Chapter 2

Welcome Home Hostility

For once Harry Potter did not look back as he left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was glad to be getting away from a place which was beginning to hold more bad memories than good. Only a few days ago he had witnessed the school's greatest Headmaster and the last of his protectors, Albus Dumbledore plummet from the Astronomy Tower to the grounds below. A few days later he had broken off his relationship with Ginny Weasley, the only girl he would ever love, and vowed to himself that he and his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger would continue on with the task Dumbledore had set him, swapping the comfort of school for the dangers of the unknown. First he had to do as he had been ordered and return to the home of his remaining relatives. It was not the first time he was going back to them with a heart heavy with loss but it would be the last.

Before Dumbledore's funeral, letters had been sent and families alerted. McGonagall had arranged to have the Hogwarts Express take remaining students home early but if it had been an attempt at some semblance of normality it had failed. The throng of students walking from the castle to the front gates was smaller and quieter than ever. They were not planning action packed summers and exchanging addresses but trapped in separate bubbled of contemplation. Even the pets carried at their sides in cages seemed subdued as if out of respect for Dumbledore's passing. Ron informing his parents that he planned to return with Harry had been met with surprisingly little retaliation and his family accompanied them all to the carriages in order to say their goodbyes. Hermione was hugged first and then Harry, awkwardly and by everyone, including Ginny which felt most awkward of all.

Watching Ron's mother tearfully kiss and hug him goodbye with the urgency and tenderness of someone who was terrified she might never see her son again, Harry decided that he would return to Privet Drive alone. He pulled his best friend's aside with a sigh and a look over his shoulder at Mrs Weasley who had always treated him like a son and at Bill who was her son and half ruined fighting for Harry's cause. "What's wrong?" Ron was doing well to hide his upset but Harry could tell he couldn't stand to see his mother cry.

"I can't let you do it. I swear to you that we won't miss Bill's wedding but I want you both to go home." Ron let out an exasperated sigh but Hermione's expression softened as though she had been secretly hoping that Harry would change his mind.

"Harry, we've already said that we're going with you-"

"I know and that means everything," Harry said with a hand on Ron's shoulder, "But...I wouldn't throw away any chance to see my parents and I don't want you to either. I couldn't stand it if anything happened to you and the last time your parents saw you..." Ron took a single look over his shoulder at his father and siblings comforting his trembling mother and then nodded in agreement. Hermione approached Mrs Weasley to give her the good news. Harry grabbed Ron to stop him from following. "You'll make sure that Ginny's okay? That she understands?" Ron shifted uncomfortably before pulling Harry into a brief hug.

"That's what brothers do. She's got enough of them to know that...Stay safe mate. I'll actually write this summer." An appreciative Mrs Weasley pulled Harry into another hug whispering a stream of comfort and gratitude as the rest of the family looked on. Harry did his best not to make eye contact with Ginny and then clambered into the thestral drawn carriage after Hermione without another word.

Harry made the mistake of sitting up with his head out of the window as the carriage retreated around the castle walls. He caught sight of the tops of the quidditch goal posts and was bombarded with a sickening nostalgia and the realization that he no longer had any time for games. His eyes welled up and he blamed the wind when there wasn't any. Despite the good weather the carriages had been given their protective hoods and Harry took advantage of the privacy, lying down across the seat he would have shared with Ron. Hermione looked at him several times, opening her mouth as though she meant to say something only to close it again. Harry knew that she wanted to impart something rational and consoling about Ginny or Dumbledore and reached a hand across to grip hers. She smiled and buried her head in a book for the duration of the ride. Harry watched her read, unconvinced that she had taken in a single word, no doubt too preoccupied by thoughts of horcruxes, RAB, Snape and Dumbledore like they were an exam question that she was unsure she had answered correctly and was going over in hindsight. Harry sat up as the carriage drew in to the station, took away Hermione's book and gripped both of her hands. "Hermione, promise me...no reading when you get home, no researching, no learning of any kind. Don't even bother with the Prophet, just live your life for a little bit. I don't want you to think about any of this, no horcruxes, no RAB, no Snape. I just want you to have fun and enjoy spending time with your parents...please." Hermione smiled and reached across the carriage to draw Harry into a hug.

"I promise."

The decision not to return to Hogwarts had instantly transformed every aspect from things Harry had loved or hated into things he would miss. The first time he had left Hogwarts it was with the discovery of a new world and new friends and a lovingly compiled album of photographs of his parents. Now his heart felt like it had dropped into his stomach as he watched the first years disembark the boats which had once taken him across the Black Lake to the castle. Despite the stares and gossip from the first years, Harry waited for Hagrid because it didn't feel right to leave without a hug from him. Harry promised that he would stay safe and that they would see each other again even though he wasn't entirely sure either of those things was even possible and then he boarded the Hogwarts Express with Hermione for the last time. The train had never been so silent or full of tears and tension. Fearing attack, the main aisle was dotted with trained Aurors and Order member Nymphadora Tonks was sitting inside the driver's cabin. When the trolley came by with the offer of snacks Harry could not help himself and bought one of everything as he had naively done the very first time. Without a ravenous Ron to help him finish off his spoils Harry and Hermione were stuck with a reasonable amount of leftovers. Harry felt too fragile to stomach anything and a single chocolate frog reduced him to tears. Hermione took the Albus Dumbledore 'Famous Witch or Wizard Card' from him before his likeness had had time to disappear tucking it inside of one of her books. Harry rushed to the toilet where he was sick in the sink. He washed his scratched face, tried not to look at himself in the mirror and changed out of his dress robes. Harry blamed his sore eyes and swollen cheeks on travel sickness and laid with his head in Hermione's lap drifting in and out of uncomfortable sleep and nauseating flashbacks as she ran her hands through his hair.

Due to Harry's last minute insistence that his friends return home, Hermione's parents had not received a letter requesting that they meet her at King's Cross. Harry had no doubt that she could make her own way home but the thought of leaving her alone after he had spent the last few hours asleep on her lap filled him with dread. "You will remember what I said-"

"Burn the books! Drugs, drink and partying until dawn! A promise is a promise," Hermione replied dryly and Harry laughed at the way uncle Vernon was staring at her as though she was the kind of bad influence he wouldn't allow within ten feet of Dudley. She hugged Harry again and promised to write the moment she got home. Harry was driven back to Privet Drive by a silent and yawning Uncle Vernon without so much as a 'hello' in greeting or a comment about his red eyes. He was not helped with his trunk, not that he had expected to be and found a much leaner Dudley asleep across the sofa and a 'welcome home' banner attached to the far wall. The dining room table bore the crumbs of a quickly devoured 'welcome home' meal. For a second Harry had liked the idea that it was for him, that someone had missed him as Sirius and Dumbledore no longer could. His aunt Petunia was clinking away in the kitchen, no doubt washing away the mess. Harry expected only more silence from her and rushed quickly upstairs to his cold and airy bedroom. He found it strangely clean; the sheets on his bed, his windows (which were without bars now), the carpet and his cupboard. The few clothes had had not taken to Hogwarts were hanging neatly in the cupboard and the old toy soldiers he had once played with in the cupboard under the stairs were lined up on his wiped down windowsill.

Harry would not bother unpacking his trunk. He could not even gather the courage to open it. He did not want to see the Gryffindor tie he would never wear again, the creased white shirts with collars smeared with Ginny's favourite lipstick or the torn blue t-shirt he had worn as he had forced Dumbledore to drink the potion which ultimately killed him. Harry laid back into his soft, fragrant bed sheets with a sigh. He could not feel the least bit bitter that his family had not made a special dinner to herald his return home. His early return probably inconvenienced them in some way. He had learned simply to never expect anything from them, and after Mad Eye's aggressive warnings at the station after Sirius had died and Dumbledore's harsh words with them last summer, Harry imagined that the atmosphere between them would only get worse in the time that they had left together. His aunt Petunia coughed as she slipped into the room. "What is it?" Harry asked, staring up at the ceiling. When he turned his head to look at her, she was still wearing soapy, pink rubber gloves and an apron, like she had made the spontaneous decision to come and speak to him, and holding a plate on which there was a large slice of Dudley's 'welcome home' lemon sponge cake. She placed the cake down on Harry's bedside cabinet with a small smile and surveyed the room. She looked as though she had seen it empty so often it was unsettling to have Harry back inside of it now.

"Dudley couldn't keep his paws off of your cake..."Her eyes stopped at the framed photograph of Harry's parents dancing in autumn leaves and her smile softened.

"Thanks..." Harry was taken aback by the gestures. Much had changed in the past year but he had not expected to return to some alternate reality where their relationship warranted civil conversations. "You cleaned my room?"

"I like to keep a clean house Harry." Harry felt his heart break when his aunt said his name so casually. He had few memories of her ever doing anything but shouting it before. In the last six years, Harry had only ever spent three months a year at most in the Dursley's company and he felt more like a strange lodger to his aunt than a beloved nephew.

"What do you want?" Harry was in no mood for small talk. He felt emotionally drained after the last few days at Hogwarts. His aunt removed her gloves, tucking them into the front pocket of her apron and looked over her shoulder as though anxious that her son or husband might overhear.

"Alright..." She stepped into the room, closing the door and leaning back upon it with a small sigh. "Old Mrs Figg came across the way earlier-all in black she was. I thought perhaps one of her cats had croaked..." Harry gave a weak smile. "But she brought over a copy of that paper of yours-the...Prophet?" Harry nodded in confusion. "She wanted to tell me about...Dumbledore-the man who visited us last summer-your Headmaster."

"What's your point?" Harry cut her off. Small talk stung like a cut soaked in murtlap. Talk of Dumbledore felt far too soon.

"Well...I'm sorry," she said, shifting uncomfortably with an apologetic expression. Harry did not move off of the bed but turned his head away from her, his jaw clenched to stare angrily out of his bedroom window. Surely Dumbledore had not insisted that Harry return for this.

"So...you thought that because someone close to me had died...again...that you being nice to me would cheer me up?" For once Harry gave no care to whether he was being unkind. At that moment he could see no possibility in forgiving her misjudgement. "My Godfather died last summer. I knew him a year! My parents-your sister died when I was one-another year! At no point over the last sixteen years did that make you think that you should be nice to me? Funny!" Harry spat the last word when it was anything but and his aunt coughed like she was swallowing a sob. Harry had never seen her cry.

"I-We-You have lived in this house free of charge-"

"Don't make me laugh! I was your slave..." Harry propped himself up on his elbows to glare hatefully across at her. "I asked nothing of you! Did you really hate mum that much? What is wrong with you?" Petunia flinched, the photo pressed to her chest as though she never could have imagined Harry confronting her with such questions.

"What is wrong with you? It's the grief speaking. You're upset..." Harry grunted and flung himself into a sitting position so that his heaving back was to her and he no longer had to look at her. "Why stay here if you hated it?"

"Because I had to. I'm protected here. You heard...Dumbledore." Harry stumbled over his name but continued. "Because somehow the same blood which ran through mum's veins goes through yours and mine and so...I am safe here."

"Safe from what?" His aunt asked naively. Harry turned to her with dark eyes and a frown. She knew nothing of the evil which hounded him and Harry envied her. "From Him?"

"Yes! Him-your sister's murderer; Voldemort." His aunt shuddered at the name in the same way that magical folk did. Harry wondered if she had an image of him in her head."He's been trying to finish what he started every year since I turned eleven...trying to kill me too..." Petunia gulped, Harry hoped guiltily. "You could have been the kind of person I wrote home to but...you chose not to be didn't you?" Harry was becoming sick of how much choice had determined in his life. "Don't bother starting now. I don't need it. I don't want it. Things have changed." Flustered and on the brink of tears his aunt Petunia left, slamming the door, covering her mouth with one hand and the photo of his parents clutched in the other. Harry had a hard time falling asleep that night.

The day following the funeral, the silent ride home and the argument with his aunt, the papers carried heavy news. The blaring headlines of muggle papers painted a picture of mysterious random brutality and tragedy as hundreds were killed, tortured and injured in an attack on a tube station. Witnesses recalled malfunctioning lights, flashes of colour in the darkness, a language they couldn't recognise, a giant snake and perpetrators in cloaks and masks. The dark wizard Lord Voldemort had gotten rid of Albus Dumbledore, the only wizard he had ever feared, and gone after the defenceless people he had always vowed to protect. It was an insult felt by the better half of the magical world and which, the Daily Prophet reported, locked the new Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour in urgent talks with the Muggle Prime Minister about what could be done to protect his people. Harry was instantly reminded of the fact that Hermione had made her own way home and sent a short letter her way. Harry's aunt could barely look at the paper, whilst it was all his uncle could talk about. He thought that the authorities ought to be doing more to bring the murderers to justice. Petunia didn't seem to have the heart to tell him that this was an attack committed by the kind of people she had once been related to and that the man responsible had dedicated his life to hunting down the boy they put up in their spare bedroom. After her conversation with Harry it was clear to him that Petunia was afraid and Harry didn't want her to be. In the past no matter how much he had resented being babysat by the Dursley's whilst his friends enjoyed a world of magic, quidditch and secret societies, Harry had secretly took comfort in being able to breathe air that was not thick with the tension of a brewing war. Now it had seeped through the cracks and there was no escaping Voldemort and all that he aimed to destroy.

The Daily Prophet covered the attacks too. In between tributes to Dumbledore, the Ministry were committed to hunting down his killer. It should have been Harry's childhood rival and son of a fallen Deatheater, Draco Malfoy that they were tracking but in the end he had allowed another to step in; Severus Snape. Sixteen years ago, it had surprised everyone when Dumbledore had been the only one willing to vouch for Snape, a young penitent Deatheater and gone on to employ him for more than half of his life. Harry had watched the same supposedly reformed man kill Dumbledore with the swift precision of someone who truly meant it and chased him as he fled the castle. Snape's childhood home had burnt to the ground and Aurors had picked through the ruins. Whilst no trace of him was found, the burnt remains of Draco Malfoy were discovered. The front page held a blown up photograph of his mother Narcissa and she looked so broken that Harry could take no twisted delight from the fact that the spoilt brat she had helped to raise had finally gotten his comeuppance. Harry knew now that Malfoy had become a Deatheater to fill the place left by his incarcerated father and whilst at first it may have been something he wanted, later it became a strain he struggled to cope with alone. Despite reckless attempts to fulfil the seemingly impossible task of murdering the world's greatest wizard, Malfoy had still failed and paid for it with his life. Harry could not convince himself that he had deserved it. His family had been so poor that all they had was money. He had taunted and abused fellow students and a good percentage of his relatives were in prison or escaped and on the run. To show at his funeral would be to support all he had destroyed at Hogwarts and Harry knew that he would be buried before a procession of one. Still, none of that distracted from the fact that Draco Malfoy had been too young to die. Now there was no chance for his redemption.

Not that Harry believed that all people were gifted with such a positive capacity for change. Severus Snape was only going to get worse. He was a liar, a traitor and a murderer. In one night he had managed to destroy the reputation which it had taken Dumbledore decades to build, making him look like a fool. All year there had been talk that Dumbledore had lost his touch and that Hogwarts and its students would be put at risk and Snape had made it all true in a moment. Harry couldn't comprehend how Dumbledore, who had known so many things beyond normal intuition, had missed the obvious lack of morality in a man whose past was marred with violence and death. Harry had always seen the true character Snape had done so well to hide and vowed to avenge Dumbledore before the year was out. If honour and courage were the only things Gryffindors believed were truly worth living for, vengeance had to be the only thing worth killing for.