Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and so forth. No profit has been made from this story.

Author's Note: I'm sorry the chapters are so short. Once finals are over I'll make them longer.

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ONLY SO MANY BATTLES

By Splitbeak

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Chapter Two: Searing and Burning

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The light stabbed his eyes with thousands of hot pokers, boring their way into his skull and swirling his brain around his skull in jagged circles. Harry groaned, rolling away from the window pouring in the bright midday sunlight. The too small room was boiling like it had its own personal furnace. The air was too thick to breathe. Harry lay still on his bed, panting, desperately trying to breathe in, while the construction crew in his head desperately tried to drill its way out. All of his muscles ached from prolonged tautness, creating a general burning throughout his body. His heart was beating to fast; it threatened to explode out of his chest.

Harry reached for the window, his arm shaking madly, trying to crack it open just a bit to get some fresh air. The smooth cylinders blocking his way jerked him to full awareness as he blinked at the heavy black bars. Right, Dursleys', he reminded himself. Green-faced witches covered in warts would take over the wonderful world if he escaped through the two-inch crack needed to open the window just the smidgeonest enough to provide the littlest breathe of cool air. How silly of him to forget.

His hand fell heavily from the windowsill, landing with a thump on the creaky mattress. The small noise was enough to make him wince, ducking his head closer to his chest both to lick his wounds and escape the sun. Is this what Dudley made the big stink over when he suffered a "spontaneous" hangover that couldn't have been caused by him drinking, since he never drank? (bull-, bull-, bull-) Harry hoped not; he didn't know if he could bear it if his cousin actually had a right to complain about agony, for once.

Carefully arranging his arms under his chest, since every movement hurt, Harry pushed up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed so he was sitting up. The room tipped dangerously and Harry found himself sprawled on the hard floor. His elbow caught the nightstand, sliding down the corner of the furniture on its decent. His glasses toppled from where they had been precariously perched on top of the rickety furniture, landing lens-down next to his bleeding elbow. Harry didn't need to see it to hear the lens crack; the second crack told him the frame had probably broken too. Harry groaned again, hiding his face in his crossed arms, wishing himself desperately back to sleep. This was definitely not the start of a good day. If only his head would stop pounding.

"Boy!" Petunia shrieked. Oh, so the door, not his head then. "What in the devil are you doing? This whole house has been the subject of your non-stop parade since you woke up. We took you in, again, after that horrendous display with that old man last summer, and you have the nerve to continue pulling these stunts?"

Harry peeked out from between his arms to squint at the pink blob that had to be his aunt- or a house-elf on crack. "It was an accident," he tried to explain, lifting up his elbow, but his lungs were racked with full-body coughs before he could get the first sound out. The dust from the floor was sucked into his mouth while he anxiously tried to breathe, making his hacking worse.

"Yech," Petunia sneered, stepping away from Harry as though his coughing were spreading the Plague. "You stop that this instant!" she demanded.

She probably said more things, but Harry was having a hard time hearing past the ringing in his ears. By the time the coughing had subsided, she was gone. His eyes stung with tears and the pounding in his head had only become worse. Harry closed his eyes tightly, just wishing the world would go away. At least it was cooler on the floor.

His drifting was abruptly cut off by the sudden relocation of Niagara Falls to just over his head. Harry jerked, wheezing, as he rolled away while simultaneously reaching under the bed for his wand. "I said, get up!" Petunia hollered.

Harry quickly withdrew his hand, realizing he wasn't being seriously attacked. But the adrenaline rush brought into sharp focus the dream from last night that to this point had only been a hazy memory. Voldemort! He reached for what was left of his glasses (he'd been right, only one lens and half the frame), and brought them up to his right eye. One angry muggle aunt holding a bucket still dripping water on the floor… check. But what caught his attention was the hall clock behind her. Harry almost wanted to believe the clock was broken, but he knew the Dursleys were neurotic about that kind of thing. It was really 5:30. As in, 5:30 pm, as in 17:30. Harry could only blink, dazed.

"It's 5:30," he croaked, amazed and cutting off his aunt's rant.

"What was that?" she demanded, putting her hand on her hips and letting the bucket drop. Harry was so surprised he didn't even flinch at the noise.

"You let me sleep until 5:30?" he whispered, still not believing. Since when did Aunt Petunia let him sleep past the crack of dawn? Was he even capable of sleeping that late? His record, and it was achieved at Hogwarts mind you, was 12:46. This wasn't even in the same competition.

"Let you? As if I have any need of your lazy self taking up room in my house sleeping to all hours of the day and night!" She looked around quickly, making sure no one could hear their argument. Leaning down, she whispered so quietly Harry had to strain what was left of his hearing, "The only reason I've let you sleep for this long is because as long as you were sleeping you weren't eating my poor Dudder's food. You've been sleeping for two days straight, and now you wake up when it's almost sunset. You haven't been… you know?" She looked around again for the reported waiting to expose her connection to freakish-ness to all the major newspapers. Heh, wouldn't she have a heart attack if she knew about Rita Skeeter.

Harry shook his head. "Know what?" What was she worried about? What could possibly explain sleeping for two days and waking up with a hangover from hell? What had Voldemort done to him, and how could Aunt Petunia have known? Harry concentrated, wiping the sweat of his forehead with his equally sweaty arm, trying to remember the details of the dream, but it was useless. His exhausted mind just couldn't focus, couldn't grasp the details. It was so hot!

"-pire?" his aunt whispered.

Harry blinked. "What?"

Petunia rolled her eyes, informing him that not only was he as dense as she'd claimed all his life, but that he'd clearly suffered brain damage as well. "Were you bitten by a vampire?" she asked again through clenched teeth.

Harry stared at her open mouthed, wondering if he'd woken up in the Twilight Zone. Realizing she was serious and waiting expectantly for an answer, he shook his head no and immediately regretted it. The pain flared up again and he squinted against it, digging his hands into his eyelids so hard he saw random stars. Nausea gripped his stomach, and the smell of something foul filled his nose. When he opened his eyes he saw a pair of evil red eyes staring at him over his aunt's shoulders. "Look out!" he called in warning, rushing forward to knock her out of the way.

"What?" she screeched, as she was pushed into the wall.

Harry ignored her, braced to battle with the enemy. Instead, he was left standing where his aunt had been in his thin pajamas, wand still under the floorboards under his bed, and staring at the floral wallpaper decorating the hallway. He swayed, suddenly overwhelmed by dizziness and confusion. "He was here," he explained, feeling disoriented, turning carefully towards his aunt. "Voldemort was here."

Petunia had gotten up from the floor where Harry'd thrown her, and after seeing no one hovering in the doorway, sprang at her nephew angrily. "How dare you lay your hands on me!" She launched forward, grabbing Harry roughly by the arm and propelling him down the hall.

"No, wait, he was here!" Harry tried to warn her, but the room was swimming and he didn't know if he'd even gotten the words out. His legs barely supported his weight as his aunt pulled him along down the stairs to stand in front of his favorite door. Harry was too busy looking over his shoulder for the missing specter to realize what was happening until his aunt forcefully doubled him older and sent him into the blackness of the cupboard.

"No! He was here!" Harry bung his fist on the cupboard door to no avail. It was too cramped inside; he couldn't breathe. If he thought his little room had its own furnace, then the cupboard really was just at the border of Hell itself. His hair was still plastered to his face, and what was left of his glasses were probably shattered somewhere along the hall. Harry miserably curled up into as tight a ball as possible, but the walls were still too close. The familiar creeping along his ankles meant that his eight legged friends had found him again, and Harry realized he no longer felt comfortable with them in this little space. Memories of running from Aragog outweighed the little bit of company he'd had during his earlier days at the Dursleys'.

Voldemort had been here, in his house, and no one but Harry knew it. How was that possible? How had Voldemort even gotten in? What had happened last night?