Harry woke with a jolt in the morning to the sound of his Aunt calling his name upstairs. Jerking awake, his leg flew out and kicked loudly against the door to the cupboard. Pulling his leg back quickly he huddled in the corner afraid that the world outside wasn't the world he went to bed with. The soft footsteps of his Aunt came down the stairs, and a moment later the angry face of his Aunt appeared in his doorway. As soon as she saw the absolute fear on his face the angry words that she was about to spit out froze in her throat. Her face softening she crouched down in front of him and said "Harry. Harry, Harry!". Once she had his attention she continued "What's the matter?".
"I don't want to disappear." Giving voice to his fear caused the tears that he'd been holding back to come forth in wracking sobs.
Somewhat at a loss, she held her hand out hovering as if to reach for him. "Why do you think you're going to disappear?"
"I... I… If I don't sl…p I'll di…p…er …nd I …'t wa..t to".
"What do you mean?"
After failing to form another sentence, Harry blindly pulled the letter out from his hiding place, crumpling it slightly, and held it out in a shaking hand towards his Aunt.
Wondering how he managed to get a letter written on parchment, she opened the letter and glanced at it dismissively until she recognised the handwriting. As she recognised the neat handwriting of her sister she collapsed to the floor and quietly read the letter in shaking hands.
"Oh Lily… Oh Lily, why didn't you ever tell me.", tears started falling down her face as she got to the third paragraph, "Why didn't you tell me you stupid cow. I could have helped, we could have meditated together, but you had to ruin it, we could have spent time with Grandpapa together."
Finishing the letter she looked over at Harry who was still crying with great silent wracking sobs, so she reached out her hand and called softly, "Boy, come here. Come on.".
Dejectedly, harry clambered out of the cupboard over to his Aunt. Instead of anything that he was expecting, for the first time that he could recall she pulled him into a hug.
"You stupid boy, I don't want you to disappear either. I care about you, and I've always tried to protect you."
They sat there together for nearly ½ an hour before they heard Vernon stomping to the toilet.
"Come on boy, I'll help you with breakfast today and once they're gone we'll talk."
Turning to look at his Aunt, he gingerly reaches a hand up to touch her eye where the makeup had run revealing the bruise that Vernon left last night. "Does it hurt?"
"A bit, but it wasn't you or Dudley, so that's ok." She replies softly. "Come on, we need to get breakfast made before he comes downstairs.".
Together they made quick work of breakfast and cleaned up the evidence of their tears in the kitchen sink. Aunt Petunia touched up her eyes using the makeup in her bag, and just got it away as Vernon came downstairs, shortly followed by Dudley. Rather than coming straight to the table, Vernon instead went to stand by the front door. As Harry went to sit down at the table he saw his mothers letter by the sofa where his Aunt dropped it when they cried together. Panicking slightly, he grabbed the letter, hurried into the kitchen and chucked it into the towel drawer. Unfortunately, Vernon heard him, and started towards the kitchen "What was that boy, if you're hiding something from me you'll…". Whatever the threat was going to be died stillborn as the postman pushed the post through the letterbox. With an evil grin and a mutter of "No freaks live here, the boy is going to go to Stonewall High and the Freakishness will be beaten out of him." he grabbed the post and took the parchment letter out into the garden before burning it.
With a look of satisfaction he returned to the table and sat down indicating that they could start eating, not that that had stopped Dudley from starting as soon as the food was on the table. As Vernon sat down he jogged the table causing Dudley to spill juice down his jumper. Aunt Petunia immediately began to fawn over him while dabbing the stain with a napkin. "Oh Dudders, are you OK? It's ok you can have more juice. Boy! Get more orange juice for Dudley! You poor thing, let's get that jumper off and into the wash, and get you into a clean one." With a glance at Vernon, who just grunted, Harry quickly took the mostly empty glass into the kitchen and filled a clean one with Orange Juice and came back with the glass and a cloth, which he used to dab up the worst of the spill. As he sat back down Vernon lashed out and cuffed him round the ear, "Next time be more careful not to jog the table."
"Yes Uncle Vernon." Harry replied meekly.
Sitting at the table after he'd finished his cereal he tried to reconcile the Aunt Petunia sitting there fussing over Dudley and Vernon and talking harshly to him with the Aunt Petunia that broke down crying and hugged him earlier. His mind kept coming up with a blank. He was so lost in thought that he received another cuff from Vernon when he didn't get up to clear away the table fast enough.
Hurrying to the kitchen he quickly cleared the table, put the tablecloth in the washing machine, cleaned the table and washed up the dishes and put them away. Once he was done he went up to his room as unobtrusively as he could, and curled up on the bed with his back to the wall. Shortly afterwards Vernon came out of their room with his tie and jacket on, his brief case in one meaty hand and slammed Harrys bedroom door open.
"Now boy, you do everything your Aunt wants you to, or it's back to the cupboard with you. You hear me?"
"Yes Uncle Vernon."
"Good, and if I hear you've been causing trouble in the neighbourhood again you'll get the belt."
"Yes Uncle Vernon" he replied in a small voice.
With that Vernon left for work and Harry heard the sound of the TV downstairs as BBC breakfast carried upstairs faintly. Dudley was playing on something in the room next door with the volume turned up to Max. All that was irrelevant to Harry as he sat there still trying to come to terms with what happened that morning.
An hour later Dudley screamed in rage, and something hit the wall hard. A moment later the heavy thump of his booted feet tromped down the stairs. "I'm going to meet up with Piers and Dennis, Mum!"
"Ok, don't be out too late!"
Followed by the slam of the front door.
A few minutes later there was a soft knock at his bedroom door before his Aunt pushed it open. He felt her sit down on the bed, and opened his eyes as she pushed a letter into his hands.
"I suppose you want to know what's going on." She said while looking at her hands.
"When I met him… When I met him, he played rugby, boxed, and was charming. Oh, he was so charming.
"I met him when I was doing an evening job as the student bar to cover the cost of the secretarial course, and he flattered me with pretty words and gifts. He was doing his final year of a Degree in Business and Management, and he already had a job lined up with Grunnings after his gap year.
"I was in love, and the world was rosy. The year went by with a whirlwind of dancing, parties and dating and when he graduated he proposed to me. It was beautiful."
Harry uncurled to look at his Aunt as her voice started to break.
"Then we got married and your mother bought us this house as a wedding present. We'd been looking at it during our engagement as they were new builds, Lily saw the brochures and bought it for us.
"That's when it changed. Oh it didn't happen overnight, it started out quite reasonably, 'Oh, don't you think it's a bit far to meet your friends in London?', 'Weren't we having so and so around that night?', 'I need to meet a client on the _ would you mind cooking for us?'. Then he hit me. I was pregnant with Dudley then, and he broke my jaw when I said I was going to see my sister in… why can't I remember where she lived?
"I hated her, did you know that. For the longest time I hated her, I hated her for how much time she spent with Grandpapa, and Grandmere. I hated her for being able to do magic, I hated her for marrying that hansom hunk. But she was still my sister, and she was so beautiful when I went to see her after…
"Then her husband came to see Vernon and something happened and it went back to the way it used to be. It was wonderful, and I dismissed the solicitor, why did I have a solicitor?...
"Dudley was born 3 weeks before you were, he was such a beautiful baby, and Vernon loved him. He looked so proud holding him in his hands.
"Lilly and that wastrel of a Husband came round shortly after you were born, and she was so hap.." Her voice suddenly turns harsh a stuck up as she continues, her face taking on a hateful visage
"Looking down at us plebs, as if marrying that drunkard gave her airs and graces. Sent her right out with a flea in her ear I did."
Harry looks at her oddly as the sudden change in demeanour catches him off guard, and he scoots to the end of the bed away from his Aunt. The sudden movement seems to break whatever turmoil was going on in her head as her face relaxes and tears start to fall again.
"A year passed and Lily… contact… " her voice trails of again before continuing.
"Then on November 1st I opened the door to bring the milk in and you were there in your blanket and a letter saying that…" Her face changes a couple of times, and she seems to be struggling. Carefully, in case she lashes out at him, he reached forward to touch her. At the touch she jumped breaking whatever turmoil was happing inside her.
"It's in the drawer with my tights, under the lining. Be a good boy and go and get it."
Harry looked at her for a long time unsure what to do before she snapped "Well go on." Scarpering in to their bedroom he quickly found the letter, carefully extracted it and brought it back.
"Read it then, you deserve to know." And so he carefully opened the letter and read it.
Mr and Mrs Dursley,
It is with great regret that I must inform you that your sister Lily and her husband James died during an attack on their home on the 31st October. As you are the sole remaining family still alive I have no choice but to leave their son Harry in your care. During the attack the leader of the terrorists was killed signalling the end of the war.
While the means of his death is unknown, I can tell that your sister laid very powerful protections on Harry. I have extended these protections over your home, and for as long as Harry can call it home you will be protected from any wizards that seek to harm you.
Obviously, I understand that an extra mouth to feed is not cheap. To that matter, James and Lily left details for Harrys caregivers to receive a stipend every month. If you would send a letter with your bank details to me at Hogwarts I will arrange to have this money transferred to you.
Condolences
Albus Brian Percival Wilfric Dumbledore
When he finished reading he looked up at his Aunt, "What's a stipend?"
As the words to the question left his mouth he was gobsmacked to see his Aunt collapse in hysterical laughter. Once she recovered a bit she turned to him "A stipend is a small amount of money used to cover someones living expenses. If we'd have been able to get it life might have been easier, but no! The stupid backwards arse world needs to use owls to deliver post. I sent letter after letter with different variations on the name and location, but they all came back unknown address. I even tried going through mum and dads files for the address, but they'd all been destroyed in the… attack… why couldn't I remember that? Why couldn't I remember the attack?...
Shaking her head she continued on as if the last 10 minutes hadn't happened.
"It was all good to start with, I was still breastfeeding Dudders, so an extra mouth wasn't hard to adjust to. But it was when Dudders started teething that money became tight, and Vernon started to change. Oh it was little things to start with, shouting at me to shut you up, or telling me to stop feeding you as he needed his breakfast before going to work. And then he started hitting me and shaking you. That's when I put you in the cupboard, you were all I had left of my sister, and I couldn't let him hurt you so I hid you away.
"It seemed to get better after that, but it got worse if he saw me caring for you, so I learned, oh how I learned. What set him off, how to set him off early, how to keep you hidden, how to keep you quiet."
Quietly Harry asks "Why didn't you leave?"
A bitter laugh escaped her lips, "I tried, oh how I tried. I got to a shelter once on my own, another time with Dudley. A shelter is a place where people that need help can go to live for a while. But whenever I took you with me I forgot what I was doing, and things didn't seem so bad.
"I even called social workers, but every single one was very sympathetic while they were here, but as soon as they got back to the office they wrote glowing reports about the home situation and I gained a reputation for suffering from Hysteria."
She shakes her head and looks at Harry. "And now you know. I've tried to protect you, sent you to do the gardening when he's angry, worked you hard so that you sleep soundly, belittled you so that he doesn't think I'm playing favourites. Even spoiling Dudley, and now the letters are coming and it's going to start again. They won't stop, they'll keep sending letters until we answer them, but we can't answer them."
She then looked at him with an expression that he didn't recognise "Can I hug you?" the shake in her voice was unmistakeable.
Harry watched her for an indeterminable moment before her face dropped and she turned away. Just as she was about to stand up he responded with a small voice "please"
Turning to him she held her arms open with another expression he didn't recognise, and he crawled into her arms and they both cried.