Obviously, I'm not British. I can't clean the American out of the dialogue that goes through my head. I try my best, but past that, I'm not going to have a kitten over it. If you are, feel free not to read.
Chapter 3
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Harry watched, irritated, as Professor Lupin bandaged the
bite on his arm. The man didn't make as much fuss as Madame Pomfrey would have,
but he did do a considerably lot more than Harry would have bothered with if
he'd been left to tend to it himself. But then again, Harry couldn't really see
why Professor Lupin just hadn't left him to it. Did he honestly look like he
needed someone to kiss all his booboos and make them better? Please.
"Some of these are pretty deep. You're lucky it was just the one bite."
Professor Lupin gave him a small half grin, inviting Harry to laugh in
chagrined humor at the whole thing. And that would have been fine, if Harry had
found this even remotely funny.
"Yeah," resentment swelled up in his chest, "I'm just a luck magnet." He winced
as Professor Lupin disinfected some of the deeper cuts. The bloke was
infinitely gentler than Aunt Petunia would have been. He'd learned at a very
early age to not go to her crying about cuts, bruises or bites. But that didn't
mean that he wanted the bloke to be patching him up or that he appreciated the
concern. It was just a couple scratches. Nothing life threatening, and nothing
he couldn't have handled on his own. The way Professor Lupin was carrying on,
it was like he was next to helpless. If a Basilisk's fang hadn't done him in,
he doubted a dog bite was going to kill him.
Besides that, where had good old Professor Lupin been when he'd been five and
Ripper had taken a chunk out of his calf to match the bruises Aunt Marge had
given him on the shins? And where had the bloke been when he was ten and had
scraped up the whole left side of his body trying to get down from the damned
tree the thrice damned dog had chased him up? Where had anyone been all the
times that he'd dabbed hydrogen peroxide over cuts given to him by Dudley,
Piers and co.? Who had been there when he'd had the stomach flu, when he'd had strep
throat, when he'd had the chicken pox?
"Care to tell me how you got attacked?" Lupin asked companionably.
"No." Well, ask a dumb question. Harry scowled as he looked away from the
intensely disappointed look on Professor Lupin's face. Heaven forbid the Boy
Who Lived be difficult. It was like watching a play unfold, in which he was the
main character, except he didn't much feel like playing the part. They could
find some other poor gullible twat to act out the role of obedient martyr for
the greater good.
"All right, let me rephrase that," Professor Lupin joked amiably, setting
Harry's teeth on edge, "could you please tell me what happened?"
"A dog bit me."
"And?"
"And what?"
"Harry, you have to work with me. Did you provoke it?"
::No, he didn't provoke the damned dog. What the hell, Remus! He's an angry
teenager, not an animal abuser.::
Harry fought down a bubble of hysterical laughter. Oh, this was exactly why he
didn't want to go into this right now, the principle of the matter aside. He
was not hearing Sirius' voice in his head.
"Of course. Pissing off dogs is my favorite hobby." Just ask his Aunt Marge.
According to her, he kicked puppies in his spare time. Given his bad blood, it
was to be expected. She and Snape had that in common. Harry was the bad seed,
the bad egg. He had a swelled head, thought himself better than his station in
life, showed too little gratitude for all the offers he'd gotten from people
wanting to give him an attitude adjustment.
And in all honesty? He wasn't entirely certain that they were wrong. For all of
Dumbledore's talk about choices making the man, it didn't seem that simple to
Harry. Because, the way he figured it, he hadn't had much choice in having this
connection with Voldemort. He had no control over what his father may or may
not have been like or who the man's enemies or friends had been. It never really
seemed to matter to the people intent on carrying a grudge or bent on repaying
a debt that he was not actually his father.
"I need details," Professor Lupin pestered, earning him another glare from
Harry. He needed details? Who the fuck was Lupin to be demanding
details?
Maybe it was petty and small of him, but fuck them, turnabout was fair play. "I
needed to be told what was going on last summer. I needed people to be honest
with me. I needed to know that Voldemort might be able to play peek-a-boo in my
mind. I need to be left the fuck alone right now. Sometimes, we don't always
get what we need."
::Harry, he's just trying to help.::
Yes, but it was unwanted and unneeded help, and help that was offered for all
the wrong reasons.
"Look," Professor Lupin sighed tiredly, "I understand that you're frustrated. Both
with me and with your situation. But I'm not doing this just to torture you. I
have to know that you're healthy and safe. I have to know if there are things I
need to be worried about or if there are things that are bothering you. I'm
responsible for you as long as you're here."
A responsibility. An unwanted obligation. Something to put up with on the
expectation that putting up with it would eventually pay off in bigger ways
later. He was a person goddamn it. He was not some fucking transaction
that needed to be handled. "You don't give a damn about me. You're just doing
this out of some misguided sense of duty. And you know what, who asked you to
butt in? Okay, cause fuck you! I don't need you." So maybe he wasn't a bloody
genius at taking care of himself. But this was the way he'd been raised, this
was the way he'd been taught to think and taught to react. If Professor Lupin
didn't like it, then maybe he should have said something a long, long time ago.
Because as far as Harry was concerned, it was much too late in the game to be
playing the role of concerned caregiver now.
"So you're just going to fight off the world all by yourself? How's that been
working out?" Lupin asked quietly, and Harry rolled his eyes. Not as well as
he'd like, but that was pretty much the way everything went. Better to shut
everyone and everything out than to try and figure out how to sort through the
myriad of lies and deceits to figure out what the truth really was. "Look, I
know I'm being a pain in the ass, but I've got all the time in the world, and I
can sit here all night with you if that's what it takes."
::He'll do it, too.::
"Fine. Sirius bit me."
aaaaaa
"Sirius bit you?" Remus couldn't help but ask, certain he'd heard the little
snot wrong. Unfortunately, Harry just nodded, a bored expression on his face as
he pulled a leg up onto the blanket covered lawn chair he was sitting on that
was doubling as furniture in the cabin. "Was it just a dog that looked like
him?" He tried, trying to figure out how the hell Sirius' name might even fit
into the picture.
"No. It was Sirius. As in my deceased godfather," Harry stated calmly, before
pulling his arm out of Remus' grasp in order to start picking at the bandages.
Reaching over almost automatically, Remus smacked the hand before it could
fully work off the first layer of tape. He spared Harry the scolding that he'd
often received from his mother for the same offenses because he was sure that
if he went into it now, the kid was going to pop his cork.
"Enough of this, Harry. You have to tell me the truth." Because he'd really
rather not have to strangle a willful fifteen-year-old.
"What would you rather me tell you?" The kid squared off for another fight, and
Remus bit back the groan that was working its way up his throat. "That I saw
some dog when I was down at the dock, tried to hit it with the hammer, and it
bit me in retaliation?"
That all made sense; from the how Harry got the bite, to where the hammer had
gotten to. Except, like the Sirius in his head had said, Harry wasn't an animal
abuser. Even in the heat of the moment, Harry really didn't strike him as
someone who lashed out at anyone without at least some kind of provocation.
There had to be more to the story than that. "Is that the whole truth?"
"I dunno, do you want it to be?" The kid smirked at him, and Remus mentally
counted to ten as he shot the teenager a pained look. "Not much fun is it? Trying
to figure out what to believe. Who to believe."
"What really happened, Harry?" And okay, so maybe he could hear the hurt behind
the kid's words. Maybe Harry did feel an overwhelming sense of betrayal from
everyone who had ever bothered to look after him, from his lousy excuse of an
Aunt to Dumbledore to Sirius to him. But Remus didn't have any soothing words
to offer. That kind of betrayal never got easier to deal with and it never was
something that ever truly went away. It was something that a bloke carried with
him forever and took with him into every new relationship and every new
acquaintance.
"I was sitting on the dock, messing around with the hammer. Sirius was talking
at me, and then he bit me." And they were back to this being about Sirius.
Which, Remus supposed was probably at the root of everything. However, while
Sirius chatted away with him in his head, it was more of a step in grieving.
The idea that Harry was chatting with a fictitious Sirius and then getting very
real wounds on his arm was more than a little worrying.
"Does he," he fished for a second trying to find a delicate way to ask if this
had happened more than once, "talk at you a lot?"
"All the time," Harry returned flippantly, before visibly pulling in on
himself. There was more to this than the kid was letting on. And just from
Harry's stiff stance and defensiveness, Remus could tell that it scared him.
"Now, if it's all right with your highness, I'm going to take my peasant ass
upstairs and get some sleep." It wasn't even worth responding to the jab.
"Fine," Remus decided spur of the moment, "but we're starting Occlumency
lessons in the morning." Finally, familiar ground. Teaching Harry wouldn't be
half as hard as simply trying to take care of him was turning out to be.
"In your dreams, maybe," Harry muttered before climbing up the wood ladder to
the second floor.
Or maybe it was going to be just as difficult as everything else during this
trip had been so far. Remus waited for the Sirius in his head to add in his two
cents, but for once, the blabbermouth was uncharacteristically silent. But then
again, the fucker probably would have gotten a kick out of watching Remus
flounder so badly at something.
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