Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling and the legal licensees of Harry Potter books and products. I am writing this for my own pleasure and have no intent to make any sort of profit with it. The inspiration came from Severitus, the plot came from my warped imagination, and everything else belongs to JKR and those to whom she's given the rights.
WHAT WILL COME, WILL COME. . .
(An Answer to Severitus' Challenge)
By RowanRhys
July 7, 1995(Little Whinging, Surrey)
"Harry! What happened to you?" Remus' smile vanished as he took in the fading bruises on the boy's face and the ragged sling supporting his left arm. "Where are your glasses?"
"Um. Broke them," Harry mumbled uncomfortably, sitting gingerly down in the chair Hedwig upon which the owl was perched. She leaned forward and tugged gently at his black hair with her beak, then hooted softly, distressed. He winced momentarily then reached up to caress his winged companion.
Mrs. Figg snorted as she prodded sausages in the skillet on the stove. "Don't prevaricate, Harry. When your uncle told me that you'd gotten in a fight on the way home from school, I didn't believe him for a minute." Her sharp blue eyes stared into his. "I saw you whole and hearty getting out of the car last week, when Vernon left Hedwig on the pavement. He's lied about you ever since I first met him." She turned her attention back to the skillet. "Remus, pour Harry some tea."
"Mrs. Figg, h-how do you know Professor Lupin?" Harry shifted in his seat, trying to find a position where his sore shoulders didn't press against the wooden slats that made the back of the chair.
"Terribly unobservant today, aren't you, Harry?" She raised the hand with which she'd been moving around the links, and Harry gaped as he recognized the blurred stick was a wand, and not the long fork he'd assumed she was using. The sausages suddenly levitated from the pan to a waiting serving plate, while Lupin was fetching a china teapot from where it had been steeping on the counter beside the sink.
As the witch added scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes to the platter, the werewolf rounded the table to fill the cup that sat at Harry's right hand. Harry mumbled "Thank you" as Remus lifted the spout, but the words transformed into a gasp he couldn't suppress when his former teacher patted his right shoulder firmly.
"Harry?" Mrs. Figg frowned as she hurried to him, nearly tripping over a trio of her cats who had been lurking under the table. "What's wrong with you?"
Harry ducked his head, unable to bring himself to look at either his old babysitter, or at the concerned Lupin who was crouched down on his other side. His body was rigid as he fought to keep the waves of hurt from showing, digging his bitten fingernails into the palms of his hands. "Please, I'm--I'm okay."
"You most certainly are not!" Mrs. Figg took his left arm firmly in her left hand and passed her wand over it with her right, muttering a Latin incantation that Harry didn't recognize. "Broken! And never set. I knew they weren't the nicest of people, Harry, but to do this! Why didn't you say anything?" Her voice was going shrill with anger. "Remus, there's floo powder in the living room. Get to Dumbledore and tell him that there is no way that I'm allowing Harry to return to the care of those terrible Muggles."
"Right away, Arabella. Harry, I'll be back soon." Lupin ran through the swinging door that led to the front of the house, cursing under his breath.
Mrs. Figg continued to mutter under her breath as she unbuttoned Harry's oversize brown shirt and pulled it away from his shoulders.
He winced as she gasped. "It's okay, Mrs. Figg. It isn't really as bad as it looks. I--I disobeyed him, and--"
"Harry James Potter, there is no disobedience that warrants caning a child, much less to this extent! How can you defend those--those monsters! If I'd known, I'd have told you who I really was years ago and insisted that Albus find another way to protect you." She dropped three sugar cubes into the still steaming teacup and stirred it briskly. "It's not chocolate, but will have to do. Drink it up, Harry, while I see if I have anything to ease those welts."
He obediently lifted the cup to his lips, letting the hot, sweet liquid warm his insides as his mind tried to come to terms with the fact that his neighbor and babysitter wasn't a Muggle after all. I guess she's one of the other protections that Professor Dumbledore was talking about when he said that I had to come back here. I wish I'd known. Then he remembered where he'd heard the name Arabella Figg before.
"You're one of the 'old gang,' aren't you?" he asked as she rummaged through a cupboard. "That's why Remus is here, isn't it?. I--er--overheard Professor Dumbledore telling Sirius and Professor Lupin to go out and visit 'the old gang' because of Voldemort's return," he explained as she pulled her head out of the cupboard to stare at him. "He thought I was asleep, I think."
She nodded and went back to her sorting through bottles of various coloured potions then popped out of the cupboard again to scold the cats that were trying to liberate some of the sausages from the platter of breakfast food. "Scat, you beasties!" A wave of the wand and the platter was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, still steaming. "Go ahead and eat, Harry. You won't starve while you're in my care! Now, where did I put that potion?" She shut the cupboard door and bustled from the room, still muttering to herself.
Harry surreptitiously passed a link of sausage to each of the three cats that had quietly come to sit under his chair, looking at him pleadingly. Hedwig accepted one as well, before he filled his plate for himself. The luxury of being able to eat until he was full lasted less time than he'd hoped. He guessed that in the week that the Dursley's had starved him, his stomach must have shrunk, because he found himself unable to do justice to the food that tasted as good as that prepared by the House Elves at Hogwarts. He offered the remaining bits on his plate to Hedwig, who took another sausage and flew to perch on top of the china hutch, looking disdainfully down at the still-begging cats. The most precocious of them, a sleek-furred, solidly-muscled black tom with brilliant green eyes jumped up in his lap and snuggled the side of his head against Harry's jaw, purring, before swiping out with a paw and knocking the last few pieces of meat from his plate to the floor, where the other two cats pounced on it. He swiped once more, snagging another sausage from the main platter, before jumping down from Harry's lap with his prize in his teeth.
Harry smiled tiredly at the cat's antics. Even though his uncle had unlocked the bedroom door before dawn, he'd been awake for hours, after awakening from another horrible nightmare about the Third Task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament and seeing Cedric Diggory's death over and over again, still utterly helpless to keep it from happening. He tore his mind from the images, and focused on the cats, which looked even fluffier than normal without his glasses. His head drooped and by the time Arabella had returned to the kitchen, he was asleep, his face pillowed by his good arm on the tabletop.
* * * * *
July 7, 1995(Hogwarts, Dumbledore's Study)
"Albus!"
The agitated voice calling from the fireplace startled the Headmaster from his perusal of the morning Owl delivery. "Remus? What's wrong? Has Sirius gotten himself into trouble?"
"No, Sirius is fine. He and Mundungus are tracking down Fellowes and Hudson. It's Harry. Can you open the Wards and let me through?"
A wave of a hand and a muttered spell allowed Remus to step onto the hearthrug, brushing off soot.
"Albus, you have got to get Harry out of that household. The Dursleys--"
"Are all the family that Harry has, Remus," Dumbledore interrupted. "It's the safest place for him until Sirius is cleared."
Remus stomped over to the desk and planted his hands on the top, glaring at the Headmaster. "No! It's not! They took off this morning for four weeks holiday, leaving Harry behind with only Arabella for protection!" The normally quiet-spoken man was shouting from anger.
"Calm down, Remus!"
"Do you have any idea of what those miserable excuses for Muggles have done to that boy? He's only been home a bit over a week and--" Remus abruptly felt the weight of Fawkes on his shoulder, and heard the phoenix's gentle warble in his ear. "My god, Albus, they've beaten him. He's got a broken arm that hasn't been treated and when I touched his shoulder it hurt him so badly--" He subsided into the armchair that was somehow at the right spot, the phoenix song calming him. He took a deep breath and pleaded, "Albus, at the very least, let me take Poppy back to Arabella's to fix him up. We can argue over the Dursleys later, but Harry needs help now."
Moments later, they were heading down the spiral staircase and passing through the Gargoyle-guarded door.
The Headmaster looked shaken as Lupin more thoroughly described Harry's appearance and behavior. "Truly, I knew they weren't the most loving of people, Remus, but considering the alternatives, they were really the only choice that we had if we were to protect Harry. I had no idea that they'd taken their dislike of our world out on him physically. Why did he never say anything about it to us?"
"I think he was ashamed. At least that's how it looked to me. And he looks starved. Frankly, if weren't for his age, I'd have thought I was looking at Sirius after he got out of Azkaban. I'm afraid that Arabella's secret is out as far as Harry goes. She rescued Hedwig when that uncle of his left her unattended on the pavement in front of their house in her traveling cage. Apparently, Harry had no idea what had happened to her. 'Bella said that she was not going to concoct some unbelievable story about why even an eccentric Muggle old woman would take in an Owl."
Dumbledore chuckled briefly. "I can hear her tart voice now. The secret would have been out in September anyway, with Arabella coming here to teach DADA." He pushed open the door to the Hospital Wing, calling out, "Poppy!"
The matron, wearing a colourful pants suit and looking very different from her usual appearance during the school terms, came out of her office bearing a clipboard and quill. "Yes, Albus? I was just going through my storeroom to see what I needed to order for next fall."
"We've got an emergency, and I need you to accompany us to Arabella Figg's house. Harry Potter needs your help."
Remus briefly outlined the situation once more and the medi-witch clucked and frowned and demanded more detail.
"I don't know anything more than the broken arm and the bruising on his face, really. It seems he's been beaten across the shoulders, too but I didn't actually see that," Lupin explained, getting irritated at the delay in returning to Little Whinging.
"I'll need to get some more Healing Potions from Severus. That last week of the term used up everything I had," Poppy fussed.
"I'll go down and get them!" Remus didn't even wait for an approval from Albus as he headed for the door at a run.
* * * * *
July 7, 1995(Hogwarts, Snape's Office)
The bottle of reddish-brown fluid that sat in the center of his desk mocked him. The stacks of Potions textbooks and scrolls that cluttered the surface on each side were proving to be useless in analyzing what had happened when Peeves had dumped the Glowjelly. He picked up a recent alchemical journal that had an article on the properties of the stuff, but, as he'd suspected from the first, there was nothing more than a brief historical note and a more extensive section on the current practical uses of the material.
Created by Quentin Tremblor of Chipping Norton in the early 1980s after several years of searching for a safe alternative to torches and candles for interior illumination. Temblor's efforts were inspired by his fire phobia. His research stems from a traumatic incident in his youth when the thatched roof of their family home went up in flames due to a carelessly placed flambeau.
The specific alchemical make up of Glowjelly is under several proprietary protection spells and is not available to the general public at this time.
Severus pushed it aside and rubbed his temples. Lack of sleep and the recurring visions of the past weren't making the research any easier, but he needed to know what had happened to the potion. At this rate, the only way to find out just why the mixture had affected him the way it did, would be to find someone else with a memory block and see if it worked on them the same way. But, if he was honest with himself, he really wasn't sure that he could torture someone else by making them live through the pain the way he was every day and every night since the accident.
A sudden pounding on his door startled him, but before he could call out to tell whoever it was to go away and leave him alone, the panel swung open, admitting one of the last persons he expected to see.
"You're in quite a hurry, Remus. Did Black manage to fall over your supply of Wolfsbane Potion and break all the bottles?" he asked drily as the werewolf came to a halt in front of the desk.
Breathing heavily, Lupin shook his head. "We need Healing Potions, and Boneset, too, I think. Right now!"
"You don't look as if you've been harmed. What happened? Did Black get hit by some Muggle vehicle he was chasing?" Severus slowly got up and moved to unlock the cabinet where he kept the completed potions. "Or did Mundungus cast first and ask questions later when he saw you two?"
"No, Severus. They're for Harry."
To be continued
Author's Note: Thanks again to my faithful reviewers! And a huge thanks to my twin, MischiefMicah, for the suggestion of the name and origins of Glowjelly and for letting me borrow her cat, Micah, for the breakfast scene. I suppose he'll be even more arrogant than usual now that he's a "star!" But he's still a sweet cuddler of a kitty!