A.N.
I realized that I missed Dumbledore's funeral. Just…imagine that it has happened, pretty much the same way it does in the book. I really don't want to go back and write something so sad.
I do not own Harry Potter.
...
Mrs. Weasley was still talking, and more and more people were staring. Harry was beginning to panic.
Ron interrupted his mother.
"Um, Mum? Could we maybe get to the car? Harry's getting a lot of attention, and there is something we need to tell you. Preferably in private." Ron said, glancing around.
Mrs. Weasley seemed surprised for a moment, but then smiled.
"Of course, dear. Let's go to the car, then." To Harry's great relief they walked to the car and piled in. Mr. Weasley was about to start the old automobile when Ron stopped him.
"You may want to not be driving when you hear this, Dad. It's going to be a shock." Ron warned. With a concerned frown, Mr. Weasley didn''t start the car and turned to face his son.
"What is it, Ron? We've heard of Dumbledore's death; it's been in the papers. It's terrible, I know, but you must realize that we've heard about it for a week? It would hardly come as a surprise…"
This time Hermione interrupted.
"This is about Harry, Mr. Weasley. Something happened in the attack. It's…quite serious."
Now all of the Weasleys excluding Ginny and Ron were staring at Harry.
"What's wrong, deary? You don't look as if you're not well." Mrs. Weasley said. Harry fidgeted, just wanting Ron or Hermione or even Ginny to tell them already and get this over with.
Now the Weasleys were really concerned by Harry's silence. Even Fred and George were serious for once, probably realizing that this genuinely was something horrible.
Harry nudged Hermione, urging her to get on with it. She cleared her throat.
"Umm, well, it's sort of difficult to say…" Harry nudged her again, but finally Ginny piped up.
"Harry's become a mute." She said. Even though she didn't speak loudly her words silenced the car like a thunder clap.
"What?" Mrs. Weasley asked, in a whisper. "Harry, is that true?" Harry nodded, not meeting her eyes.
"Oh, Harry!" she burst out, tears leaking from her eyes. She leaned into the back seat and pulled Harry into an embrace, rubbing his back and squeezing him tightly.
"Harry, you listen to me. Whatever help you need, you come to me. You understand? I am not going to let you try to take care of yourself and push through this without any help. Do you understand?" Mrs. Weasley said, and then burst out in a fresh wave of sobs. Harry nodded into her shoulder, patting her back and hoping to calm her down.
Eventually she pulled away, rubbing her eyes, and Harry could see the rest of the Weasleys' reactions. Mr. Weasley looked as if her were in shock, and the twins were looking grim.
"I mean it, Harry. If you're having trouble with something I want to know. Okay?" Mrs. Weasley asked. Harry nodded again, this time meeting her eyes to let her know that he meant it.
"H…how…how long?" Mr. Weasley choked out. Harry did a quick calculation: three days unconscious, and then six until the end of term. He held up nine fingers.
"Since the attack. Harry was hit with a rogue curse in the neck. It…it was horrible just hearing about it. It…the curse…it…." Ginny couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Here, I've got his explanation that he gave to McGonagall." Hermione said, rummaging in her bag. She pulled out a piece of parchment that Harry recognized as the scroll he had written the story for McGonagall on. She handed it to him.
He looked at it for a second, remembering the contents. Then he passed it to Mr. Weasley, who began to read Harry's explanation of that night. Everyone quickly caught on that Harry was relating the tale of Dumbledore's murder as well as his own mutilation, and so no one spoke while Harry's words were read.
Even after Mr. Weasley had finished, everyone was silent. Mrs. Weasley was crying again, this time silently. The twins still hadn't spoken.
"Harry also has the full medical report from Madam Pomfrey. It shows exactly what the damage was." Hermione said, clearing her throat again.
"Harry, we're so sorry. For this to happen…it's horrible." Mr. Weasley said.
"Yeah, mate. We had no idea…how are you managing?" George asked.
"Ok. Somethings hard. Happy here." Harry spelled out in sign. Everyone stared, but then Hermione translated.
"He said that he's okay, but some things are hard. He's happy to be here." Harry smiled uncertainly. He knew that the Weasleys must have no idea what he had just done; not many wizards were disabled so most of the wizarding community had no idea what British Sign Language was. Hermione had known about it because she was a muggle-born, but she had had to explain it to Ron, apparently.
"What did you just do?" Fred asked Harry. This made Harry happy; some people he had interacted with at Hogwarts had asked questions to his friends, instead of to him directly. It had annoyed him no end.
"Sign language. Used deaf mute."
Hermione again translated, and more.
"It's called Sign Language. It's used by the deaf and mutes to communicate, since it doesn't require any sounds and is completely reliant of visuals. Since there aren't many mutes in the world the only times I've ever seen it used is with deaf muggles, since the magical community can fix most defects before they become a problem."
"That isn't what he said!" Ron pointed out. Harry smiled and leaned back to watch his friends bicker.
"It's close enough, Ron."
"Harry only said 'sign language, used deaf mute.'"
"It's the same thing, Ron."
"No, it isn't! You made it seem like Harry quoted a book!"
"They needed more of an explanation, Ron. I couldn't just translate what Harry said and leave it at that."
"Yeah, but you could have…"
Harry sliced his hand through the air between them and rolled his eyes.
"Enough. Mr. W drive."
"He said…" Hermione began, but Ron interrupted.
"I'll translate this time! Harry said that was enough, and for 'Mr. W' to drive."
Fred and George, even though they had been somber, now chuckled at Harry's shortened version of their father's title.
"Do all three of you know this 'sign language'?" Mr. Weasley asked as he started to car.
"Yeah, but Hermione knows the most." Ron said.
"Ron and Harry know the alphabet, so they can only just spell words out. But really, sign language is much more complicated. There are signs for nearly every word and whole new grammar rules and syntax. There are also different versions of sign language for every country." Hermione rambled in typical Hermione fashion.
"So, Harry, you're just spelling out words?" Fred asked, and Harry nodded.
"Can you spell out my name?" George inquired eagerly. Harry smiled and nodded, then showed George the signs for each letter of his name while Hermione said the corresponding letter.
"George."
Harry went over it with George until the older boy could do it, and then Fred urged him to teach him his own name. So Harry spelled that out, too.
"Fred."
"Wicked!" the twins chimed simultaneously after spelling their names to each other, simultaneously.
"Teach us some more, Harry!" They begged. Harry, relieved that their attention had been distracted from something other than his silence, taught them the entire alphabet by the time they reached the Burrow. As they walked up to the house they were spelling out messages to each other.
"Wicked."George spelled, slowly.
"Our secret code!" Fred replied, just as slowly. They hadn't yet gained the fluidity that Harry, Ron, and Hermione had achieved. Harry tapped on their shoulders and spelled out his own message, quickly.
"Not secret. I watching."
Even though Harry had just dashed their hopes for a secret language, the twins were overjoyed to understand their first message from Harry.
...
The rest of the day was spent settling into the Burrow. Harry unpacked his belongings in Ron's room, finding that someone had moved a chest of drawers into the room for his belongings. Ron also "unpacked" but in reality he simply emptied his clothes onto the floor and shoved everything else into his closet, with no organization whatsoever.
They had a wonderful dinner prepared by Mrs. Weasley, and Hermione explained her plans to get into London to buy some things for Harry. The Weasleys immediately agreed, and it was decided that they would take a trip into London the following morning.
That night, Harry didn't have a single nightmare – a rare occurrence. He just felt so safe in the Burrow with the Weasleys that he didn't think it was possibly for anything to bother him at the moment.
So, when he woke and realized that he hadn't had a single nightmare, he 'whooped' in joy. He felt safe in doing this since his new version of a whoop was completely silent.
Breakfast was rushed as everyone prepared to go out; Harry and Hermione had to advise the wizard family on what to wear in order to actually blend in with the muggles. In the end, thankfully, they did look reasonable.
The first stop was a bookstore in muggle London to get several notepads and pencils for Harry, as well as a book on Sign Language. As Hermione had said, mutes were nonexistent (as far as she had gathered from reading) in the magical world, and deafness was extremely rare. Therefore it was unlikely that a magical bookstore would carry books on Sign Language.
They bought five small notepads and a box of pencils with a sharpener as well as several pens, as well as three books on sign language. Hermione used her muggle money and promised to let Harry pay her back later.
Then they reached the Leaky Cauldron.
Harry was in such a good mood that he had forgotten that the wizarding world now knew of his disability. He received a shock when he walked into the pub and found that Rita Skeeter, along with several other reporters and photographers, was waiting for him.
They bombarded the Weasleys and Hermione with questions, snapped pictures of Harry, and in short made themselves as intrusive and nosy as possible. Harry, having some idea of what it was like to be constantly asked questions by people who had no business asking, grabbed his friends' hands and forcibly shoved his way through the reporters until he reached the door. He shooed them out into the small alleyway and then went back for the elder Weasleys.
He completely ignored the reporters and photographers, instead dragging the Weasleys through them without any care if he stepped on a toe or shoved a nosy reported out of the way. He got the two Weasley parents out the door, and then went through the same process with Fred and George.
Once they were all out in the alleyway Mr. Weasley cast a locking charm on the door so that the reporters could not follow, at least until they figured out what Mr. Weasley had done.
Harry scrawled a message on his notepad.
"It will be the same in the alley, though maybe not as condensed. You all just need to completely ignore them. Just push and shove your way through and don't talk. Trust me, that's the only way to do it. Hopefully they'll eventually get the message and leave, but we may have to deal with them the entire time we're in there."
Hermione read the message so that everyone knew what Harry said, and they all nodded.
"Of course, we shall trust you judgment on these matters of paparazzi, Mr. Celebrity." Fred teased. Harry rolled his eyes and wrote another message as he scowled, thinking of that obnoxious Skeeter woman.
"I hate being famous. Paparazzi are just annoying, and they tell all your secrets to the world if they get even a whisper of them."
...
As Harry predicted, they were besieged by reporters and their camera men as soon as they entered the alleyway. They all followed Harry's advice and pushed their way to the bookstore, where the owner of the shop barred the reporters from entry.
"I'll not have my shop clogged up with your lot." The owner ranted as he locked the door, muggle style.
"Thank you, for that. They've been at us since we entered the alley." Mr. Weasley said.
"Why?" the owner asked. He couldn't see Harry, who was hidden behind the twins. Harry stepped into view and gave the owner a little smile.
"Ah… I see. They don't have any empathy, those reporters. While you are in here, at least, I''ll give you some peace. Is it true, what everyone is saying?"
"If you are asking whether Harry is a mute or not, the answer would be yes. But he's learning how to cope." Hermione replied.
"We're here for books on silent magic. Could you tell us where they are?" Mrs. Weasley asked.
The shopkeeper led them to his selection of books on the subject and then left them to it. Harry ended up buying four books, all on silent magic at different levels. Then they braced themselves to go out into the alley once more.
...
They made it back to the Burrow in one piece, just barely.
They had lunch, spent discussing the reporters. Then Harry, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George opened up Harry's book on beginner's sign language and spent several hours learning different signs for common nouns. Hermione spent the time doing her summer homework.
The evening passed smoothly and without incident. Bill and Charlie were going to come to dinner that night, so Harry wondered what their reaction to his muteness would be like. He wasn't as apprehensive about this revealing though, since he didn't know Bill and Charlie as well as the rest of the Weasleys.
The two oldest Weasley brothers were shocked, obviously, but they quickly caught on that Harry didn't want to be treated differently, so there were no awkward scenes. They all went out to play a match of Quidditch, and came back sweaty and laughing, talking, or in Harry's case, signing, about various moves and stunts that had been pulled off.
Everything went perfectly normally until George cracked a particularly funny joke and Harry, who had been trying not to seem strange by laughing in his silent way, couldn't contain his laughter.
Everyone laughed at George's joke but they soon noticed Harry's chest heaving and his erratic breaths. They stared in concern, thinking that maybe something was wrong, until Harry realized their reaction and quickly got himself under control. He signed:
"Laughing. Strange I know. No chords, no sound, no matter what." Harry finger-spelled.
"He was laughing. Says he knows it's strange. But he has no vocal chords anymore, so he can't make any sound whatsoever. No laughing, screaming, moaning, groaning, nothing. Hermione and I have gotten used to it, but…" Ron shrugged.
"It's alright, Harry. It's your laugh now, so we'll just have to get used to it. Forgive us for our reactions." Bill said diplomatically.
Harry nodded and gave him a small, wan smile. But it was then that he realized that, no matter what he did, he would always be different. His unrealistic hopes for a normal, unnoticeable life had been completely dashed.
And he couldn't help but feel depressed about that.
