Blood is Shed
A/N: I can't believe this story is nearly over. I don't want to end it as it's one of my favourites I've been writing. Maybe a sequel..but then I'll be hated I suppose. : laugh : Anyway, here's a chapter eight. I haven't quite decided yet if I want one more chapter or two (though in the last update I was certain it was one), we'll see how things go.
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The only thing he had realised he couldn't do was breathe.
The paramedics tended to his nose, pressing a hard lump of cold metal above the bridge where his bone had shattered. The rest was mopped up carefully from his upper lip. It was now stained scarlet.
Through squinting, watery eyes, Harry flung a glance at his bent glasses, twisted from where the frame had connected with the radiator. He felt as though he had been knocked out. He couldn't remember anything...except his final harsh words to his uncle before blackness had erased all memory.
I called him a git. A fat, lazy old git.
"Um," he made a tiny noise as the doctor's knuckle pressed into the skin by accident. Every hand on his face was ice cold. He felt stiff, too.
Petunia was the only one stood behind, watching the action. Her hands were now ravelled in her apron, twisted and mangled in a field of cotton. She moved from one foot to the other, as though inspecting the work being done, and if she could in some way, give advice to improve their treatment.
"What's wrong with him?" she asked, expecting an answer.
The doctor sighed. "Broken nose. Quite a bit of bleeding too. He must have taken a hard hit to that radiator." He turned to look at her. "Did the boy fall?"
There was an odd gulping, grunting sound coming suspiciously from Vernon's chair. Petunia was unable to tell whether it was guilt or some kind of message he was trying to send across to her. She took her own road and pretended as though she hadn't heard. The doctor was now staring at her carefully.
Then, a small, weak voice rose from below them.
"By accident," Harry mumbled. "I was running, and I tripped." His eyes moved to stare into those of the adult tending to him. "I didn't know I had...broken it. Is it really bad?"
The second doctor smiled now, his hand patting Harry's shoulder. "Nothing that a brave kid like you can't manage," he chuckled. "Seven or eight years old, aren't you, and not a tear in sight? That means you're made of strong stuff." The poultice was removed from Harry's nose as the doctor laid out small gauze strips along the hall carpet. Looking down made Harry feel ill.
"You'll just have to walk around with a bandage across for a while," was the explanation. "I'm sure that'll be no problem for you, eh son? Plenty of kids like you love showing off injuries, like you've survived a war or something."
"Yeah," Harry agreed uncomfortably.
Petunia was still gaping at her nephew. He struck him. Vernon struck the boy. He never mentioned it, that Vernon struck the boy.
She had always feared that this would happen one day. Her husband had often become so close to giving Harry a good, hard smack that she had quickly come to hold him back, her heart full of fright for what would happen to them, if he were ever to become hurt from their faults.
Vernon struck the boy. Vernon struck the boy. He made him bleed.
What will become of this? She sighed. Wait, it was an accident. Vernon never meant to break the child's nose. Perhaps they won't care. Perhaps no one will. Potter didn't...
That was the hardest thing to accept out of them all. She was certain that Harry would have blamed his uncle for the misfortune, but he never uttered a name. She could still hear Vernon mumbling frantically from the kitchen. Her thoughts could also have been running through his own head, from the way he was trapped in a panic. It was as if he half expected the 'burglar' to come charging through the front door and throw him by the wrists into the wall.
"Is...is he all right – are you all right?" Petunia found her voice at last.
Now it was Harry's turn to gape, no clarification needed.
"Oh. I'm...fine," he said quietly. Somehow he couldn't look her in the face.
"Do you need anything?"
There was a small silence. "No, thank you."
His words were muffled by another trickle of blood dribbling down into his mouth. The doctor dabbed at it quickly, wrapping Harry's nose with the gauze and making sure not to bring any pain onto the child. Harry really didn't care anymore. Everything seemed so strange. Was he dreaming this?
His eyes kept darting towards his aunt. Open and staring at her unusual behaviour. She was frightened. She was actually frightened for him. When had that ever happened before? It was only a broken nose...it wasn't like he was dying. Maybe it was all an act before the doctors...she wanted to act like the loving parent – um, guardian.
His lips were tightly opened as he continued to stare.
"Aunt..."
"There we go, you're on your way," the doctor smiled as he finished fastening the gauze to Harry's nose. They brought forward a small mirror too, just to show the boy that there was nothing to worry about. When he glanced into it, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry out in alarm.
He looked ridiculous.
His nose was completely white, and had seemed to have swollen an extra size, reminding Harry of the garden gnomes in the neighbour's yard to the left. He wanted to touch it, to make sure it was there and real, but then again, he didn't want to. What Dudley would say if he could see him now...
"I know it's a little strange at first, but you'll get used to it," added the second doctor, noticing Harry's glumness. "A few weeks and you'll be able to remove it."
A few weeks? Harry's heart dropped like a stone. He would have to go to school...with this great big white mess on his face. The bullies would never have the end of it. They would break it again and again; so that he would wear it until the day he fell over and died.
"Oh. Um..."
"Thank you," Petunia said stiffly. Harry's disappointment was clearly showing.
He still didn't say anything.
"If there are any worries or problems let us know." The doctors picked up their equipment, ruffled the young boy's hair and left in the next five minutes. Petunia saw them off with her squinting eyes, sighed and shut the front door quietly, a tight ball in her throat.
"Have they gone?" Vernon bellowed.
"Yes, Vernon. Long gone!" she called back, a hand pressed to her forehead.
What about the boy? Doesn't he care? After all, he had caused this.
She was unsure why she felt anger towards her husband about this. Many times they had sent the child to bed without supper, sometimes without tea too. They constantly shunned him, sneered at his suggestions and laughed at his serious comments. But now that blood had been shown...it stunned her. It had been an accident, but...Vernon hadn't been there to help clean up his mess.
She took a few steps back toward the hallway, her knees shaking.
"How are you in there, boy?"
Harry was now standing against the stairs, quite ready to run into his cupboard – the door was open a crack. He had his back turned from his aunt, so as to hide his padded nose. He was hunched over a little.
"My glasses are broken," he said in a tiny voice.
Petunia swallowed. "Can't you just fix them with tape like always?"
"No, it's different. They're not snapped, they're bent. They won't fit."
There was another long pause. Petunia wanted him to disappear into his room, just to save the uncomfortable waiting. But he still stood there, hunched over sadly, and now she could see something being played with in his hands. She looked over at the radiator, and imagined her own nose being smashed against the rim. A hand fell over it at the thought.
"That's not your fault," she snapped. "You'll just have to make the best of it, while you can."
"But they won't fit, Aunt Petunia. I can't see - "
"Well then, you'll get another pair. Don't be difficult."
Harry finally sighed and turned to open his cupboard door wider. There were a few lone blood stains on his baggy shirt and a darkened stain past his lip that the doctors forgot to clean. Above the bridge of his nose, there was a swelling, which Petunia knew would eventually turn the undersides of his eyes black.
Those eyes that had stared at her as he had fallen. That had been the first time since he had been dropped on their doorstep that she had seen her sister's light. It was as though she were inside him, calling out. It had scared her.
He's in your care now, she thought she heard Lily say. I'm trusting you with him.
"Your uncle didn't mean to break it," she said abruptly. "You know that."
Harry said nothing. He didn't even go into the room.
"He only struck you because you shouted at him. You made him angry."
"He shouted too," Harry muttered back.
There was another pause. Then, "Why do you have to argue with him? Just accept his decisions. We all do. He only said he was going to call the police on a burglar. Do you want to be robbed of house and home?"
"He wasn't a burglar," Harry said. "I...I don't know what he was."
At that moment Petunia wanted to tell him exactly who that person was. It would have made things so much easier, but she held herself back. From the other room she could hear Vernon getting up and moving about towards the kitchen. She glanced at her watch, it was still early morning.
"Why don't you go to bed?" she suggested.
Harry really didn't want to. He had just left his bed not two hours ago, and didn't feel tired at all. Going back felt like a silly idea. But then again, he didn't like the idea of wandering around, showing off his nose. He would have liked to see his uncle's face though, and the extent of his guilt.
He went without a word, making Petunia feel worse somehow.
Vernon toddled into the hall, noticing the empty corridor and sighed to himself. "I thought they were going to be here all morning," he said gruffly. "Don't these people understand that we also have lives? They probably spent more time fixing up his nose than actually going to a murder scene or something - "
"I thought it was more than his nose," Petunia interrupted. "I thought you had smashed his skull." Her face was white.
Vernon blubbered a little, and gulped. "You know as much as I do that it was an accident, Petunia," he gasped. "You don't think they'll - "
"Ssh!" she broke him off again, indicating to the cupboard door. "I hopefully doubt it. It was a mistake."
They exchanged glances through a short silence.
"Wasn't it?"
"Yes – yes, of course it was! What kind of man do you take me for? But did you hear what he called me? Did you?"
Yes, Petunia had. Her eyes watched the bedroom cupboard again.
"He's becoming a rebel, Petunia – at eight years old! You'd think that the way we treat him would turn him to rights, pay us respect! What's the boy going to be like at ten, and twelve? It has to stop!"
Petunia nodded, barely listening. She turned back to the kitchen with a swish of her head, and finished washing the dishes, her rubber gloves becoming covered in soapy water. She didn't even look out of the window to see the neighbours peering back at her, wondering why the doctors had visited.
The child had a cold, and now this. It was strange that everything happened to him. He could be cursed. She shivered thinking about it.
Lily was strange. And so is he. She's passed on her spirit in him.
What if Vernon's right? What if he finds out who he is? He'll turn on us...
Why did he have to be dropped on us?
Why couldn't he have gone too?
She felt sick. The last thought left her with a lump of metal in her throat. Maybe it would have better for all of them if he had died with his parents.
She moaned to herself, wondering if anyone could hear her dark thoughts.
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An hour or so later, she went to see if he was still awake. She peered through the cracks of the door and saw him reading by light bulb, looking intent and with his legs drawn in tightly. She suddenly had a strange urge to...do something. But what had she done wrong? Nothing. She could have left him there bleeding. But the paramedics were called.
"Are you asleep?" She pretended she couldn't see anything. She was happy that her voice sounded gruff and uncomforting.
There was no answer. She saw him look up, but then turn back to his book. She never moved from the door.
"Is it true?" he mumbled out, ignoring her. "What Uncle Vernon said?"
"What rubbish are you on about now?"
"That he was going to take me to the orphanage. He said so. He said that's what you were going to do when I was brought here. You don't want me."
It was as though a firework had set itself off in Petunia's head. She swallowed. "Quiet. Don't talk about things that you don't understand."
"I meant what I said too," Harry replied, his voice growing a little louder, but still remaining calm and sullen. His aunt saw him look deeper into the pages of his book. "I wish I had been taken to the orphanage. They would have treated me better. Everyone hates me here. I thought family were supposed to love you."
More silence. Petunia bit her lip. Words were no option anymore.
"I'm not loved here. I'll...I'll run away or something. I'll run away and find someone who cares about me. You won't care, no one will - "
"That's enough!" Petunia snapped, her heart beating with fear. She felt herself slipping into a panic, similar to the ones her husband had. Everything he was saying she wanted. So why was she so afraid of him saying it?
Her hand was clenched and throbbing. She brushed some hair from her forehead, leaving a wet, soapy trail. Harry had fallen quiet again.
"While you're in this house, you live in this house, and you stay in this house," she said slowly. "If I or your uncle catch you running away, you even think about it, and we'll lock you up until you've forgotten how to. You will learn from discipline, mark my words. I won't have some brat growing up in this house who wants everything his way. I won't!"
"But you are!" Harry protested, his voice strangely tight. "That's Dudley! That's Dudley! I never get anything my way. How can you say that, Aunt Petunia? It's so unfair!"
"HUSH!" Petunia was pressing her hands roughly over her ears, her teeth grinding together in frustration. "Please, I can't take anymore of your groaning! And your voice is sending me mad, hearing you speak in that clogged way! You never even apologised to your uncle for calling him such names! Disgraceful child..."
Harry couldn't believe it. "But he said things to me first!" he cried. "And then he hit me! He's made me talk like this!" He hated the fact that tears were welling up behind his eyes. He plunged his nose further into the pages of the book, to hide himself away from everything.
"I hate him, Aunt Petunia."
"Why you despicable – how dare you! How dare you say that? He took you in!"
"He doesn't love me! Neither do you! I hate...I hate everything!"
Petunia was stunned to see a tear softly falling down his cheek. The last time she remembered seeing him cry in front of her was probably when he was a baby. She never even thought about it – she just supposed that he had grown with no emotional sadness...unlike her Dudders. She saw him wipe his nose, and then wince from the pain.
"I want Mum."
Petunia stumbled around on her feet. "Well, she's not here. Neither of them are, how many times do I have to say so? You're old enough now to understand this. Stop snivelling and get to bed. The doctor says you need rest. So rest!"
She left. She left with a haunting pain in her heart.
Harry wiped away his tears, frowning at the closed door, and placed the book back onto the bed, underside up. If it wasn't for the thought of food, he would have gladly made that tiny room his forever home. The thought of leaving it only left open options for disaster.
He sighed, lying himself down onto the pillow, and shut his eyes. His nose throbbed constantly. It felt worse than it did when he had a cold. How tiresome it was getting to breathe only through the mouth. He scrunched his eyes tight when a light tapping came into hearing.
"Go away," he said aloud, thinking it was the door.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Please...go away."
Tap. Tap, tap. Tap.
Wait. It wasn't the door. It didn't sound the same. It sounded like...glass.
He sat up in bed, listening hard, a tremor of interest and excitement rushing through him. He looked around, thinking it may have been an animal or something, but then it came again. That sound...
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Someone was at the upstairs window.
: To be continued :
A/N: Cliffhanger: sigh : I know you hate me. Please, please, please R&R!
