PART TWO: RETURN TO HOGWARTS

The next several days were surreal. Whenever the Dursleys sat down to watch television, they begged Harry to join them, and adopted tragic, disappointed facial expressions when he refused; they peppered him with questions about Hogwarts, and listened in rapt attention as he fumbled for answers. They parceled the chores among themselves, begging off Harry's attempts to re-establish some normality when he offered to do them himself. They invited him to go to the cinema, to go out to dinner. His aunt insisted on buying him new clothes, and gloated aloud about how wonderful her 'Ickle Harrykins' looked. Dudley watched it all without jealousy, and even offered his new 'little brother' advice on everything from girls, to throwing a punch, to driving...

Harry went along with it out of sheer terror.

He sent frantic letters to Dumbledore and the Order, absolutely convinced his relatives had been killed and some imposters with malevolent intent had taken their place. Or perhaps they were under the Imperius Curse. Or maybe they'd been poisoned, and their neural pathways were slowly festering, leaving them under the delusion they cared what happened to Harry, when in reality they were acquiring irreversible brain damage that would eventually manifest itself in homicidal rage...

Nymphadora Tonks, Arthur Weasley, and Remus Lupin arrived after several of these frantic communiqués and laughed off his fears.

"Honestly, Harry, you're upset because they're not mistreating you for once?" Mr. Weasley said, chuckling. "They're probably just being mindful of our warning."

A fleeting smile crossed Harry's lips as he recalled the end of the school year when members of the Order had ordered the Dursleys to treat Harry well or face their wrath.

"It's more than that, Mr. Weasley. They're acting wrong. They're behaving as if..." he lowered his voice, wary of his imposter relatives overhearing, "They're acting like they love me."

"Maybe the Dursleys have simply learned the meaning of family, Harry," Tonks said with a coy little smile.

Harry seriously doubted it. He watched them leave again with trepidation, and turned, even more incredulous, to find his relatives waving goodbye.

"What pleasant people!" Aunt Petunia exclaimed after they'd left, turning to his uncle. "Vernon, we really must have them over for tea sometime! And I must ask that girl who dyed her hair that lovely shade of purple..."


Harry spent several more days dubiously playing family with his family. As his suspicions about their identities slowly waned, he began to consider this might all be some horrible trick. It would be just like the Dursleys to play nice to him, to lull him into a sense of security, and then yank it out from under him again. To laugh, spitefully and maliciously, once Harry had begun to trust in their kindness.

Actually, it wouldn't be like them at all.

They would never be able to pull off an act this elaborate. His Uncle Vernon could barely stand to be civil to Harry, much less play a father to him. And all the money his aunt had spent the last several days on Harry's clothing... That couldn't be just for show.

Pondering the mystery of the loving, caring Dursleys occupied Harry's every thought. It was only in passing one day, in the car on the way to a family night on the town, that it occurred to him he hadn't thought about Sirius or the Prophecy or Voldemort for several days. He didn't have time for the guilt to crash properly down over him before his now-loving relatives ushered him out of the car. They picked up on his glum expression and quickly went about lifting the spirits of their beloved Harry.

Several weeks later found him on the Hogwarts express.

He gazed out the window, trying to shake off the unsettling feeling that refused to leave him. The Dursleys had implored him to come home for Christmas break. They hugged him goodbye. To Harry's shock, their gestures of affection continued after he boarded the train; they deigned to enter Platform 9 ¾ with him, and they stood there waving at him as their figures shrank into the distance. They never tore off their masks, dropped the act, and revealed some malevolent reason for their kindness.

He now leaned his heated forehead against the cool window, daring to wonder—could it have been real?

He wanted to hex himself for being so goddamn stupid, for actually considering this.

But could it possibly have been real?

He raked his fingers through his hair, hard, clawing with his nails. Dare he entertain the possibility they'd had a change of heart? Was he seriously foolish enough to wonder if they'd cared for him of their own volition rather than due to some spell or curse?

That wasn't them! They hated and despised everything Harry represented. They resented him with all the bitterness in their hearts. He didn't understand this last summer, but he would never dare to believe in the possibility...

Yet he had to admit-- he desperately wanted to believe this summer hadn't been an illusion. He wanted to think he had a family out there, somewhere, that actually loved him.

But they were the Dursleys. And he could never deceive himself that way.

There was a hollow burning in his chest as he gazed at the bleak landscape zooming past the window. He hated this uncertainty. He hated that he was buckling under, allowing himself to indulge in the possibility his relatives might possibly care about him. Intellectually, he knew it wasn't possible. It would evaporate the moment he began to invest himself in this new familial feeling. They would reveal themselves to be the same cruel, hateful Dursleys the second he dropped his guard and let himself care what they thought of him.

"Harry?"

He heard Ginny's soft voice beside him and glanced up to meet her worried eyes.

"You've been really quiet this whole trip," she said. "Are you okay?"

Across from them Neville glanced up, then back down again, pretending he wasn't listening. Ron and Hermione were conspicuously absent, off meeting with the other Prefects.

"Oh, it's nothing. I'm fine," Harry said absently.

"Is it your relatives?" Ginny's expression was dark, and he remembered suddenly she knew all about his turbulent relationship with the Dursleys from Ron and Mr. Weasley. "Did they do anything—"

Harry laughed a little wildly, avoiding her scrutiny. "No, no, the Dursleys were great. They were... they were perfect. I'm very tired, Ginny."

That seemed to appease her, and Harry continued to stare sightlessly out the window, feeling slightly ill. Whatever else Voldemort had done, nothing had fucked with his head like this. The Dursleys had acted like they loved him... And he knew they'd given him something he needed, desperately, especially after last year. Especially after losing--

He felt a pang of guilt as he reluctantly admitted to himself that, despite his unrelenting terror, he'd been something other than utterly miserable this summer. Since Sir-- since the Department of Mysteries, he should have been doing something to make up for his terrible mistakes, to make up for killing—to make up for what he'd let happen. He should have been unhappy, miserable, guilty... And he'd been treated like a prince.

No, he'd been treated like a son.

A son.

All these years of longing for a family that actually loved him and he received it when he least deserved it.

He'd killed Sirius. He shouldn't have this now. He wasn't worthy of it.

He was irritated when he felt Ginny's light touch on his arm, and again, he had to assuage her concern. He was considerably less patient and gentle this time, and by the time Hogwarts students were converging on the Great Hall en masse, she looked even more upset. She stood next to Hermione whispering about him. Ron's voice was pestering him in his ear, and Harry just wanted to disappear. He wanted to escape all the concerned, hollow-eyed gazes of his friends. He wanted to leave all the admiring eyes of those students who had ridiculed him just the previous year amd worshiped him now. He wanted to flee the scrutiny of those professors glancing over at him from the Head Table.

When the path was clear, he pleaded a headache and fled for his dormitory. He'd very nearly escaped the Great Hall when a figure emerged from the corridor beyond. Harry froze, eyes locking with the black gaze of Professor Snape.

All the sound about him seemed to drain into a strange blur in his head. Snape was watching him with a cold, assessing gaze that took in everything revealed nothing. Harry suddenly felt raw and exposed before the legilimens' eyes.

"Leaving so soon, Potter?" Snape said in a chilly voice. "I daresay your admirers will be heartbroken."

Harry was consumed by an urgent need to flee; he averted his gaze, staring wildly at the floor for a moment before gathering the wits to lance around Snape and proceed swiftly down the corridor.

A strange mixture of guilt, fear, and confusion wrenched in his stomach as he hurried down the hallway; if Snape said anything more, or deducted points from Gryffindor for his failure to answer the question, Harry did not hear it over the sudden roaring in his ears. Every instinct had screamed at him to get away from Snape.

And then it caught up with him. All thoughts of the Dursleys vanished beneath the sudden deluge of emotions that had been drowning him early in the summer.

There was a sudden, blinding jolt of anger as he remembered Snape's role in Sirius's death. He staggered to a halt, suddenly struggling to breathe, as the hatred simmering within him for months overcame him and soaked through the marrow of his being. His days and nights of half-sleep before the mysterious change in the Dursleys, the thoughts he'd kept at a distance, clouded by his visions of Death Eaters, were suddenly returning-- hard, sharp, and unrelenting.

He hated Snape. He HATED Snape. The bastard had driven Sirius to his death, had forced open Harry's mind for Voldemort's intrusive visions and then abandoned him to that gaping vulnerability. He'd sneered at his pleas for help in Umbridge's office, and scorned Harry's concern for Sirius. Harry's body shook; he felt himself choking on fury and hatred long supressed. He'd had to run; a moment longer in Snape's presence, and this twisted thing inside him would have broken through his clasp right there, in the Great Hall, and he didn't know what he would have done in front of Dumbledore and the rest.

Suddenly Harry wished it had. Something fierce pulsed within him, and he whirled around, the hot blood in his veins laced with something like poison, thirsty for a chance to hurt Snape, to make him pay.

The corridor behind him was empty.

Harry's eyes squeezed shut as he clamped down upon the fury. It took everything in his being to force himself around, to direct his steps clumsily back on his original course, back to Gryffindor.

TBC