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Disclaimer: Harry Potter, his acquaintances, and his world in general, belong to JK Rowling. Not the authors of this story. The plot, however, is ours, and we'd appreciate it if it stayed ours. If you'd like to review it, though, you're more than welcome to. Just a quick click on the button at the bottom left corner of the screen when you're done reading. Thanks!
GHOST OF MYSELF CHAPTER 1
The noonday summer sun beat mercilessly down upon the back of the despondent, exhausted coal-haired emerald-eyed young man who had sat contemplating the pruning shears in his lap for the past hour and a half, an hour and a half that should have been spent using said pruning shears to tame the bushes blocking the lower half of the first floor windows at Number Four Privet Drive. He would move his head ever so slightly, listlessly watching the way the hot sun glinted off the sharp silver blades resting across his knees. His vision was spotted, and colors in his line of sight were changing, distorting. He knew he shouldn't be looking directly at such a bright light for so long, but he found he didn't care if his already poor vision were further compromised by his afternoon activity. At least the spots of sunlight dancing before his eyes took his mind away from the constant throbbing of his forehead.
Some wry corner of his mind mused that ruined vision and constant headaches were the least of his worries. Vernon (the boy could no longer bring himself to apply the familiar endearment, Uncle, to the man) would be furious at him when he discovered that Harry hadn't cut back a single twig the entire afternoon. Yet even the thought of the man's wrath couldn't bring Harry to rouse himself to work.
It wasn't that the heat was too oppressive; quite the contrary, Harry had done much more laborious work under hotter, more humid conditions. By comparison, today was downright pleasant, hot, but the air abnormally dry. It was more that he just couldn't bring himself to care, to care enough about his own wellbeing to do the work in an effort to avoid, or at least lessen the wrath of the fat, squat man.
It didn't matter what happened to him, didn't matter in the slightest. 'You're the only person, Muggle or Wizard, who can save the entire world from Voldemort and the Death Eaters, of course your wellbeing, your life doesn't matter in the slightest,' mocked that cruel, wry corner of Harry's mind. He ignored it. He'd been ignoring it since shortly after wounding Voldemort severely in battle that past spring. While everyone was congratulating him, celebrating his attack that forced Voldemort back into hiding, wounding him to the point of near death, Harry was fighting enormous, brain-numbing headaches that could not be relieved, and slowly, quietly, privately slipping into a deep, dark, oppressive pit of despair and apathy. He couldn't bring himself to study, to care about his final exams. He'd barely made passing grades on most of them. He strongly suspected Dumbledore had had a hand in his passing everything, that he had told the professors to grade Harry more leniently in light of his saving the world yet again. Most of his teachers would have agreed readily to do so, Harry knew. In fact, the only class he was sure he had passed by virtue of actual aptitude, save Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class that could very well be renamed "A Day in the Life of Harry Potter," he mused wryly, was potions. Snape would never boost a Gryffindor's grade, the famous Harry Potter's grade, merely because a doting headmaster pitied a student. Ironic, that the man who hated him the most was the only one to treat him decently, fairly. But even Dumbledore's perceived act of kindness didn't arose even a token emotion from the boy sitting mutely, frozen on the front lawn of his only living relatives. He couldn't bring himself to care whether he passed or failed, not in the slightest.
So he didn't notice the heat of the sun burning the back of his neck, didn't notice the sweat dripping slowly from his forehead, forming small rivulets down his face, didn't think of the empty owl cage in his room, or the absence of any mail for him since the term ended, didn't remember that today was August second, and that his birthday had gone as completely unmarked as it had for the first eight years of his life at Privet Drive, didn't hear the sound of a car pulling into the drive, didn't notice Vernon approaching him until the man's beefy hand made contact with the side of Harry's head, sending him reeling, the sharp thwack echoing through his skull, amplified.
"Get up, freak," that sickening voice growled, its tone commanding as only the voice of a weakling assured of his authority can be. "You good for nothing drain on my resources, what's keeping you from earning your keep, mutt? Get to work, ingrate. We'll see who's playing Mister I'm-so- superior-and-above-work tonight, boy!" He raised his hand again, ready to deliver the same treatment to Harry's other check when a blaring car horn roused him from his blind rage.
"Hey, Dudley!" a voice called from a beat up, rusting heap of metal mounted on four mostly round oversized wheels, chains hanging from the body of the vehicle. "Dudley, get your fat arse out here!" called a second voice, this one issued from the head stuck carefully out the passenger window frame, its owner not wanting to find said head severed at the neck by the jagged glass that had once been the full window.
The Dursley's pride and joy soon came ambling out the front door of Number Four Privet Drive, pausing in his labored walk to the vehicle only once, to throw his entire strength into a short, quick punch to Harry's face. Harry barely winced as the blood poured down his face from his broken nose, choking slightly on the teeth swimming in his mouth.
"Bye, son!" called Vernon, waving his hand once to the now-receding heap of metal. His attention was then brought immediately back to Harry, face turning a brighter shade of reddish purple as he again forced himself to look at the boy. "Why can't you be more like Dudley, going off with his friends to help out at the church homeless shelter?" demanded Vernon. "Must be the ungrateful freak blood running through your veins. You do have veins, don't you, boy? Or are you too good for that, eh? Is that why the blood is all running down your face?" He laughed maliciously at his own perceived joke.
Harry kept his gaze fixed on the spinning ground near Vernon's feet, registering detachedly that at some point, he had lost his glasses. He brought his lips up slightly at the corners at the thought of Vernon and Petunia believing that Dudley was really going to help feed the hungry. More likely he was off to mug the beggars and stand in the food line himself, beating up anyone who dared get in his way. Harry soon regretted that smile, though. Not because of the sharp, searing pain it caused him, but because it brought Vernon's wrath down upon him, redoubled.
"So you think it's funny, boy? Is that it?" barked the man. "I'll give you something to laugh about!" With that, he grabbed Harry by the ear and dragged him into the house, up the stairs, and into Harry's room, where he threw the boy onto his bed. "Yes, this will leave you roaring!" he cried, slightly crazed, as he rolled up his sleeves, stretching his arms a bit, and flexing his hands before setting them into massive fists. Harry closed his eyes, resigning himself to receive the beating he knew Vernon had been aching to deliver for the past six years of his life, ever since Hagrid had come and taken him from the Dursley's care. He struggled against the first fourteen punches, then went limp, knowing from experience that by this point, Vernon was so caught up in his fists that he would scarcely notice if Harry were to manage to slip away. Not that he could, with the fat man sitting on Harry's knees, causing them to hyperextend painfully under the stress.
He'd never been able to get away, not a single one of the times his...this man had beaten him, starting when he was four. He had tried, oh how he had tried, but after the ninth or tenth attempt to escape, he knew he was better off to just submit at once, putting up a token struggle until the man completely lost any vestige of thought, awareness of his surroundings or victim. By the time he was five, he had learned exactly when that point was, two seconds after the fourteenth punch. When he escaped, the resulting punishment just lasted longer, was more severe. But if he didn't struggle, Vernon would stop, grab him by the shoulders violently, and shake him, try to "shake some fight into him." And so he learned.
Some far corner of his mind registered that this time, the beating was much more severe, lasting much longer than any other ever had. Six years of pent up rage and anger, finally released because Vernon knew Hedwig, Harry's only contact with the wizarding world, was gone, and that Harry hadn't received a single letter, let alone package from any of his "freaky accomplices" since parting from them at the train station. And he knew Harry was weak, weaker than he'd been in a very long time. Vernon never did beat on Harry when he was feeling well, when he had had a decent meal recently, or had had a decent night's sleep. He always waited until after he had refused Harry a meal, or had kept him up from dawn until well past midnight. He always preyed on the weak, the ones he knew he could beat. That he feared a boy of ten, eight, four, was laughable. Unless, of course, you were that boy, and feared Vernon even more than he feared you and your "freakish" blood.
An eternity passed, and the sun began to set. A barely conscious Harry noted that Vernon seemed to finally be letting up, tiring. His glasses were long gone, his eyes nearly swollen shut, vision blurred by blood, so he couldn't see whether the man was finally tiring, but it seemed that the blows were less frequent, less forceful. A tolling clock echoed through the house, echoing through Harry's head from miles away. He heard a low, monotonous growl, and registered after a few minutes that Vernon was speaking.
"Leaving boy...Petunia to dinner...stay out of trouble." A cruel, hollow, maniacal laugh punctuated the fragments Harry heard. He sensed that the lights in his room were turned off, and a few minutes later heard a distant thud as a door slammed shut, and the sound of the Dursley's car turning over and puttering out of the driveway.
He lay in bed for several minutes, focusing on breathing, keeping the breaths shallow in an effort to ease the searing pain that gripped his chest every time he inhaled. His mind, long since detached from the pain his body felt, registered that several ribs were broken, but that the lungs seemed as of yet unpunctured, as his breathing was no different from the labored wheeze that normal followed these beatings. 'Funny, how some things you never forget,' interjected that vicious wry corner of his mind. He didn't have the energy to tell it to shut the hell up.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Harry worked himself to a seated position, his head spinning wildly in the process. The bathroom, he needed to get to the bathroom. Acting on an autopilot established many years ago, long before going off to Hogwarts, Harry began to edge blindly towards his door. He soon found him self sprawled out painfully, half on the floor, half in a box of sorts.
His school trunk. An object not engraved upon the mind of a frightened, aching six year old. As he moved, ever so gingerly, to bring himself to an upright position once more, his hand brushed against a smooth, cool glass bottle. He grabbed it reflexively, carrying it with him on his long, torturous trek to the bathroom. Once there, he set the bottle down gently on the counter, and sat down on the closed toilet seat to rest, exhausted. His mind, tired of cataloguing pain and injury, at a loss as to what to do with half the sensations it felt, focused its energies on the small glass liquid-filled bottle it knew to be on the counter, barely discernable through the slit-opened eyes. A potion. For school. A magic potion. Snape, had something to do with Snape and a test. A precaution of sorts? Yes, a potion for the final exam. The practical, a dangerous potion to make, so they were instructed to concoct a healing potion, a strong one, before taking the test. Something about having to wait to get Madame Pomfrey meaning severe permanent injury. 'Trust Snape to try to kill you on the final,' interjected that wry observer. Healing potion, potion to heal. Potion to heal injury. His hand reached for it, shakingly brought the bottle to his lips. He couldn't force the liquid into his mouth, couldn't swallow it, couldn't afford to waste any of the precious liquid, a few mere milliliters all the bottle contained. Water, must drink water
He stood up, careening towards the sink. He turned on the faucet, then cupped his hands under the running water, bringing them up to his lips. His mouth was filled with blood and he could barely open it, but he knew he had to drink water, had to replace the fluid he had lost to bleeding during the beating. The water trickled in drips and drabs into his mouth, barely enough at any point to do more than moisten his mouth. He felt the greater part of the fluid pour down his front, and made a mental note to mop up the bathroom before the others got back. But he persevered, taking drop after drop of the cool, soothing liquid into his aching body. After a long while, he had no idea just how long, time had a habit of losing meaning when he was in this state, he finally felt strong enough to try to take the potion he had stumbled across in his school things, grateful to have found it. 'Thanking Snape twice in one day? What would that man think?' queried the ever-talkative wry audience of one in his mind. He willed the voice into silence as he again brought the potion to his lips.
The first few drops discouragingly trickled down his chin, but the rest soon found its way into his mouth. Before he knew what he was doing, he had finished the entire bottle. Harry had hoped to leave some for future emergencies, but there was no helping that now, the best he could wish for was that future beatings would be much less severe. He stumbled back to the toilet and sat down, waiting for the potion to take effect.
A new sort of pain soon wracked through his body in sharp, distinct waves. One, two, seven, nine, eighteen, Harry soon lost count. Yet he sensed that with each wave, with each pass of the potion through his body, he was a little bit better. His breathing eventually returned to near normal, and he could almost completely open his eyes. His vision was still atrocious, on account of his loss of his glasses during the beating, but he was almost back to a near-normal state, certainly able to function. He stood up slowly, not wanting to shock his body with too much too quickly, and took a few more gulps of water. His forehead throbbed, the familiar headache unrequited, and now again at the forefront of his consciousness.
He edged slowly down the stairs, sensing by the darkness and the moonlight that it was very late at night, and that the Dursleys should all be abed and asleep. It was safe for him to venture to the kitchen and search through the garbage for a bit of food for dinner. He didn't dare take anything fresh; surely it would be noticed first thing in the morning. He contented his growling stomach with an apple core, at least three days old, and some crusts from that day's sandwiches. After his small feast, Harry leaned against the kitchen counter, letting the food settle in his stomach, allowing himself to rest before continuing back up to his room. After several minutes, he took a deep breath, gathering up his strength, and made for the staircase.
Halfway there, by the front door, he nearly tripped over something. He would have, surely, had he not seen it glint in the moonlight. He squatted down to see what blocked his path. The gardening shears, from this afternoon. He must have had them in hand when Vernon dragged him into the house, dropped them part way to his room. And the Dursleys, being lazy, left them, as always, for Harry to clean up and put away. He sighed as he reached out to pick them up, deciding to take them with him up to his room, then put them away in the morning, not wanting to deal with Vernon yelling at him because he had left them there for the whole family to trip over.
As he reached to grab them, his vision being poor, he grabbed at one of the blades instead of the handles. He gasped slightly as the blood seeped from the small wound in his palm. The detached corner of his mind analyzed the wound, noted that it wasn't nearly as painful as the previous ones it had received, that in comparison, this was almost pleasant. Harry watched the fuzzy shape of his hand grasping the handle of the shears, bringing a blade down upon the opposite arm, resting it there briefly, the cool metal oddly welcome against his skin. Then the pressure increased, and the blade began to rub against his skin, sawing at it, his mind marveling detachedly at the sensation. He found himself drawing his head down to get a better view as the blood began to pool, make slick little lakes and rivers along his arm, seeping out of the cut, mixing with the dirt and bits of grass and leaves on the blade.
He set the shears down, awed by the sight of the blood on his pale skin. He just sat there, staring at it in the moonlight, mesmerized. Slowly, the pain became more acute, and that clinical corner of his mind registered that the potion had worn off, would be of no help for these new wounds. The thought was enough to jolt Harry back to the present, to his reality. He needed to get upstairs, to tend to these new cuts before the Dursleys awoke. He picked up the shears once more and ascended the stairs, stopping briefly in the bathroom to find a bandage to wrap up his arm, not bothering to wash it off first, then took a few more mouthfuls of water, and went back to his room, collapsing on the blood-soaked bedding, head now throbbing in pain. He set the gardening shears down under his bed, a spot formerly reserved for letters and packages from his friends, and drifted off to sleep, allowing himself for the first time that summer to think of how his friends had all abandoned him.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, his acquaintances, and his world in general, belong to JK Rowling. Not the authors of this story. The plot, however, is ours, and we'd appreciate it if it stayed ours. If you'd like to review it, though, you're more than welcome to. Just a quick click on the button at the bottom left corner of the screen when you're done reading. Thanks!
GHOST OF MYSELF CHAPTER 1
The noonday summer sun beat mercilessly down upon the back of the despondent, exhausted coal-haired emerald-eyed young man who had sat contemplating the pruning shears in his lap for the past hour and a half, an hour and a half that should have been spent using said pruning shears to tame the bushes blocking the lower half of the first floor windows at Number Four Privet Drive. He would move his head ever so slightly, listlessly watching the way the hot sun glinted off the sharp silver blades resting across his knees. His vision was spotted, and colors in his line of sight were changing, distorting. He knew he shouldn't be looking directly at such a bright light for so long, but he found he didn't care if his already poor vision were further compromised by his afternoon activity. At least the spots of sunlight dancing before his eyes took his mind away from the constant throbbing of his forehead.
Some wry corner of his mind mused that ruined vision and constant headaches were the least of his worries. Vernon (the boy could no longer bring himself to apply the familiar endearment, Uncle, to the man) would be furious at him when he discovered that Harry hadn't cut back a single twig the entire afternoon. Yet even the thought of the man's wrath couldn't bring Harry to rouse himself to work.
It wasn't that the heat was too oppressive; quite the contrary, Harry had done much more laborious work under hotter, more humid conditions. By comparison, today was downright pleasant, hot, but the air abnormally dry. It was more that he just couldn't bring himself to care, to care enough about his own wellbeing to do the work in an effort to avoid, or at least lessen the wrath of the fat, squat man.
It didn't matter what happened to him, didn't matter in the slightest. 'You're the only person, Muggle or Wizard, who can save the entire world from Voldemort and the Death Eaters, of course your wellbeing, your life doesn't matter in the slightest,' mocked that cruel, wry corner of Harry's mind. He ignored it. He'd been ignoring it since shortly after wounding Voldemort severely in battle that past spring. While everyone was congratulating him, celebrating his attack that forced Voldemort back into hiding, wounding him to the point of near death, Harry was fighting enormous, brain-numbing headaches that could not be relieved, and slowly, quietly, privately slipping into a deep, dark, oppressive pit of despair and apathy. He couldn't bring himself to study, to care about his final exams. He'd barely made passing grades on most of them. He strongly suspected Dumbledore had had a hand in his passing everything, that he had told the professors to grade Harry more leniently in light of his saving the world yet again. Most of his teachers would have agreed readily to do so, Harry knew. In fact, the only class he was sure he had passed by virtue of actual aptitude, save Defense Against the Dark Arts, a class that could very well be renamed "A Day in the Life of Harry Potter," he mused wryly, was potions. Snape would never boost a Gryffindor's grade, the famous Harry Potter's grade, merely because a doting headmaster pitied a student. Ironic, that the man who hated him the most was the only one to treat him decently, fairly. But even Dumbledore's perceived act of kindness didn't arose even a token emotion from the boy sitting mutely, frozen on the front lawn of his only living relatives. He couldn't bring himself to care whether he passed or failed, not in the slightest.
So he didn't notice the heat of the sun burning the back of his neck, didn't notice the sweat dripping slowly from his forehead, forming small rivulets down his face, didn't think of the empty owl cage in his room, or the absence of any mail for him since the term ended, didn't remember that today was August second, and that his birthday had gone as completely unmarked as it had for the first eight years of his life at Privet Drive, didn't hear the sound of a car pulling into the drive, didn't notice Vernon approaching him until the man's beefy hand made contact with the side of Harry's head, sending him reeling, the sharp thwack echoing through his skull, amplified.
"Get up, freak," that sickening voice growled, its tone commanding as only the voice of a weakling assured of his authority can be. "You good for nothing drain on my resources, what's keeping you from earning your keep, mutt? Get to work, ingrate. We'll see who's playing Mister I'm-so- superior-and-above-work tonight, boy!" He raised his hand again, ready to deliver the same treatment to Harry's other check when a blaring car horn roused him from his blind rage.
"Hey, Dudley!" a voice called from a beat up, rusting heap of metal mounted on four mostly round oversized wheels, chains hanging from the body of the vehicle. "Dudley, get your fat arse out here!" called a second voice, this one issued from the head stuck carefully out the passenger window frame, its owner not wanting to find said head severed at the neck by the jagged glass that had once been the full window.
The Dursley's pride and joy soon came ambling out the front door of Number Four Privet Drive, pausing in his labored walk to the vehicle only once, to throw his entire strength into a short, quick punch to Harry's face. Harry barely winced as the blood poured down his face from his broken nose, choking slightly on the teeth swimming in his mouth.
"Bye, son!" called Vernon, waving his hand once to the now-receding heap of metal. His attention was then brought immediately back to Harry, face turning a brighter shade of reddish purple as he again forced himself to look at the boy. "Why can't you be more like Dudley, going off with his friends to help out at the church homeless shelter?" demanded Vernon. "Must be the ungrateful freak blood running through your veins. You do have veins, don't you, boy? Or are you too good for that, eh? Is that why the blood is all running down your face?" He laughed maliciously at his own perceived joke.
Harry kept his gaze fixed on the spinning ground near Vernon's feet, registering detachedly that at some point, he had lost his glasses. He brought his lips up slightly at the corners at the thought of Vernon and Petunia believing that Dudley was really going to help feed the hungry. More likely he was off to mug the beggars and stand in the food line himself, beating up anyone who dared get in his way. Harry soon regretted that smile, though. Not because of the sharp, searing pain it caused him, but because it brought Vernon's wrath down upon him, redoubled.
"So you think it's funny, boy? Is that it?" barked the man. "I'll give you something to laugh about!" With that, he grabbed Harry by the ear and dragged him into the house, up the stairs, and into Harry's room, where he threw the boy onto his bed. "Yes, this will leave you roaring!" he cried, slightly crazed, as he rolled up his sleeves, stretching his arms a bit, and flexing his hands before setting them into massive fists. Harry closed his eyes, resigning himself to receive the beating he knew Vernon had been aching to deliver for the past six years of his life, ever since Hagrid had come and taken him from the Dursley's care. He struggled against the first fourteen punches, then went limp, knowing from experience that by this point, Vernon was so caught up in his fists that he would scarcely notice if Harry were to manage to slip away. Not that he could, with the fat man sitting on Harry's knees, causing them to hyperextend painfully under the stress.
He'd never been able to get away, not a single one of the times his...this man had beaten him, starting when he was four. He had tried, oh how he had tried, but after the ninth or tenth attempt to escape, he knew he was better off to just submit at once, putting up a token struggle until the man completely lost any vestige of thought, awareness of his surroundings or victim. By the time he was five, he had learned exactly when that point was, two seconds after the fourteenth punch. When he escaped, the resulting punishment just lasted longer, was more severe. But if he didn't struggle, Vernon would stop, grab him by the shoulders violently, and shake him, try to "shake some fight into him." And so he learned.
Some far corner of his mind registered that this time, the beating was much more severe, lasting much longer than any other ever had. Six years of pent up rage and anger, finally released because Vernon knew Hedwig, Harry's only contact with the wizarding world, was gone, and that Harry hadn't received a single letter, let alone package from any of his "freaky accomplices" since parting from them at the train station. And he knew Harry was weak, weaker than he'd been in a very long time. Vernon never did beat on Harry when he was feeling well, when he had had a decent meal recently, or had had a decent night's sleep. He always waited until after he had refused Harry a meal, or had kept him up from dawn until well past midnight. He always preyed on the weak, the ones he knew he could beat. That he feared a boy of ten, eight, four, was laughable. Unless, of course, you were that boy, and feared Vernon even more than he feared you and your "freakish" blood.
An eternity passed, and the sun began to set. A barely conscious Harry noted that Vernon seemed to finally be letting up, tiring. His glasses were long gone, his eyes nearly swollen shut, vision blurred by blood, so he couldn't see whether the man was finally tiring, but it seemed that the blows were less frequent, less forceful. A tolling clock echoed through the house, echoing through Harry's head from miles away. He heard a low, monotonous growl, and registered after a few minutes that Vernon was speaking.
"Leaving boy...Petunia to dinner...stay out of trouble." A cruel, hollow, maniacal laugh punctuated the fragments Harry heard. He sensed that the lights in his room were turned off, and a few minutes later heard a distant thud as a door slammed shut, and the sound of the Dursley's car turning over and puttering out of the driveway.
He lay in bed for several minutes, focusing on breathing, keeping the breaths shallow in an effort to ease the searing pain that gripped his chest every time he inhaled. His mind, long since detached from the pain his body felt, registered that several ribs were broken, but that the lungs seemed as of yet unpunctured, as his breathing was no different from the labored wheeze that normal followed these beatings. 'Funny, how some things you never forget,' interjected that vicious wry corner of his mind. He didn't have the energy to tell it to shut the hell up.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Harry worked himself to a seated position, his head spinning wildly in the process. The bathroom, he needed to get to the bathroom. Acting on an autopilot established many years ago, long before going off to Hogwarts, Harry began to edge blindly towards his door. He soon found him self sprawled out painfully, half on the floor, half in a box of sorts.
His school trunk. An object not engraved upon the mind of a frightened, aching six year old. As he moved, ever so gingerly, to bring himself to an upright position once more, his hand brushed against a smooth, cool glass bottle. He grabbed it reflexively, carrying it with him on his long, torturous trek to the bathroom. Once there, he set the bottle down gently on the counter, and sat down on the closed toilet seat to rest, exhausted. His mind, tired of cataloguing pain and injury, at a loss as to what to do with half the sensations it felt, focused its energies on the small glass liquid-filled bottle it knew to be on the counter, barely discernable through the slit-opened eyes. A potion. For school. A magic potion. Snape, had something to do with Snape and a test. A precaution of sorts? Yes, a potion for the final exam. The practical, a dangerous potion to make, so they were instructed to concoct a healing potion, a strong one, before taking the test. Something about having to wait to get Madame Pomfrey meaning severe permanent injury. 'Trust Snape to try to kill you on the final,' interjected that wry observer. Healing potion, potion to heal. Potion to heal injury. His hand reached for it, shakingly brought the bottle to his lips. He couldn't force the liquid into his mouth, couldn't swallow it, couldn't afford to waste any of the precious liquid, a few mere milliliters all the bottle contained. Water, must drink water
He stood up, careening towards the sink. He turned on the faucet, then cupped his hands under the running water, bringing them up to his lips. His mouth was filled with blood and he could barely open it, but he knew he had to drink water, had to replace the fluid he had lost to bleeding during the beating. The water trickled in drips and drabs into his mouth, barely enough at any point to do more than moisten his mouth. He felt the greater part of the fluid pour down his front, and made a mental note to mop up the bathroom before the others got back. But he persevered, taking drop after drop of the cool, soothing liquid into his aching body. After a long while, he had no idea just how long, time had a habit of losing meaning when he was in this state, he finally felt strong enough to try to take the potion he had stumbled across in his school things, grateful to have found it. 'Thanking Snape twice in one day? What would that man think?' queried the ever-talkative wry audience of one in his mind. He willed the voice into silence as he again brought the potion to his lips.
The first few drops discouragingly trickled down his chin, but the rest soon found its way into his mouth. Before he knew what he was doing, he had finished the entire bottle. Harry had hoped to leave some for future emergencies, but there was no helping that now, the best he could wish for was that future beatings would be much less severe. He stumbled back to the toilet and sat down, waiting for the potion to take effect.
A new sort of pain soon wracked through his body in sharp, distinct waves. One, two, seven, nine, eighteen, Harry soon lost count. Yet he sensed that with each wave, with each pass of the potion through his body, he was a little bit better. His breathing eventually returned to near normal, and he could almost completely open his eyes. His vision was still atrocious, on account of his loss of his glasses during the beating, but he was almost back to a near-normal state, certainly able to function. He stood up slowly, not wanting to shock his body with too much too quickly, and took a few more gulps of water. His forehead throbbed, the familiar headache unrequited, and now again at the forefront of his consciousness.
He edged slowly down the stairs, sensing by the darkness and the moonlight that it was very late at night, and that the Dursleys should all be abed and asleep. It was safe for him to venture to the kitchen and search through the garbage for a bit of food for dinner. He didn't dare take anything fresh; surely it would be noticed first thing in the morning. He contented his growling stomach with an apple core, at least three days old, and some crusts from that day's sandwiches. After his small feast, Harry leaned against the kitchen counter, letting the food settle in his stomach, allowing himself to rest before continuing back up to his room. After several minutes, he took a deep breath, gathering up his strength, and made for the staircase.
Halfway there, by the front door, he nearly tripped over something. He would have, surely, had he not seen it glint in the moonlight. He squatted down to see what blocked his path. The gardening shears, from this afternoon. He must have had them in hand when Vernon dragged him into the house, dropped them part way to his room. And the Dursleys, being lazy, left them, as always, for Harry to clean up and put away. He sighed as he reached out to pick them up, deciding to take them with him up to his room, then put them away in the morning, not wanting to deal with Vernon yelling at him because he had left them there for the whole family to trip over.
As he reached to grab them, his vision being poor, he grabbed at one of the blades instead of the handles. He gasped slightly as the blood seeped from the small wound in his palm. The detached corner of his mind analyzed the wound, noted that it wasn't nearly as painful as the previous ones it had received, that in comparison, this was almost pleasant. Harry watched the fuzzy shape of his hand grasping the handle of the shears, bringing a blade down upon the opposite arm, resting it there briefly, the cool metal oddly welcome against his skin. Then the pressure increased, and the blade began to rub against his skin, sawing at it, his mind marveling detachedly at the sensation. He found himself drawing his head down to get a better view as the blood began to pool, make slick little lakes and rivers along his arm, seeping out of the cut, mixing with the dirt and bits of grass and leaves on the blade.
He set the shears down, awed by the sight of the blood on his pale skin. He just sat there, staring at it in the moonlight, mesmerized. Slowly, the pain became more acute, and that clinical corner of his mind registered that the potion had worn off, would be of no help for these new wounds. The thought was enough to jolt Harry back to the present, to his reality. He needed to get upstairs, to tend to these new cuts before the Dursleys awoke. He picked up the shears once more and ascended the stairs, stopping briefly in the bathroom to find a bandage to wrap up his arm, not bothering to wash it off first, then took a few more mouthfuls of water, and went back to his room, collapsing on the blood-soaked bedding, head now throbbing in pain. He set the gardening shears down under his bed, a spot formerly reserved for letters and packages from his friends, and drifted off to sleep, allowing himself for the first time that summer to think of how his friends had all abandoned him.