Chapter 6
The Sheltering Summer Shattered
The Prophet brought some semblance of good news in announcing plans for Hogwarts reopening. The Board of Governors demanded the school reopen and educate future generations of wizarding children in the eve of war. Like the Ministry, under new management the school would also undergo a transformation. The parts of the school which had been destroyed at the Battle of the Tower had been rebuilt by teams of ex and current students and professors. McGonagall was listed as Headmistress and Head of Gryffindor. Slughorn would return as Potions Master and become Head of Slytherin. 'Auror Nymphadora Tonks' was on board as assistant Transfiguration professor and Head of School Security. The search for a new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was 'ongoing' and the uncertainty left Harry uneasy. So far there had been a talented actor with Voldemort living in the back of his head, a fraudster whose only talent was for memory charms, a charming werewolf, a Deatheater in disguise intent upon murdering Harry and a traitorous killer who had succeeded in murdering their headmaster. Harry did not want to think about the kind of dangerous character ready to crawl out of the woodwork this year to claim the teaching post under dubious intentions.
One morning mid July like so many mornings before, Hedwig delivered Harry's Daily Prophet, but only barely. She struck the window and tumbled across the carpet, dropping the paper. Her left wing was crooked and she was missing chunks of feathers. Harry ignored the paper with its blaring headlines and tenderly inspected his wounded pet. The Order had been right not to write to Harry. Someone had grabbed Hedwig. Harry leaned out of his window to eye the back garden, empty except for an unattended bottle of plant feed and the equally empty opposing streets. Hedwig screeched loudly in pain as Harry made to lift her. He retreated, apologizing and at a loss. He and still underage and had never managed to master healing spells with the same vigour as Hermione. "What's wrong with your owl?" Aunt Petunia stepped into the room, staring at Hedwig where she was perched on Harry's dresser. "I saw it practically crash into your window."
"Someone's grabbed her. It's pretty common for letters to be intercepted that way. Maybe I should take her to Mrs Figg. She'll know what to do." Old women always knew how to heal hurt.
"With all those cats? Don't be silly." Harry had not considered the furry wannabe assassins which lived within the nooks and crannies of Mrs. Figg's small home. "I can fix her up. I'll be right back." His aunt left his room removing her gardening gloves and when she returned it was with a small first aid box. She took Hedwig up with expert hands and sat down on the bed stroking tenderly from Hedwig's beak, over her head and down her back. Harry stood watching curiously as Hedwig calmed and his aunt stretched out her injured wing. "There's a little cut which could do with cleaning. It should heal on its own. The rest is just bruising." She dipped a piece of gauze in antiseptic and wiped it across the bleeding wound. Hedwig fidgeted and his aunt soothed her again with soft caresses and whispering like she was a baby. "Harry, won't you pick up that photo album? If I'd known you take so little care of other people's possessions I would never have given it to you." Harry followed his aunt's gaze. He had knocked the childhood album she had borrowed him onto the floor when he had leaned out of the window.
"Sorry." Harry picked up the album, stuffing the scattered photographs back inside. He had torn through it so often he was beginning to feel like he had been there. The album Hagrid had given him at the end of his first year at Hogwarts was now so love-worn it was spello-taped together.
"You should probably keep her inside for a couple of days to give that wing a little rest but she's going to be fine," his aunt assured him. Hedwig was perched upon her arm eyes shut and cooing softly.
"Thanks...How do you know how to do all of this?" Harry asked as he transferred Hedwig from his aunt's arm into her cage. He bent down to pick up a photograph from his aunt's album which had almost become lost beneath his bed.
"Lily and I always loved animals when we were little...Every summer we volunteered at animal shelters. We were always bringing home strays and begging to keep them."
Harry was too distracted by someone he had spotted in the back of the photograph in his hand to take in his aunt's reply. The photograph showed his mother Lily seated at the kitchen table. She looked about twelve and she was smiling, wide, the way young children do for photographs. Behind her standing at the sink with soapy hands was a stringy young boy with sallow skin, sharp cheekbones and chin length black hair. "Who is this?" Harry handed the photograph to his aunt. "Standing at the sink?" His aunt's nostalgic smile was replaced by a tight lipped frown.
"The last of Lily's strays. He lived down the street from us. He went to your school with her. They met the very same day she got her letter..." Harry's face twisted into a tighter expression with every word. "She was out all day, got home late to babysit me because ma and pa were going out to dinner. She told me that she'd met a boy. 'You won't believe it Pet' she said 'but he can do magic!'I didn't believe it."
"Do you remember his name?" Harry knew what the answer would be.
"It was something strange-"Petunia struggled to remember. Her sister's killers had always been faceless dark wizards hidden behind a wax seal and a train platform and Harry wondered whether that came as a comfort or a concern.
"Severus?"
"Yes..." Harry's aunt stared at him as if she was wondering how he could have plucked such an obscure name out of thin air-whether he had known the boy from the photograph in the world from which she was barred. "Lily always called him Rus and Sev ad Er whenever he was unkind. She was always giving him her favourite books." Harry didn't smile. He didn't like the idea that such innocent beginnings had come to tragic ends and Petunia didn't have a clue. "Before that letter Lily and I were always together- we bickered, all sisters do but we were best friends. Those two lived in each other's pockets. Out all day down by this lake near our house or in his room or hers or he'd be invited to dinner. He was so skinny and pale. I think ma felt sorry for him..." Harry's feeling towards Snape had fuelled many adventures but now all could feel was betrayed. "And I think she was glad that Lily wouldn't be going into that world on her own. I remember at the station before they got on that red steam train, pa took that boy aside and I didn't hear exactly what was said but I think he was just asking him to promise to take care of Lily."
Harrylistened but none of it was what he wanted to hear. Snape had broken his promise to the grandfather Harry had never met and it was just another thing Harry would demand an apology for. "And when did they stop being friends?" Harry asked.
"I don't know if they ever did. The summer after her last year Lily only came back to collect her things. Then she moved straight in with your father...I always wondered what happened to that odd skinny boy because after your mother died I knew he had to be the only person left who had loved her as much as I did." Harry considered lying to save her feelings.
"He used to work at Hogwarts and he hated my guts." His aunt Petunia cocked an eyebrow.
"Well you never love anyone as much as you love your first real friend do you?" Harry loved Ron and Hermione beyond measure. They were misfits just as it was becoming clear his beautiful mother and her Slytherin friend Snape had been misfits before them. "He probably hated your father too." Harry snorted and stopped pacing, bitterness bubbling up and out of him.
"The whole time he was supposed to be on Dumbledore's side-his double spy. Everybody else doubted him but Dumbledore trusted him for a reason he wouldn't share," Harry explained, just as clueless about this secret as he had ever been.
"Well some things can't be cheapened by sharing them-"
"He murdered Dumbledore: injured and unarmed. He did it right in front of me." His aunt looked down at the photograph, as though she could not imagine that the boy with the dark eyes who had stood at her mother's sink had grown up to be a killer.
"You've seen so much..." She handed back the photograph and Harry stuffed it wordlessly back into the album. His aunt got up off of the bed with the first aid box in hand and stood by the door picking Hedwig's white feathers from her skirt. "You never know what children will become, you just hope that whatever it is, they'll be loved..." Harry did not hope that Snape was loved. "When I found you on the doorstep I didn't know whether to keep you. You had Lily's eyes and your father's hair and you kept asking for him and asking for him, 'papa', 'papa', 'papa' all of the time as though Lily had never existed...but you were a stray and we had always taken them in...It took a long time for you to stop asking for your father. I never wanted to have to tell you they'd been murdered..." Harry no longer begrudged her that. He had now seen enough murders to make up for those years of blissful ignorance. He didn't want to tell her about any of them. The way she imagined her sister dying had to be better than the truth.
The same day Hedwig was attacked Harry was pulled out of silent contemplation by an event which had never occurred before within the walls of number four Privet Drive. "Harry! Phone!" His uncle Vernon bellowed up the stairs so loudly that it could not have been a mistake. He had barely spoken to Harry since he had made his wife cry and had left the receiver sitting on the table in the landing. Harry took the phone into the empty cupboard under the stairs, switching on the light with no idea who could possibly be on the other end of his first phone-call.
"Hello?" Holding the receiver up to his ear felt more alien than apparition. Harry wondered whether his wishes about Ginny had somehow come true.
"Harry!" Harry was bowled over by the sound of her voice. He sank into a sitting position on the stairs with a sigh. "It's Hermione."
"I was expecting Voldemort," Harry explained in a quiet voice failing to drag a laugh out of her. "Why have you never rang me before? It's really good to talk to you."
"I'm sorry. I'm sure everyone would disapprove of me calling but I didn't want you doing anything rash because we haven't been in contact. Security's trebled without..." She could not even bring herself to say Dumbledore's name. "I didn't think the Deatheaters would have the sense to bug muggle technology..."
"I doubt my aunt's neighbourhood gossip would give them much to go on. I was so worried about you-"
"Never mind me! McGonagall said that you tried to leave! Too much has happened for you to make a break for it on your own Harry. For better or worse, we're in this together now."
"I'm sorry. It was a rough night...but you're right, as always," Harry sighed picking at the initials he had carved into the steps above his head.
"But you're okay now, aren't you? You sound sick." Her letters were usually filled with instructions on the importance of a balanced diet and regular sleep pattern during the holidays.
"I was but nothing serious. I'm better. Don't worry. What about you? Where are you?"
"I'm...good. I've just come back from holiday with my parents...and I just...needed to know that you were okay," Hermione trailed off. They had not spoken since the day of Dumbledore's funeral and she still sounded just as distraught.
"Hermione, tell me what's wrong." Hermione sighed and then in a stammering voice, holding back teas she confessed her fears for her parents after the attacks on the tube station which had been far too close to her home for comfort.
"I'm not strong or brave like you Harry. I couldn't cope with that kind of loss." Harry felt helpless at the end of a phone in a cupboard under some stairs but did his best to comfort her.
"Listen to me, Hermione. You are not going to lose them. Nothing is going to happen to them." There were a few sniffling breaths and then it seemed that she had pulled herself together.
"I know it isn't. Just promise me that you'll stay put with your aunt and uncle, even though you hate it there. Ron and I will always be waiting. Harry, promise me!" Harry was put off by her tone.
"I promise Hermione." He couldn't stand the idea of her being upset and wanted nothing more than to be with his best friends.
"I'm sorry Harry but I've got to go. You won't be able to reach me on this number again...but I'll try to call you soon. Try to stay out of trouble please. Goodbye." Harry had wanted to discuss everything he had read in the paper but Hermione was gone as suddenly as she had called. Her letters were always so long that the shortness of her conversation seemed out of character
Every day for the next week Harry rushed to the stairs the moment the phone rang but it was never for him. He couldn't stop thinking about the way Hermione had said 'for better or worse'. He did not want to think about the 'worse'. Harry had been a self imposed hermit for days by the time the last week of July brought with it Dudley's seventeenth birthday. He did not count his presents as he had done on his eleventh but they were still numerous and large. He tore into a brand new computer and stereo system, a motorbike and seemingly endless amounts of expensive designer clothes and accessories. His mother cooked him all of his favourite foods all day. Whilst Dudley spent the afternoon with his father at a golf course and then a shooting range, Harry helped his aunt Petunia with baking his cousin's birthday cake. "It's strange: your coming of age at seventeen," his aunt Petunia said in between cleaning of the kitchen surfaces as they waited for the cake to bake. "Do you feel like an adult?"
"Yeah." Harry's years of childish obliviousness were over. The last of his protectors had died and now it was time for him to face his fears. He listened to his aunt but did not speak much as he had not slept. He was exhausted and did not want to have to remember any of Dudley's previous birthdays in which he had been chased up trees by his Aunt Marge's vicious dogs, pummelled with things or locked in his cupboard for days after unleashing a giant snake upon the zoo-going public. Harry slept through Dudley's birthday dinner and when he came downstairs his aunt and uncle had been banished.
"I'm having my mates round for a party." The new computer and stereo system had been set up and one of Dudley's new CD's was ready to be unleashed upon the clueless neighbours.
"Oh right. I'll be in my room. I won't be any trouble-" Harry headed back upstairs but was cut off by his cousin.
"You can stay-"Taken aback as he was,Harry just didn't find the prospect of sitting in a room with a bunch of muggle teenagers he didn't know as they drank and did whatever else all that inviting.
"Thanks but I should-"
"I go to school and I come out with good grades and career prospects. You go to school and you come out with new scars, screaming a different person's name in your sleep...So stay?"
Harry stayed and Dudley introduced him as his "cousin Harry". When his friends asked why they'd never seen him before Dudley told them that it was because Harry went to boarding school. "What's your school called?"One of Dudley's friends asked as they sat in the living room drinking and listening to loud music. The guy had gelled back brown hair and blue eyes and he seemed to be the toughest of the group. Dudley had introduced everyone but Harry had trouble remembering their names.
"Uh...Hogwarts-"
"No shit, man!" the guy sat back laughing out loud and everyone else sniggered as though they weren't sure if Harry was being serious.
"Sounds like an asylum!" said the thin, baby faced boy who was sitting on the rug, flicking his cigarette ash into the fireplace, "They got girls there?" Harry nodded but didn't elaborate. "I hit a sore spot? Oh sorry man. Sorry. No more school talk-"
"That's alright," Harry said, shaking his head as he was offered a cigarette, "It's a good school. It's just-"
"Full of assholes?" the tough guy asked and Harry chuckled feeling the effects of the three bottles he had downed to dim the awkwardness of earlier conversation.
"Yeah...four different kinds." There were three boys and two girls and it was clear from the way they looked at Harry that they thought he was a little strange.
"What kind are you?" the tough guy asked intrigued.
"The kind with scars," Harry said, unsure whether they could understand the concepts of founders.
"How did you get this scar?" Harry was sitting on the floor and a girl sitting behind him on the sofa reached around to place a finger on his forehead. Dudley stared across at him. Harry turned to look up at the girl whose hair was hanging down and tickling the back of his neck. She was thin and pale with long blonde hair and big brown eyes. Her name was Rachel.
"Someone...gave it to me," Harry explained slowly, taking another gulp from the bottle in his hand. The occupants of the living room eyed one another.
"That's heavy man," the tough guy said and everyone murmured in agreement.
"So your school has got hot girls, four different kinds of asshole and knife fights? Where do I sign up?" The baby faced guy jumped to his feet with his hand to his forehead in salute but he'd had too much to drink. He fell over his own feet, knocking his bottle everywhere. It sprayed Harry and Rachel and put out the tough guy's cigarette but he didn't get angry. Everybody burst out laughing and Rachel dragged Harry into the kitchen in search of some hand towels to dry off. They stood in the dull lull of the drum and bass of the track currently playing loudly on the stereo in the next room. Rachel wiped her hands, chest and neck clean and then crossed the room to press a towel to Harry's wet face. She dried his glasses and then his forehead, stopping to stare up at his scar.
"It hardly looks real," she said, touching it with her fingers again.
"Sometimes I wish it wasn't," Harry said, slowly becoming aware of the palpable tension between him and this girl he knew nothing about. He thought about how easy it would be to date her until his birthday and then disappear. He'd go and live in a world she knew nothing about and she'd forget about him. Unlike his relationship with Ginny, it'd be simple.
"Everybody's got scars, just not everybody's are on the outside," she said as she drew closer and Harry turned his head away, "Scars are just proof that once you stopped bleeding-that you're alive..." The baby face and the other girl came stumbling into the kitchen.
"I love this song! Rachel, come dance with me!" Rachel was dragged away and Harry stood alone in the kitchen clutching the damp hand towel and thinking about other people's scars.
"I think Rachel's into you," Dudley said as he came into the kitchen. He leaned down to take more bottles of beer from the fridge.
"Don't be stupid-"
"Gorgeous and perfect not your type?" Harry said nothing and stared out of the kitchen door at the dining room table, thinking of the Weasleys and one in particular.
"Got a girl back at school?" Dudley asked, slurring his words and already quite drunk but seemingly enjoying his birthday.
"Kind of," was all Harry could reply.
"Explains why you keep going back I suppose," Dudley said. Harry smiled but wasn't happy. He did not know if he would be going back this year and if he did it would not be for Ginny.
Harry followed Dudley back into the kitchen, back to the kids he didn't know and the music and the dancing and the forgetting. Harry downed every drink he was handed and listened to their conversations about people he had never heard of, laughing when he was supposed to laugh and asking questions when he felt he was supposed to ask them. He danced with Rachel. Nobody asked anything more about Hogwarts or his plans for the future. Rachel mentioned that she wanted to be a nurse. When she asked Harry what he wanted to be he told her that he just wasn't sure. She told him that he looked like a writer. Harry thought of all of the stories he could tell them and how they wouldn't believe any of them. They left Privet Drive for the park where Harry had spent so many summers sitting on the swings alone as Dudley and his gang bullied the younger kids until they ran home to their mothers. Except this time Harry wasn't alone and he wasn't thinking about Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore or Voldemort. He didn't care about the danger of being out of bounds of protective charms of the fact that they were breaking his aunt's curfew. Harry was too busy finally enjoying himself.
Harry woke up on his bedroom floor late into the afternoon with a phone number and Rachel's name written on the inside of his arm in permanent marker. He scrubbed it off in the shower and he no longer felt the happy apathy of the night before. Dudley was seventeen and he was still Harry Potter with a deadly mission to fulfil, an evil wizard to vanquish and a lot of lives weighing down on his shoulders. He was in the bathroom thinking about it all for so long it got too hot. He ended up sat down on the toilet seat with the window open wishing he'd kept one of the cigarettes from last night. "Harry? Not being sick again?" His aunt Petunia rapped on the door. Harry had no doubt that she's been up for hours deep cleaning the house of all those cigarette fumes, drink stains and general teenager germs. She'd probably cleaned around Harry in his own room.
"No. I'll be out in a second." He knew she only wanted in the bathroom so that she could continue her manic cleaning spree. He got dressed quickly and passed her in the doorway.
"Breakfast is on the table." The living room was spotless. No evidence of a party remained in the kitchen or dining room either, apart from Dudley, looking worse for wear with his head resting on the dining room table.
"How's the head Big D?" Harry slapped Dudley on the back playfully and sat down.
"Big..." he groaned in reply. He had pushed away his plate of breakfast. It must have been the only time in his whole life Harry had ever seen Dudley refuse a meal.
"Good thing birthdays are only once a year I guess."
"Totally. You had a good night, though?" Dudley asked, raising his head and staring at him as he tucked into the first thing he'd eaten since breakfast the day before.
"I did, yeah." Dudley smiled and returned his forehead to the table. He spent the rest of the day throwing up but he didn't get a shred of sympathy from his mother. Harry did all he could to stay occupied and ignore the vicious headache which rivalled only the pain which had used to stem from his scar. He read his schoolbooks from the year before, put away his laundry and helped his aunt with the gardening.
"Harry." Harry was sitting cross legged beside the rose bushes staring at the photograph of Snape at his grandparent's sink as though waiting for the boy in the photograph to open his mouth and tell him the answers to all of his questions about him. "Honestly if I'd known you were going to be such little help." Aunt Petunia leaned across him to pick up her discarded shears. "You say that strange boy-he became a killer for...the man who killed your mother?" Petunia asked and Harry nodded. "He never used to let anybody say a bad word about Lily. What changed? Why on earth would he do anything for that man?"
"I don't know...It doesn't make any sense."
"Not much in that world does." Harry couldn't fathom how a half-blood boy who had grown up on the same street as his muggle born mother and spent half a decade as her protective best friend had come to be the reason for her death and a supporter of her murderer. Harry silently cleared away the clippings from the rose bushes and then trudged up the stairs to his bedroom where he shut the door, slipped the photo back into Hagrid's album and let Hedwig out for a short fly. Her wing was all but healed and even though Harry had not had a paper in several days he was still anxious to let her out knowing that someone out there planned to hurt her. He was going a little mad with cabin fever by the evening, staring at himself in the mirror and thinking of his father calling him his 'little man', when Dudley came in and suggested a kick-around.
A tabby cat Harry recognised with markings above its eyes like spectacles, was sitting on the garden wall. Harry petted the cat with a smile. The walk was slow and quiet and the kick around short. Dudley had to stop to throw up. Instead they lay in the grass behind the park, smoking cigarettes and staring up at the darkening sky. A change of scenery was exactly what Harry had needed but he could not run away as easily from his thoughts. Dumbledore occupied many of them. Harry tried not to think of the potion he had forced him to drink in the cave but the mystery of what had happened to his withered hand had never been fully explained. What kind of curse could to that to someone? How had Snape known how to heal him? Had he still been slowly dying? Was that why he had pressed Harry for the memory from Slughorn? Was that why he had finally allowed Snape the cursed teaching position? Did he know he was living on borrowed time and that no matter what happened Snape would not be at Hogwarts at the end of the year? Had Snape known that he might die by the end of the year? Had Snape gone with him when he had travelled in search of Voldemort's horcruxes? What had he asked him to do that he didn't want to do? "You're always staring off into space. What you thinking about?" Dudley asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows, instantly feeling sick and lying back down again. Harry opened his eyes to a sky filled with the beginnings of stars. The day had gone by quickly and Harry was glad.
"Mysteries-"Dudley jumped to his feet and threw up again, doubled over by the fence which ran around the park.
"Put me out of my misery won't you Harry?" Harry watched in disgust as Dudley wiped sick from his chin with his arm. If Dudley had really been dying Harry might of-That was it! Perhaps Dumbledore had already been dying from the curse which had been inflicted upon his hand. He knew that Draco planned to murder him and he also knew that because of the curse on the job Snape would no longer be teaching at Hogwarts by the end of the year. Suddenly all of the pieces were coming together in Harry's head to form a big and disturbing picture. That was what they had argued about which Snape had not wanted to do. It made sense that Dumbledore had asked Snape to finish him off, cementing his status as Voldemort's favourite and saving Draco from becoming a killer but for what?
Harry had been pacing up and down as Dudley stared at him and stopped dead with a hand to his head as he reached the last stop of his train of thought. Of course his theory all relied upon the fact that Dumbledore had been right to trust Snape and that he had always been on their side. After seeing the hatred in Snape's face when he had cast the killing curse on Dumbledore's weakened body made that harder to believe than anything else. Would Harry have hated Dumbledore if he had been asked the same thing-to murder a friend, a mentor, somebody he respected? He couldn't- Harry's mouth dropped open. "More mysteries?" Dudley asked and Harry shook his head and raised a finger to point at the sky. A flume of black smoke was spiralling into the air far too close to Privet Drive for comfort. Harry and Dudley ran as fast their legs and Dudley's sensitive stomach would carry them. Dumbledore and Snape were temporarily forgotten. Harry's heart was in his throat, terrified that his relatives had been killed by Deatheaters. Harry and his cousin found themselves out of breath, hiding behind a bush in the heat of Mrs Figg's front garden as her home burnt to the ground. A stream of cats came darting out of the house and between their legs. Harry made to clamber over the bush and into the house to look for the old women who had come to his rescue two summers ago. "You can't go in there!" Dudley pulled him back and Harry fell straight back into the bush scratching his arms. They were both staring at Mrs Figg where she was standing on her front lawn. Her hair, face and clothes were black with smoke and she was holding the burnt bodies of two large cats. Harry again tried to stand up as Mrs Figg spotted him lying in her hedgerow.
"Harry! Get out of here-"She had barely finished before she was throwing the two dead cats into the air and shrieking as a shadow the size of two men descended upon her. Harry recognized the shadow instantly-the dark hair, strong hairy arms and bared teeth of Fenrir Greyback. He tore down the frail body of Mrs Figg and howled at the moon. It wasn't full but that didn't stop Harry from being terrified of the man who had just bitten a chunk out of a pensioner. Dudley was dragging Harry up and out of the bush open-mouthed and eyes wide.
"Holy...Who is that?" Dudley asked as Harry regained his footing and set off in a run, down the long side road which would lead them to the protection of Privet Drive.
"Run! Just run! Don't look back!" Harry ran as fast his legs would carry him, leapt the fence surrounding his aunt and uncle's house, almost dislocated his shoulder tearing open the front door and pushed Dudley inside. His aunt who had previously been twitching at kitchen curtains, eyeing the fire across the back garden came rushing into the hallway. She hugged her son tightly.
"Are you alright? I've been so worried." Dudley did not have the energy to shrug his mother off. Harry stumbled into the kitchen and sat down at the dining table trying to catch his breath. His uncle Vernon was standing at the fridge, taking out a large beer. He did not look the least bit affected by the fire.
"Where have you been boy? You've dragged mud all into the house!"
Early next morning Harry was awoken by the phone's loud ringing. Dudley trudged up the stairs and into Harry's room. "Couldn't sleep either?" Harry shook his head and sat up. "There's a girl on the phone for you." Harry threw off the covers. "She sounds hot. You never said you had hot friends." Harry shrugged Dudley off as he tried to listen in.
"Hello?"
"Harry!" She always sounded so elated to start with. "I called as soon as I could! Everyone knows about Arabella. It's disgusting! They got so close. Are you alright? They didn't hurt you-"
"Hermione. Calm down. I'm fine."
"I'm fine too," Dudley whispered, smirking, "Tell her I'm fine-"Harry took the phone away from his ear and pushed his cousin out of the hallway. It sounded as though Hermione was standing on a busy street.
"Where are you?" Hermione paused. Harry yawned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
"I better not say...but please stay safe, won't you? Promise me."
"I promise." Harry regretted starting off this chain of back and forth promises.
"I can't wait to see you." Harry wanted to smile but Hermione still didn't quite sound herself.
"Hermione, are you okay?"
"I'm just worried about you Harry."
"Hermione, you're forgetting one vital thing. I defeated Voldemort before I was out of nappies. I'm the potty trained Chosen One, okay?" Hermione laughed and Harry felt accomplished.
"Goodbye Harry."
As days passed, Harry's birthday approached and the Order made no form of contact, Harry became wracked with worry. He demanded that his uncle Vernon stay home from work. He wouldn't listen and went anyway. Harry did not allow his aunt to go shopping for new clothes to wear on their cruise. Instead she ordered everything in. It was the first time the family had eaten takeout. Dudley was scared by his paranoia but Harry was scared of what was waiting for him outside the moment he came of age. He did not want his relatives to know the kind of things that hunted him. The closer his birthday got, the less Harry slept. A few nights before the 31st, when Dudley was wolfing down Chinese food, there was a knock on the door-the back not the front. Dudley's fork stopped mid journey and was lowered back onto his plate. His aunt Petunia almost dropped her glass. Even his uncle turned his eyes away from the television. Harry drew his wand and approached the door. He opened it to a young man with a beard wearing a leather overcoat with a deep hood. "Who are you?" Harry did not even remotely recognise the man on his doorstep. He wasn't sure what he'd expected- Voldemort standing there in the middle of the garden?
"Wotcher Harry. It's me-Tonks. I'm in disguise because they'll be watching the house," Came a voice that Harry instantly recognised as hers. It was odd to behold-a woman's voice coming out a terribly manly face. Harry did not let go of his wand and raised her left sleeve just to check that her arm was bare.
"I'm sorry but who will be watching the house?" Petunia asked as a bearded stranger ran around her living room closing doors, locking windows, drawing blinds and pulling curtains to.
"Has anyone new moved into the area lately?"
"Yes. A young couple-Esther and Adam-moved into the house on the end there-"Petunia explained proudly, her thirst for gossip for once paying off.
"Deatheaters," was Tonk's dry reply. Harry tensed, wondering if they had kept Greyback the night Mrs Figg had died.
"They have my casserole dish!" Harry couldn't help but smile.
"Well Harry that's why you're to walk to the park where Remus will meet you while I remain here posing as you so that the lookouts don't get too suspicious. I'm your advanced guard if you will. Letters are too risky these days." Harry struggled to take in everything she had said as she shed the beard and a few inches of height, her eyes went from blue to green and she pulled a pair of circular glasses from her back pocket with a smirk. His relatives watched in amazement as her appearance rapidly changed until they were staring at a mirror image of Harry.
"Woah! Can you do that Harry?" Dudley asked circling Tonks.
"No! Wait-why are you staying here?" Harry asked scratching his head. Tonks mimicked his actions as though studying him. Harry shoved his hands into his pockets feeling self-conscious.
"To avert suspicion. Look Harry," Tonks took Harry aside and lowered her voice. "It's no surprise that the Deatheater's will attack here the second that you turn seventeen-"
"Friday? Death...eaters...want to attack this house on Friday?" Petunia asked falling shakily onto the sofa. Tonks rolled her eyes, annoyed at being overheard.
"You saw Arabella Figg's house in flames?" she asked, her hands still on Harry's shoulder. Harry felt odd being stared at by someone who looked exactly like him.
"Old lady burnt to death-lots of cats. Terrible stink it was. Ruined the look of the..." Vernon stopped talking as Tonks turned to stare at him incredulously.
"Well that was the Deatheaters...and if we don't get Harry out of here safely before his birthday, you could all be killed in the attack."
Faced with a threat on their mortality, Aunt Petunia fell back down onto the sofa, accidentally sitting on Vernon and Dudley's fork dropped onto the table with a clatter.
"No. They're leaving thursday for a cruise." Even the Dursley's seemed to have forgotten. After all Tonks had said, Petunia looked a little guilty that she had planned to leave Harry in danger.
"Just as well then. Harry, is your trunk packed? Put some basics in a backpack or something too."
Harry took the stairs three at a time and burst into his bedroom where he tore open his trunk and began throwing clothes from his laundry basket and chest of drawers into its depths, his old schoolbooks, supplies and Daily Prophets went on top. He stuffed some clean underwear and pyjamas, the photo album Hagrid had given him first year and his aunt's album into the old backpack he had tried to leave with weeks before. He fed Hedwig and was excitedly telling her that they were at last getting out of Privet Drive when his aunt quietly slipped into his bedroom with a wrinkled parcel in her hands. It was wrapped in colourful paper with a red bow. "Need any help?" she asked tentatively. Harry thought about Tonks, left alone downstairs pretending to be him with his uncle Vernon and Dudley.
"I'm all done." His aunt sat down on his bed, smoothing down the sheets with a long stare out of his window. Harry's room was so clean it barely even looked lived in. Harry coughed uncomfortably, his eyes on the parcel and his aunt stood up and passed it into his hands.
"Since you won't be here for your birthday..." she said and she left the room again. Harry stared at the parcel in his hands. It felt like clothing of some kind. He had never received an actual birthday present from his relatives and the fact that he was getting one now seemed like a goodbye.
Tonks was the second to enter Harry's room having passed his aunt on the stairs. She closed the door behind her and rushed to the window to draw the blinds. "Bit early isn't it?" she asked of the present in his hands. Harry nodded and stuffed the parcel hastily into his backpack. "Leave me some of your clothes won't you? Need to look convincing." Harry removed an outfit from his case and left it on the bed, shoes, socks and all. Tonks picked up his underwear with her wand and a bemused smirk.
"Tonks, can't you be yourself until I have to leave?" Harry was becoming unsettled talking to himself. Tonks nodded and transformed her face back into the milky white skin, brown eyes and pink hair that was her own. Harry felt put at ease and sat down beside her on his bed.
"I imagine you've seen enough of your own face in the paper." Harry slammed his case shut on the crinkled Daily Prophet covers emblazoned with his and Dumbledore's photograph from the ministry after Sirius had died. "You understand why no one's been in touch?" Harry nodded but did not mention Hermione's phone-call.
"Seems like you have the kind of big news you put in a letter." Harry eyed the moonstone ring on Tonk's left hand and for the smallest of moments she practically beamed.
"Oh thank you Harry...but you best take this. Harry Potter's not married." Harry struggled with the idea that he might never be as she slid the ring from her finger and pushed it into his palm. "Give it to Remus and I'll put it back on when I see him again." Harry put the ring on the same delicate chain as his mother's whistle, afraid of losing it, making it the third thing hanging close to his heart. Tonks cast her eyes over the locket and the whistle but said nothing about either. "Dung will be collecting your things in the morning. It's too risky to be doing magic so close to this address with you being underage." Hedwig gave a low hoot and the television volume was turned back up downstairs.
Seeing Tonks transform into him had reminded Harry of something he had been meaning to ask her all year. "Tonks...Did you ever have to pretend to be Dumbledore last year?" On the night of his death Dumbledore had told Harry that he appeared to do other things whilst he was away from the school searching for horcruxes. Tonks hung her head slightly and fiddled with her ring-less hand.
"Yes I did...and I never really asked why..." she said sadly. "All I had to do was sit in the Three Broomsticks or the Hog's Head and have a drink." Harry thought this had been a risky move on Dumbledore's behalf. If he had known that Draco was out to kill him he could easily have tried to kill Tonks instead. Harry supposed she would easily have been able to defend herself against a desperate schoolboy. "It was always so easy to have blind faith in him...but now I'm beginning to question whether we were all just taken in by his age and his wisdom-if even he was taken in by it..." Harry knew by the way the usually long-winded Tonks had to pause that she too had lost sleep trying to unravel Dumbledore's motives for trusting Snape. He didn't know whether this was the right time to share his recently formulated theories with her. "I haven't been able to get it out of my head...What was the last thing he said to you?" Harry was taken aback by the bluntness of her question but did not have to struggle to remember.
"He said 'you swore to obey me'..." Harry trailed off rubbing sore eyes and Tonks smiled weakly. "He stunned me up the tower. I wanted to save him-I did." Harry could not stand the idea that people thought of him as a helpless victim frozen by fear and unable to fight the Deatheaters which had cornered Dumbledore. Tonks nodded and gripped his hand.
"I know. We all want to help you with whatever he's asked you to do-"
"No one else is going to die for me," Harry replied gravely. Tonks let go of his hand and stood up, rearranging her features into his and slipping on circular glasses.
"People die needlessly every day. We just lost Emmeline but this is a war and if it wasn't you, it would be somebody else. I'm willing to go down with our ship, if that's what it takes but it's just like Dumbledore said; 'it's important to fight and fight again, keep fighting' because only then can evil be kept at bay."
Harry stared at her feeling suddenly schizophrenic and wishing that he had an alter-ego with such optimism. When Harry said nothing, Tonks started to get changed. Harry pulled on his backpack and his invisibility cloak and followed her downstairs when she looked exactly like him. He watched as she sat down in the chair by the wall and his relatives stared as though they were unsure which Harry they were looking at. Harry hated goodbyes. His relatives raised their eyes from the television as the back door opened and closed and Harry, under his invisibility cloak, stepped out into the night. He walked silently towards the park, the cloak clutched about him as tightly as possible, jumping at every noise and passing shadow. The moment he had rounded the corner into the driveway of no. 4 Privet Drive Harry had seen a light switch on in the house at the corner and the man, Adam's face had appeared in the window, peering out. Harry could barely believe that followers of Voldemort had been living so close to him, watching his every move waiting for his birthday to arrive. He began to wonder about other things-the girl guides who had knocked the day before, the homeless man lying in the alley Harry and Dudley had sped down at the sight of Mrs. Figg's house in flames, the blue haired cat circling the lamp post at the end of the street and the young boys who had been fighting in the park a week earlier. Voldemort had been circling him all summer, silently drawing in...Perhaps these odd previously un-noticed strangers were not only Deatheaters but also Order members. The thought made Harry smile- Kinglsey Shacklebolt in disguise as a girl guide.