Title: Harry Potter and the Summer's Secret
Author: Japhu
Beta Reader: Hallia
Pairing: HPSS
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own nothing of Harry Potter and his world and don't make any money with it.
Summary: For one week in summer Harry disappears without trace. When he comes back he claims to have no memory. But something happened and it changed him. It remains to be seen if for the better or the worse. (will be HPSS)
Category: action/adventure/angst
Feedback: highly appreciated
Chapter 4 - Temptation's Call
Vernon Dursley's countless chins and bellies wobbled wildly, punctuating the fat man's irritation in having to drive the freak boy to London. Of course he had refused doing so while other people could possibly see them.
Harry had to get up in the middle of the night to indulge his uncle's bent and to avoid a last, very pointless argument. Harry kept his silence determinedly, for he must not get angry as not to call unwanted attention on his person or worse to lose his control. The need to keep his anger at bay was the most pressing thing that kept rolling through his mind endlessly. Do not lose control!
With an exhausted grin the boy watched Vernon Dursley squeezing himself behind the wheel of his very inconspicuous Muggle car.
Taking his uncle's antics into account, the blubbering piece of crammed goose could not get away fast enough from his freakish nephew and his equally freakish friends, who had to gather at this place in a short amount of time.
To Dursley's excuse it had to be said that Harry's relatives did not have it easy for the last few weeks. Especially his uncle who had had a hard time and now probably needed a good dose of sympathy for his pitiful existence, but the boy would not bother. He had had too much fun for said time, practicing with a very much willing Vernon.
Whenever Harry had not researched one of his newfound abilities with Vernon's help, he stayed out of the Dursleys' way whenever possible. When he was practically caught between his huge relatives he bit his lip in silent suffering. Harry could not always keep pushing them around with magic and obliviate them afterwards. However, at the first oportunity he locked himself up in his room, trying to learn as much as he could on his own.
He was not the poor and innocent boy anymore, friendly and shy and openhearted to everybody. The last school year had proven that good did not always beat evil or that, if it did, then often to a price that was not worth to pay. Cedric's death had opened his eyes, whereas Sirius' death had closed some doors, quietly and still not widely known to his friends that there were doors within him to lock up.
He still had some things to figure out and was not explicitly sure to where his course would lead him. Most certainly he would not end up evil, calling himself dark lord, not if Harry had to decide about it. He would die before he let it get out of control as far as that, if he still was able to think in a straight line when the moment came.
Harry simply hoped to get more powerful. To fulfill his plan he had to master as much of his magic as he possibly could. He had to find ways to open his channels for magic further. In search for an opportunity to use his magical core, Harry would do just that and be happy when the magical backlash did not kill him on the spot.
Until now Harry had not even consciously tried to touch it. Firstly because Tom was too strong a presence in his mind, and secondly because Harry did not know enough about the strength of his rapidly changing magic and more importantly the extent of his own powers to use it just then. Harry knew everything about temptations and even if his magic could not function to the fullest yet, Harry would work assiduously to redeem the fact as soon as possible.
Furthermore he had to thank his brute of an uncle that he now had at least a fairly well idea of what he was capable of, and what things needed an urgent upgrading or rigorous avoidance.
Harry had needed someone to test his new abilities on. The obliviating at the end of each day for the last two weeks probably had left some effect, for Harry could watch the small pig's eyes bustle about for few minutes each time. Of course Harry had not let his more playful side take action and had filled the empty spots with all that boring everyday shit his uncle seemed to bloom in.
How it happened that no one noticed what went on in the Dursleys' much prided residence, was a puzzle Harry still had not solved. It could not be that the ministry did not recognize the wandless bits of spell casting Harry did. After all they found Muggleborn wizards and witches when they did accidentally magic, what was very much wandless, too. Perhaps they had justified their tracers to other districts, as they thought him well watched.
Their ignorance to the Muggles fate was disturbing, too. Should not have one of Arthur Weasley's department come to right the wrongs Harry did to his relatives?
He grimaced when Vernon pulled the car out of the parking space with burning wheels, the brakes grating reluctantly, before driving off from King's Cross station in a frenzy.
When everything passed the way he had planned, Harry would not have to see him, his horse-faced wife or his massive offspring for the next fifty years at least.
The last thing Harry had done before climbing in to the back seat of Dursley's car, was to take down the wards surrounding Privet Drive. When they were gone Dumbledore would have no reason to send him back to that place ever again.
From the two possible ways to take them down, short of breaking them and destroying the house, too, only one was workable. Harry could have turned the wards around, so that his aunt would have been under his protection, but that would not have worked well with Dumbledore, because for the manipulative bastard to stay unaware of the wards' changing, Harry Potter had to be the one guarded. So Harry just had called the wards' protection back to his being, as the blood protection thing prevented handling it in any other way.
It had been but a small problem he had had to work hours to get around, nevertheless. Basically it meant that Harry was from now on guardian and fosterling in one person. It was a little difficult to get the magic to recognize him as both, but eventually Harry had managed that piece of art and he would hold the protection wards around Privet Drive until a month's time or so, when he could let it dissipate slowly as he would be far away by then and could not be held responsible in any way if something went wrong at this front.
Standing at the station a little lost with his only trunk and the bird's cage Harry looked around to decide what he could do now, while preparing to wait for the Hogwarts' Express for more than five hours. It was not even six o'clock and the sun still had not totally fought its way onto the sky.
A hoot from his owl pulled Harry out of his near slumber, and after a moment of ponderous thinking Harry's first good deed for the day was to open his owl's cage and to watch smiling when the beautiful bird soared up into the sky with loud screeching noises. After his birthday Harry had been hesitant to let Hedwig fly freely, but now he was sure that she could find the way to Hogwarts safely on her own and would not get caught up in some scheme of a madman ... or by a crazy uncle with a gun. After he lost sight of her Harry rubbed his rapidly dropping eyes. He had not gotten much sleep during the last days between his constantly pestering relatives, a raging Tom and the need to learn anything he could.
Harry looked down at the empty cage and his trunk. He absolutely refused to haul that thing with him for hours. He would not have any muscles left in his arms. It took only a small flick of his wrist and Harry had shrunken everything with a satisfied grin and summoned it to his hand. He blinked, looking fixedly onto his palm. The cart was not part of his Hogwarts' utensils, was it not? With a blush worth of a Weasley Harry bend down and enlarged that one piece again. It would have been embarrassing, had anyone he knew been watching. With a glimpse at the few hurriedly passing people Harry assured that this was not the case, before taking a large step away from the corner and away from people, who would noticing him hanging around the station for too long a time.
Harry strolled around Muggle London in a leisurely pace someone took when one was without obligations, though, his thoughts continuously circled around Voldemort. Harry still had not figured out all of what had happened during the ritual itself. Everything Harry could recount was his feeling of being alive for the first time in his existence. When Voldemort had tried to take Harry's body and soul, it had felt - for a moment - as if he was thrown out of his narrow existence, where he floated to something unrecognizable great and energetic. It had felt good, until he was pulled back again being more aware of magic - his, other people's, the world's in general. It was as if someone had given him a new sense to experience the world as it really was thought to be, for everything had been more … there.
It was during that short moment when Harry had felt the panic rising within Tom, as he took everything to bind the Dark Lord and to hold him, until Harry somehow had managed to erect mental walls of a strength he never had been able to do before and anyone would be hard pressed to break them.
How Harry had known this to be the only way to come out of their encounter alive and whole as he had gone in, he could not have said it if tortured. He just had gathered his magic to hit back. Harry would not be able to repeat it consciously. Magic was a fleeting thing, ever had been, at least as long is it concerned him.
Harry had been left with a terrible ache in his head and every part of his body was burning in pain, while Tom had tried desperately to break the shields Harry had surrounded him with.
Harry smirked darkly when a brief thought of anger grazed his mind from within. Tom did not like to be reminded of his failure. Too bad. Harry would have to think about it more often then. An angry Tom would not be able to destroy Harry's shields.
Yawning Harry wandered further. He just wanted to sit down somewhere and close his eyes. His feet were beginning to hurt. The shoes were not quite what one needed for a long range walk, but as everything else they would have to do.
With a deep sigh of boredom Harry took his much used Doing-For-Fun-list out of his pocket and studied it intently. A lot of things had been crossed out already, but some were still open. Now that Harry had the luxury of doing things he liked, he had found it hard to decide what to do first on his very long list, and as Surrey did not have much to give to tourists, Harry had decided without further ado that he would make his way into the heart of the city he lived in since his birth, but had never once seen.
During the last weeks Harry had seen more of London than ever before. Now he could truly say that he lived here. Despite Tom's presence he had managed to push thoughts concerning dark lords and a rising war back into the darkest corner of his mind to keep that slimy thing of a tainted soul company. For the first time in his life Harry had gone into a cinema, as a matter of principle an event quite enjoyable, but for Harry a dodgy thing to do. At least, Harry thought, it would need a lot of persuading before he was ready to give it another go, ever. He was glad to put that experience behind him.
Not quiet right for his group of age, Harry had gotten into the cinema nevertheless, of course only with a little bit help of magic. Sitting in the darkness with people screaming now and then, while Tom choose that moment to make himself known, was not a thing Harry wanted to get used to, for it had too much of reality to be even halfway entertaining. The stark mad cackling that had run chillingly through his body, had left Harry for the rest of the film sitting alert and unable to keep his concentration on the screen, as good as the show might have been otherwise. The Muggles certainly had seemed to enjoy it. Even now a shiver ran down Harry's spine when he thought back to the dark room and the screams. Much too much reality!
After that horrible event Harry had decided to stop being selfish. So he had listened to his grumbling belly and had had another first, a much greater success in review. Straight out of the cinema Harry had gone into his first MacDonald's restaurant ever. He had gotten himself filled up with cheeseburgers, coke and French fries, until he had to loosen his waistband, a thing that needed attention, for he still wore exclusively Dudley's cast offs. And alone the first time he did not feel hunger gnawing in his stomach, gave him a feeling of pure joy hardly anything could have topped.
Harry swallowed. Today he still had not eaten anything, but as he did not have any Muggle money left, it was a thought for future thinking. His last meager meal Harry had had the day before at breakfast. His dinner had been canceled without further ado, because Vernon held the opinion that Harry had looked him up and down without the required respect and admiration.
Harry had not disabused Vernon from that notion, for it certainly would be the one thing his uncle was right about. Looking at the big oaf in the wrong way, if taking the oaf's view to things into account, had been a thing Harry had indulged in delight many times. His uncle was not capable of counting the lots of occurrences in his empty bowl of a head Harry had done to 'Vernon-Watching' just in order to forego absolute boredom more than once or a dozen times.
It was not that the Dursleys could have forbidden him to eat; Harry would just have to send them to their rooms again. No, this time Harry had simply forgotten to satisfy his body's needs, as he was busy with fighting off a new attempt of Tom to free his soul.
His stomach growled and Harry shoved the much abused list back into his pocket. He should not have thought about food. Now he could not get away from it. He cursed his stupid stomach. In a few hours it would be stuffed with chocolate frogs, pumpkin pasties and Bertie Bott's.
Thinking of Hogwarts brought other stuff to Harry's attention. A visit to Diagon Alley was long since overdue. Until now he had stayed far away from widely known magical places, but he still had hours until the point of no return and the departure of the Hogarts' Express. Harry would not loose any time, for he had other means to travel, even if not taught in Hogwarts. Still wavering Harry weighed the pros and cons, but his stomach had the decisive voice, for it growled like one of Hagrid's beasts and Harry felt really hungry.
A few galleons still should be gathering dust in his trunk. He would have to enlarge it of course, but he would get something to eat before he lost consciousness. Surely he could stay out of sight long enough to risk a furtive glance, for he still needed his school books.
Harry's brows furrowed. Disquieting was just the fact that he could feel the magic of the place even here. Harry did not know how much he was able to take. He still was not feeling wholly comfortable to not stumble over his own feet whenever his magic reached for sources with an equally strong core of energy to bond itself and to strengthen and to widen its scope. But as despite everything else he still was a growing youth, Harry decided to take the risk and to run if he felt himself growing dizzy or numb or especially energetic. He laughed silently. He would not wonder if he turned out to be addicted, for he could not turn off the magic wherever he went - and he sounded like one already.
Slowly his steps took him to the Leaky Cauldron. If this summer did not have happened, Harry would have gone straight through, but today he felt something off. So Harry stared intently at the entrance way to the Wizarding World.
He leaned back against a wall of a house opposite the Cauldron, his foot propped up behind him and his arms crossed over his chest. Harry waited for his magic to calm down or to reveal what had made it bursting like that. Like a breeze of air he seemed to vanish from the corner, sinking silently deeper into the darkness; watching, widely awake and very much hidden among the shadows.