposed to do? He'd killed a man, he'd deliberately murdered a human being and there was no turning back from that. All of his guilt over Cedric and Sirius seemed to disappear with Voldemort, all the things he enjoyed in the past seemed too saccharine now.
He always knew that he was strange when it came to things like this. He knew that he should have been able to laugh and play just like he used to, eat sweets, carry on without a care in the world, struggle through his homework just like a normal person his age…. He wanted to do those things, but he found it impossible. He felt too cold on the inside for a normal life. Like a spent coal, everything Harry had, had been used up in that last battle, all the energy and passion that defined his life in the past was gone, and there was nothing left to enjoy. The sympathy he received when he woke up in the infirmary was dizzying, nauseating, then Madame Pomfrey shoved chocolate down his throat. He hadn't been able to hold down the chocolate then, or much food since. There was a reason he was so thin. Everyone else had first a party, then a pity-party. He threw up.
Harry didn't need a sense of purpose anymore, he'd learned his lesson when Sirius died, he didn't want to rescue anything, he just wanted to start living. The Dursleys were the only people that didn't treat him like a national treasure, something he was extremely grateful for. To them, he was the same irritating burden that he'd always been, though they would no longer accept him in their home after this school term. He would need to find somewhere else to live very shortly.
The door behind him creaked and Harry glanced around, finally spotting the bony ankles of Ronald Weasley. "Hey mate? You all right?"
Harry blanched, there again was the glowing sympathy, the dazzling array of pity that just made his skin crawl. Without another word, he turned away and began throwing up again.
~
There was such a sense of familiarity in this, it wasn't comfortable, but it was something he was used to. Somehow this situation was one of a very few that didn't want to make him scream. This was normal, how things had always been, before Voldemort, he was treated the same here, he felt the same here. His aunt was at some function, his uncle busy firing people at Grunnings, Dudley was home for the summer holidays, and he was up to his old tricks. For a moment, Harry convinced himself that everything was exactly as it was ten years ago.
Piers Polkis had his arms, twisting them painfully behind his back. The rat-faced boy was whispering things into his ears, distinctly disturbing things, he lived for this; he thrilled in the power and the cruelty. He felt it thrumming through every fiber of his being, it was base, it was gratuitous, but it was a simple thing to say that he got off on this. Piers Polkis, one of Dudley's over-indulged friends, someone coddled by his parents, his teachers, life – Piers Polkis truly enjoyed participating in the routine torture of Harry. "I love it when I've got you like this." He hissed, twisting Harry's bony wrists painfully. "When you're helpless, I could do anything I wanted, and you couldn't complain. Just like a little dog." He pressed Harry to him harder by yanking his arms down, "anything." And to prove his point, Piers' tongue snaked out of his mouth and traced the fine skin behind Harry's ear. Dudley couldn't see this action.
Harry jerked and bit back a grunt of pain as his shoulders nearly left their sockets. He didn't care if he got beaten to a bloody pulp every day, it was nothing he wasn't used to, but this brand of sexual sadism filled him with disgust and loathing. "You stupid, sadistic little bastard." He spat. Piers yanked him tighter and this time Harry couldn't quite suppress the squeak of pain that escaped his gritted teeth.
Whether Dudley suspected the comment was directed at him, or Piers, it made no difference to him. The muscle he had packed on was begging for some usage, summer vacation meant no readily accessible punching bags… save Harry of course. It didn't matter how things began, all that mattered, was that it hurt. It was pain.
One of Dudley's well calloused fists would come soaring at him like some missile, a bludger with an amazingly controlled flight path, and then it would connect. When that happened, Harry stopped thinking in similes and metaphors, and started thinking in terms of medical bills. A knocked out tooth (replaceable with a drop of skelegrow in the proper place) a broken rib or two, bruises, cuts. Harry had remedies for them all, but there was no remedy for the pain.
His toes curled up as Dudley took a swing at his face, so Piers stepped on his foot, crushing them flat as he absorbed the impact and kept Harry from falling over. Harry could feel his jaw bone crack under Dudley's meaty fist. He could hear it. He sighed in familiar agony as Dudley's knee connected with his stomach, forcing the air from his diaphragm. He felt the cracking pain of his shoulders as he jerked forwards reflexively. Then the blows blurred together, the blood splattered in too many directions to count, the damage became irrelevant, and the pain became overwhelming.
As that happened, Harry's mind wandered. Dudley wasn't sadistic, he thought. He wasn't malicious by nature, he felt distraught when he heard tales of human suffering. Surprisingly, since his very young years as an insufferable bully, after his first few boxing matches (having been hit harder than he would have imagined possible) Dudley gained an understanding of life and its intricacies. He only hurt the people that signed up against him, and he only hurt the people that could fight back. He never willingly harmed other people. It wasn't that he particularly despised Harry to treat him in this manner, Harry simply wasn't a person to him.
Harry wasn't a person to any Dursley, he wasn't anything. He wasn't as well respected as a pet, he wasn't as priceless as a zoo animal, he wasn't a bug to be simply crushed, merciless but painless. He wasn't any type of life form, he was furniture, he was a foot stool, a back scratcher, a wall, a door, a robot, a punching bag – he didn't have emotions, he couldn't feel pain. He was a wizard, something far less than human to Dudley.
Piers was different, something infinitely more disturbing than Dudley ever was. Piers, he hated Piers, and Piers, who in his youth displayed signs of being normal, was the type of kid that tortured animals. Harry briefly wondered if given the opportunity, Piers would torture him by roasting like he had Mrs. Delaney's dog. The thought was fleeting, knocked out of his head.
Harry didn't know of anyone like that at Hogwarts, he didn't know much of anything anymore. Did he still have homework?
It took Harry a moment to realize that Dudley had stopped beating on him, was he unconscious? No, he ached too much, he could still feel Piers' hold on his arms, he could feel himself slumped weakly, relying on Dudley's atrocious friend for support. His feet hurt too much to support him, he was too dizzy to stand on his own. He could still see the taupe carpeting below his dirty yellow sneakers, he could hear Dudley sigh in frustration, clearly he was still awake. "Come on," his cousin said petulantly, "this is no fun. Let's go play that new computer game I got for a coming home present!"
As Dudley raced up the stairs to start his computer, Piers set Harry on the couch with surprising gentleness. The Muggle boy stayed a moment, letting himself linger while Dudley was occupied in his room, he brushed a gentle hand through Harry's hair, then his fingers traced the contour of his jaw. "You really are priceless when you're helpless." He said, leaning down, and placing a kiss on the corner of Harry's mouth that wasn't seeping blood and saliva. "I could do anything." He whispered. "Anything, if you weren't Dudley's."
A pained sigh, a grateful sigh escaped Harry's lips as Piers followed Dudley up the stairs, allowing Harry his rest. It was a surreal moment as Harry thought, perhaps it was a good thing he belonged to Dudley, but he had no time to ponder it as he slipped into unconsciousness.
The rocking was abrupt, throwing him from side to side. It was warm, torturously warm. Dudley again? The very well heated (kept at precisely 74 degrees Fahrenheit thank you very much) Dursley residence? The rocking persisted, becoming rougher before it stopped. Somewhere in the distance a note sounded, like the lingering vestiges of a dirge, haunting. Suddenly that single note became a scream of the exact same pitch, rising in crescendo, it was so loud. Harry was thrown to the floor, and crashed head first on to the compartment floor as the Hogwarts train came to an abrupt halt.
His eyes opened, he sat up, looking in askance at the best friends he knew were there, though he could not see them because his glasses had been knocked askew. "Wha?" A hand flew to his mouth, why had he dreamed of that? Why had he dreamed of Piers and Dudley? Why had he chosen to relive that particular memory?
"We were wondering when you were going to wake up Harry!" said Hermione enthusiastically. "We're here, we're at Hogwarts!"
"Yeah mate, we're home!"
Harry didn't feel very much at home. No, he wasn't anywhere near home. Where ever that was.