Standing Beside the Fallen
Chapter Seven - Talking it Out, Part II
Recalling his dream had taken more than ten minutes, considering he kept pausing for breath or to collect himself. Sirius and Remus were patient, allowing him to take as much time in pausing as he needed, both showing their support as much as Harry was comfortable with. When he managed to finish, his throat was aching. Remus must have noticed because the next second there was a glass of water in front of him. He smiled and took a long sip, trying to stall the conversation as long as he could. It didn't work as well as he hoped.
"I'm sorry you had to see that, kiddo," Sirius said and allowed Harry to lean into him and soak up the comfort. He was still tense, but at least he wasn't flinching away.
"Harry, I know it was hard having to see what you did." Remus said. "But exactly how do you feel about it? Are you sad? Angry?"
That was a good question - how did he feel? Of course he was angry at Voldemort for murdering them, not even they deserved to die like that, nobody did. He felt guilty that because of the trouble he had attracted, it had gotten them all killed. If Voldemort hadn't been looking for him, the Dursleys would not have been targeted and they would have gone on leading their perfectly normal lives. But beside the guilt, he felt this overwhelming feeling to get up and throw something at the wall, something heavy that would leave a big dent.
Remus seemed to be reading his mind because he said the next moment, "It's alright to feel upset that they died."
Harry stood up quickly and started to pace the kitchen. "I'm not supposed to be upset!" He said wildly, tugging at his wild hair. "I'm supposed to be glad! I'm supposed to be relieved! But I'm not! Can you imagine what its like to know that you're the reason your family died? And they didn't even want me! They were forced into my world with my chaotic problems, they didn't choose it! So it is my fault that they died! It has to be!"
"It isn't!" Sirius yelled, jumping up from the table. Harry stopped his pacing and wheeled around.
"How do you know," Harry yelled, tears falling from his eyes.
His voice was cracking as he screamed, and his hands were balled up so tightly that his palms were nearly drawing blood, but he didn't care. He felt like he wanted to rip Sirius's head off at this moment and yell in his ear to make him understand. Because he didn't, and he doubted no matter how much he screamed, yelled and cried, that Sirius would ever understand.
The dishes on the table rattled and the objects in the room started to shake. Harry wanted to lash out on his suppressed rage, to go up and hit Sirius to make him understand. He didn't notice the alarmed look that Remus was giving him as he looked around at the shaking objects, he didn't notice much of anything. His only focus was glaring at Sirius as hard as he could manage.
"My aunt and uncle never wanted me! They were willing to ditch me in an alley if they could, but they were forced to keep me! If I hadn't been living there, Voldemort would have had no reason to kill them! He wouldn't have gone there and they would still be alive! It was because of me Voldemort went there, and killed them! It was my fault and you can't understand that!"
Sirius growled in frustration, yelling as loud as Harry. Harry stilled and looked at him, surprised by this. "Yes I can understand that!" He snarled. "You think I didn't feel guilt when I let Pettigrew be the secret keeper? You think I didn't feel guilty that your parents died or you ended up in that house in the first place?"
Harry had backed up into the wall now, his eyes wide with shock and regret. His anger was gone, and everything in the room was still again, but Sirius's anger seemed to be one that rivaled Harry's. Remus quickly got up from his seat and went over to Sirius to pull him away from the argument, but Sirius tore his arm away, too angry to see sense and too angry to see the shock and fear written plainly in Harry's face. Instead of backing off, Sirius kept going.
"You think I don't feel guilty that my best friend and his wife are dead because of my stupid decision or that Wormtail got away because I couldn't kill him properly? Yes Harry, I think I understand perfectly what the hell guilt is and god knows that I feel it each and every day so don't you dare lecture me on it! Understand?"
Harry stood against the wall, his back pressed against the wooden panels as he gave a quick nod. He stared up at Sirius, his eyes looking owlish and puffy red behind his round glasses, tears running down his cheeks. In that moment as Sirius stared at his godson, he could see exactly the shell that Harry had dug himself into. He remembered back to when he was fifteen, to how he and James had prided themselves in their height and muscles and being able to sneak into the bars to drink. It was plain to see that Harry was nothing like his father.
The boy had been broken down, and it was plain to see in front of his eyes. Sirius wondered how he could not have pinpointed it before. Sure he had known Harry was in pain, that he was suffering, but he never realized exactly how until that very moment. As he stared, he didn't see the replica of his father he once had back in the Shrieking Shack two years ago. Now he saw the child that Harry really was, the small skinny and beaten boy who thrived for caring and understanding. He realized, that he had been giving Harry the exact opposite of what he needed. He understood that Harry needed a father figure, and Harry was looking at him to fill in.
"Harry . . ." He said quietly, taking a step back in horror. Sirius watched as Harry bit his lip breathing hard, his eyes flashing over to the door before he made a decision. He turned and ran to it, wrenching it open and running up the stairs, slamming it behind him and disappearing. They listened in a still silence as Harry's footsteps echoed through the silent house and then the distinct sounds of a distance door slam brought them from their reveries.
Sirius turned and gripped the countertop hard, his knuckles turning white. This was not how it was supposed to be. Harry was not supposed to run away hurt and afraid, he was supposed to have opened up to him. And yet Sirius had failed, just like he always had in the past. He had failed to keep Harry safe, and failed to protect him from the demons that haunted him constantly. He was failing in his promise to Lily and James that he had made so many years ago to protect their son if something were to happen to them.
In a bought of sudden anger, he grabbed a glass from the drainer and turned, hurling it against the wall. It smashed into a thousand pieces, falling and littering the floor with small bits of glass. Upstairs, he could hear his mother's portrait starting to scream and he felt the need to go up there and curse her until the paint on the portrait was in pools at his feet. But he knew that wouldn't get rid of her. It never did before.
"Sirius,"
Sirius turned to face Remus, and noticed the hard look on his face. It had always made him feel a little intimidated when he was on the receiving end of a glare, but right now he was too angry at himself to feel intimidated. It didn't stop Remus from glaring at him though.
"Before you try and get Harry to get over his guilt and pain, you should get over your's first." Remus said only loud enough to hear over his mother's wails. "And you better do it quick, because you won't be seeing Harry much until you do."
Harry closed his door hard and gripped the doorknob to try and suppress the ripping emotion overtaking his body. He didn't notice the sounds of something breaking downstairs, and not even heard the screeches of Sirius's mum. His teeth were bared and his eyes were screwed shut. He wasn't sure exactly what he was feeling. Fear, yes. Anger, yes. Guilt, yes. It was just a huge puddle of emotions that he was sinking in, desperately trying to grab onto solid land, but he wasn't getting anywhere.
And suddenly, the emotions drained from him, and all he felt was a sense of numb exhaustion. It was a relief really, to what he had been feeling earlier and he slowly let go of the doorknob and sunk down in the armchair beside the window. He stared outside in the bright sunshine, feeling nothing but numb. It was a hollow feeling yes, but it was definitely better than the overwhelming pain he had been feeling just moments ago. He didn't know how long he looked out the window, but his mind seemed as numb as his body. He felt too exhausted to move, too tired to get up and move yet too tired to sleep. It was weird to know that you were too tired to actually sleep. It was a weird oxymoron, and yet there it was.
He stared through the window, watching as a car passed by on the street and a dog sniffed around a few houses over. He wondered how life could be so normal and so peaceful when there was actually no peace to be had. Voldemort was gaining strength. people were dying at his hands, and he was suffering with the overwhelming guilt. And yet the world still had time for kids to go get ice cream and people to head off to work in their usual morning routines. It was weird how the biggest things in the life of one person could not even affect another. But that was just how life was.
He watched as a group of kids walked down the street, one of them holding a football in his hands. He remembered back when he had been eight or nine, around the age of these kids. He remembered how much he had wanted to be just like them, to be carefree and to have friends to play sports with down at the park, and not having to worry about getting his chores finished before his uncle got home. He had been unlike most children because of his aunt and uncle.
And yet it dawned on him, as he sat and remembered how different he actually had been. Dudley had not been a freak or weird because his mother and father allowed him to be normal. And yet, they never allowed Harry to have a normal childhood and therefore he never really knew what nomal was. Had it been the Dursleys fault that he was not normal, or had he just been born like that in the first place?
He remembered when he had been a small child, around the ages of six or seven, he had owned the imagination the size of Russia. His biggest chunk of imagination made him dream of himself finding a rowboat on the shoreline and rowing miles and miles off of England and to an Island where it was sunny and beautiful everyday. It was a place that never rained, and it was never too cold or too hot. There was only sand and no grass, because grass was too much of a bother to cut.
On the island there were people, but it was only for people that were not normal, people who had been like him. These people lived in huts that were small and dark, but everybody liked that, and they had big beautiful backyards. Everyone ate bananas and coconuts all day and nobody was fat. They also ate chocolate cake. They had to eat chocolate cake everyday because Harry loved chocolate cake and never got to have any because it always went to Dudley. So there was always chocolate cake available on the island. There were television sets and toys, and he was allowed to use all of it.
Everybody on this island considered each other family. Nobody judged you by how un-normal you were, or how different or ugly you looked. In fact, the more weird you seemed, they made you the president of the island. Being too young to vote or even cross the street by himself, he imagined himself too young to be the president of the island so he was the junior president. He got to live in the biggest hut on the island with the weird president and they ate bananas and coconuts and chocolate cake all day long and played games. Because Harry was never allowed to play, so there was always time to play on the island. And nobody ever had to do chores, because there were never any chores to be done. Food was there waiting for you to eat it and left when you finished eating it. The huts never needed to be clean because they always were and not a finger was lifted for a chore.
In first grade he wrote a story about his island for a creative writing assignment. He had handed it in to his teacher Ms. Covey, and Ms. Covey had absolutely loved it. She had loved it so much that she had brought his aunt and uncle in to show him the story and tell them how good he was at writing and what a beautiful imagination he had. Harry knew, because Uncle Vernon had relayed everything to him later that night in enough detail that he would remember it forever. He would remember because that had been the night that his imagination died. Died with his sense of childhood, and from then and there he had been an adult, and no longer did he have that imagination that Ms. Covey adored.
He had gotten a really bad beating after that and had been absent for school for two days to heal and took up the weekend before he could go back and act normal. After that he had never dared to write an assignment that was better than a C. Thinking back, he wondered why having an active imagination made him different. A lot of people had one. Every child had one, authors had them, artists and musicians. Why did he have to have his beaten out of him? Why had they made him different? Had it been because Dudley was too lazy to use his own, and Harry could not be better than Dudley at anything? Or was it because they thought his imagination was somehow linked with magic? He would never know now, because they were dead, and couldn't answer his question.
He blinked and suddenly turned his head away from the window. Sitting here and thinking back on his horrible childhood, questioning his aspects, was doing nothing to help him get over whatever he was going through. Sirius and Remus seemed to think he was going through something, and before he had experienced this numb exhaustion he would have agreed. But now there was nothing to feel, nothing to go through. Everything was so confusing, why couldn't his worst childhood memory be the time when his hamster died or something? That's right, because Dudley got the hamster, and he sat on it. The hamster had died under his bulk . . . poor Wiggles, such a terrible way to die.
Harry sighed and sat up from his chair, his legs feeling like rubber, but he ignored it. He glanced up at the clock and saw it was half past noon. He wasn't really sure how long he had barricade himself in his room, but he was pretty glad that nobody had come knocking on the door, asking him if he wanted to talk, because he didn't. Talking just led to more bad memories, something which he had spent too long trying to ignore.
Sitting in this room was not helping to keep the bad memories at bay either, and he felt the need to leave. The air was suddenly too thin and the room too small. He had never been claustrophobic and anybody growing up in a cupboard most likely wouldn't be unless they had horrible memories with it. Harry didn't. His cupboard had been the safe haven, and basically he was rather fond of small dark places. Not that he hauled himself into them a lot, because he liked the open too. His love of Quidditch demonstration that.
He walked over to the door and cracked it open a little bit and peaked out. The hallway was empty and he let out a breath of relief. Being after twelve, there was a chance that Tonks had come over for lunch, or was in her bedroom going over notes during a break or something. Tonks was someone he was comfortable with and knew would not talk about his abuse unless he wanted to, so she was like a cupboard to him, a safe haven. He walked out of the room and closed the door quietly, heading down the hall.
The house seemed almost too quiet for him. Even though he was used to the quiet, and Grimmauld Place was either silent and still or buzzing with quiet chaos, he had grown used to it even after being here such a short time. But now it just seemed too quiet. The house wasn't settling, there was no radio going off from Tonks or Sirius's room, no sounds of shuffling people down the hall, or even the mutters of Kreacher the deranged house-elf. It was so quiet he could hear himself breathing. As he passed by a door, a sudden quiet rattling startled him and he looked at the closed door. Was somebody in there, or was Kreacher trying to steal something again?
Harry entered the drawing room and looked around. The walls still smelled like paint, and specks of purple and blue were still drying on the floor and walls like they had been yesterday too. Despite their giant paint fight, the walls had somehow finished orderly, whether it had been manually or magically Harry didn't know. All he did know was that a rattling sound had drawn Harry into the room and from curiosity he wanted to see what it was.
By now Harry had found himself rather acquainted with the Black house, and knew that if you see or hear anything strange, not to go near it because there is a seventy seven percent chance that whatever it is highly dangerous. Nevertheless, Harry still had that young childlike curiosity going on him, and didn't even think about the risk as he entered the room and looked four the source of the rattling sound. His uncle might have managed to take away his imagination, but his curiosity was well intact. The noises sounded again and Harry turned to see that It was coming from the far corner where a wardrobe that was currently covered with a paint streaked sheet on top of it. The wardrobe reminded Harry of something a few years ago. A rattling wardrobe, Remus teaching in class, Snape in a dress. . .
"Remus!" Harry called as he backed away from the wardrobe. He didn't fancy it shooting out and turning it into a dementor, or worse: His uncle. He headed to the door and called Remus again. He had just reached the door when it shut on its own and Harry heard the faint click of a lock. He heard a small gale of cackling laughter on the other side and soft pattering feet. He turned the doorknob and found it locked.
Upon hearing a crash behind him, Harry turned around quickly and the torches on the wall went out, leaving him in a completely dark room. His breath was quickening and he turned and started to hammer on the door. He knew the boggart was loose out of the wardrobe, and he shut his eyes, hoping that the old childlike logic would pull through: If he couldn't see it, it couldn't see him.
"Remus! Sirius! Somebody, let me out! Help!" He shouted. He heard someone maybe two floors down calling his name, and he was about to desperately call back, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Harry froze with his eyes wide in terror as the hand gripped like a vice, and spun him on the spot. Harry's wide eyes traveled up and he found himself staring into the face of his Uncle Vernon.
Harry screamed, and tried to wriggle out of the gasp but the boggart Uncle Vernon would let go of him. He turned and pinned him down onto the floor, his knee digging into Harry's ribs. Harry was still screaming but Vernon placed a thick hand onto his mouth.
"No point in screaming, boy, nobody is going to come. Everybody hates your sorry ass and doesn't care about you. They only like the boy-who-lived, who isn't even that great in the first place. Can't even stand up to a muggle like me, can you? You're going to pay for what you did to your friends and family and making them suffer, and you are going to pay now! You will pay for killing me and killing my family!"
Harry closed his eyes and waited for the blow as he quickly threw his hands over his head to protect it and started to scream in fear, his mind in such a panic that he didn't hear the door crash open and Sirius's screams while Remus yelled, "Riddikulus," and the weight on top of him vanished. When it did, Harry curled into a ball, unbeknownst that the boggart that had turned into Uncle Vernon was now in front of Sirius, and unknown that there seemed to be double Harry in the room, one panicked on the floor, the other dead. Remus quickly got rid of the boggart and Sirius rushed to Harry's side.
"Harry! It's alright, it was a boggart, it's not real." Sirius said grabbing his arms and bringing them off of his face. Harry yelled and started to struggle away, but Sirius held him into place. "Harry open your eyes!" He said it in such a commanding way that Harry opened them out of fear and stopped struggling the moment he saw Sirius sitting beside him. A sudden wave of relief hit him and he went limp.
"S-sirius?" He gasped. Sirius let go of his hands and drew Harry into a bone crushing hug. Harry returned it quickly, his need for comfort overtaking his embarrassment. He felt his eyes becoming glassy and he quickly blinked the tears away. He couldn't cry, he had told himself earlier that he wouldn't. Crying was a weakness, and he was already weak enough to begin with. The boggart was right, he was too weak to stand up to his muggle uncle, and even weaker when he couldn't even face that boggart. He couldn't stop the tears falling, and he stopped trying.
"I'm so sorry Harry." Tonks said crouching down beside them. "Remus told me to check the room for any dark objects - I just can't believe I didn't find that boggart, it's all my fault."
Harry loosened himself in Sirius's embrace enough so that he could turn and face Tonks, his head resting on Sirius's chest slightly. He felt drained, like all of his energy had been sucked away with a vacuum. It wasn't like the exhaustion he had felt earlier, because this time there was no numbness to clog the pain. It had come back with a vengeance and gripped at his heart mercilessly, twice as worse than before.
"Tonks it's not your fault." Harry said quietly. "I heard the rattling and came inside to see what it was. That was my first mistake. When I realized it was a Boggart I called for Remus to come help and tried to leave, but I was locked inside the room." He paused, deciding whether he should tell the room or not that it had actually been Kreacher who had locked him in the room and decided against it. If Sirius knew, he would go ballistic and Kreacher would probably end up with his head on the wall. As much as he didn't like that low life elf, he decided that even he didn't deserve death. After all it was only a boggart, a boggart couldn't physically harm him, just mentally.
"How did you get locked inside?" Remus asked.
Damn it, he thought. That man is still way too nosy for his own good.
Harry shrugged and played dumb. "I don't know, one minute it was open and the next it was closed and locked. I tried to get out but by then U-uncle Vern - er - it - had me cornered."
Sirius had decreased his grip on Harry a little bit, but was still holding him as though he was afraid the boy might break. Harry didn't mind this, it was calming him down greatly to the point where his heart was nearly back to a normal weight. True, the room still felt way too hot for his liking, but hey, it was better than having a panic attack.
"It wasn't real." Sirius whispered. Harry nodded, knowing that his uncle may not have been real, but his echoing words were. "Harry, I am so sorry for what I said this morning in the kitchen. I really didn't mean to upset you, I just wanted to make you understand."
Harry pulled away and looked up at him curiously. "Understand what?'
"Understand that not everything is in your control. I wanted you to relate your situation with what I had gone through. I had blamed myself for your parent's death for so long before I realized that I wasn't the one who killed them. I didn't spill the secret to Voldemort and I didn't pick up a wand and hurt them. I had no way of knowing what was going to happen, no control over the situation. It wasn't my fault. Just like you couldn't control Voldemort going after your relatives, and you couldn't control whether they died or not."
"But he went there looking for me." Harry whispered and allowed himself to be held in Sirius's tight embrace.
"Yes, but there was no way you could have known. Nothing you could have done to stop it. You need to understand that some things happen for a reason, and these things you can't control. It's a part of life, kiddo."
"It's just like how you couldn't control the way your relatives thought about you." Remus said quietly, sitting on the floor beside the pair. "They had a biased opinion of magic, mainly because they didn't understand. It wasn't your fault that they abused you, Harry. You did nothing to start it. It was their lack of understand and their fear of magic that drove them to violence. They didn't know anything about magic, or what you could do with it. So they tried to get control over you with violence. It wasn't anything you did."
"But it still hurts." Harry answered quietly. "Why couldn't they just have made it simple and loved me for who I was? They loved Dudley and he wasn't anywhere near perfect."
"That's because they pictured Dudley as the perfect son. They birthed him and raised him to be perfect. You came to them on a doorstep, and they were told you possessed magic." Remus said. "They were worried that their perfect lives were tainted with something they viewed with abnormal. They tried to take anything that seemed wrong, or in their minds weird or freakish," Harry winced at this word. "And turn it into something that needed to be punished."
"They didn't hate you Harry." Tonks suddenly said. "Nobody could hate you. They didn't like what they thought you were, because even if you lived with them for fourteen years, they didn't know you at all."
There was a silence as Harry processed this information. It made sense, and the Dursleys did seem the type to act out from fear with violence. Perhaps Sirius and Remus were right after all. He nodded, his head against Sirius's chest again. The Dursleys had always been prejudice, whether it was of magic or of a neighbor who weren't as rich as they were. They thought of themselves as superior, and it was something Harry had always hated, because no matter how much they tried or believed themselves to be, the Dursley's were nowhere near superior.
"Here's what you should understand Harry." Sirius said, running his finger through the tangled locks. "When your mother and Aunt Petunia were younger they were as close as sisters could get. They had their fights yes, but they were around each other all the time. Then Petunia went to high school and sort of left Lily alone for a year when she got friends and got the spotlight of the family with her clubs, charities and things like that.
"Then Lily got her letter to Hogwarts. Petunia had been used to being in the spotlight, and now that she wasn't with a witch in the family, she grew jealous and a hatred of magic arose, and with it was the hatred of her sister. They grew distant and soon they didn't even talk to each other anymore. That's where it started. Ever since then it seemed to build up, and then she met Vernon, who shared her views and had even more hatred of it than Petunia if that was possible."
"But I don't understand." Harry said. "If Professor Dumbledore knew that I was going to a family that hated magic, then why did he let me? I mean, I understand the protection but couldn't he have found a different protection with someone who didn't hate me?"
Sirius and Remus shared a look.
"We don't know why Dumbledore chose what he did, but I can assure you this." Remus said looking him in the eye. "If Dumbledore knew what was going on, he would never have left you there. He thought it was for the best, and he was wrong. He does care for you Harry, and he knew that life with them was going to be hard. How hard exactly, even he didn't know. Despite what everyone says, Dumbledore doesn't know everything."
Harry nodded and brought his legs up to his chest, breathing in deeply. He had always thought of Dumbledore as the man who knew everything and could fix everything. This, of all things, was something he overlooked, and was something he could not fixed. He sighed, the smell of paint was strong and making him lightheaded, but he hardly noticed.
"I know that he's gone." Harry whispered. "I know that he can't hurt me, but I'm still scared. I don't know why, but I am. I'm scared of him . . . but I'm also sorry he's dead."
"That's normal, Harry." Tonks said, scooting over next to him and hugging him awkwardly, though brief enough to give him some space. "It's alright for you to feel sorry for his death, but it's also okay to be angry with him. And no matter what, no matter how much your scared, Remus Sirius and I would never let anything like that happen to you again. We promise, as your family to do everything we can to help you and love you, and no matter what you think we'd never be disappointed in you or hate you for any reason."
Harry looked at the floor.
"She's right." Sirius said. "We will never turn our backs on you or hurt you in any way. We absolutely promise."
Harry looked up at Sirius and smiled. The pain that had been gripping his heart was starting to fade. It was still there, and it would probably be there for a very long time, haunting him. He knew that it was going to take a long time for him to get over everything, but he felt like now he was ready to face it all. Knowing that Sirius Remus and Tonks thought of him as family, ones he could turn to when he needed them, it was enough to help some of it go away. He didn't have to face any of this alone, and it made it easier.
Maybe life didn't have to be so complicated after all.
Authors Note: If you seem to notice an alter in my writing style (there may be or not) its not my fault. Never again will I write an entire chapter after I read 60 pages of an abuse story, it alters my perspective, but I wanted to finish this and I also wanted to read . . . sigh . . . I love weekends. Not only do I update, but school isn't in session! On a totally unrelated topic and even though this has no relevance to you, I wanted to announce that I got my license on Monday. I was happy for a total of 3 seconds. Then I realized I don't have a car and my mom won't let me drive with my friends, oh well. Anyways enough about my life and my depressive mood, thank you for reviewing, please continue to do so, beta position is opened if you want to do it while I review some applicants, just send me an e-mail. Review please and keep reading too!
BlondxCrayon