~Written for the QLFC, Season 5, Round 11~

Position: Seeker

Position Prompt: Write about a second chance on a rainy day(s) OR a missed opportunity on a snowy night(s).

Title: Without Solace

Word Count:~1270

Beta(s): CUtopia, DinoDina, RawMateriel

Chapter 12: Without Solace

To a child, there were few sounds more rousing, more melodious, and more utterly captivating than the wailing chimes of an ice-cream van. Heads would rise, eyes would widen, and like a Pavlovian dog: mouths would water in anticipation.

For Harry Potter, it was no different, even if he'd never partaken in the fruits that accompanied that melody. The Dursleys might shower Dudley with the petty cash to dash outdoors and chase after the van with it's tooting horn and whining music, ambling with his rolling gait, but Harry wasn't allowed. He wasn't supposed to, because what could he offer the Ice-Cream Man in place of chipped coins?

For a seven year old boy, the promise of ice-cream was the absolute. It was the number one. And on Christmas Eve, even as snow fell and frost fogged the windows to muffle the street beyond the living room window, anticipation still drew a tingle to his fingers and enthusiasm to his feet.

Harry waited. He'd been waiting all day. There was no rhyme or reason to the passage of the Christmas Ice-Cream Man, so it was a chance there one moment and gone the next. Harry had completed his chores already. He had raced through scrubbing up after dinner, packing away the dishes, and wiping down the benchtops. He'd helped his aunt tidy away for the evening when the relatives would descend, because that was what he was supposed to do. He was a good boy today, even if his aunt didn't tell him so. She didn't tell him he wasn't, which was almost the same thing.

In the comfortably warm living room, fireplace crackling behind him and the scent of artificial pine Christmas tree – dusty from the attic and spruced up with too many false perfumes – Harry perched in the alcove at the window. He peered out at each car that trundled past, slowed by the slick roads with wipers skittering across their windscreens. Harry touched his fingers to the glass time and time again, wiping the fog away from the vague reflection of his face just so he could peer beyond.

The garden, covered in a spread of untouched snow.

The shrubs, lining the picket fence and sagging beneath their own blanket of snowfall from the day that had already begun to drift into night.

The gutter, thinly awash with sludge, and the road itself, glossy from rain that couldn't quite freeze into snow.

Harry's breath made a fogged mess of the image, and he wiped it away with a scrub of his hand once more.

It came at six o'clock. Six o'clock almost on the dot, and Harry knew because he'd been learning time at school and he remembered the hours. The clock had barely struck when he heard it.

The whine. The clatter. The hum of a distant engine gradually approaching and the toot of a horn to bring scarf-wrapped and mittened children dashing into the streets in an excitable frenzy. This was the day. This was it. The one day of the year that the Ice-Cream Man wouldn't turn him away because he didn't have a pocket-full of pennies.

Harry was scrambling from his seat in the alcove without thought. He heard his aunt in the kitchen, heard her call something to his cousin, but he barely heard her. He felt a grin spread across his face, and he was tripping and stumbling from the living room almost before he'd properly climbed to his feet at all.

That stumble — it cost him as he would always remember.

His aunt's voice called. His uncle shouted something across the length of the house in return. And his cousin… Harry heard his cousin thundering down the stairs and even without precognitive abilities he felt his heart sink. It was almost as though he knew.

"He's here, Mum, he's here!" Dudley cried, as though he didn't have ice-cream for sweets every other night.

"Go and get him, Dudders," Petunia called from the general direction of the kitchen. "You don't want all the other girls and boys to get it all and leave you none."

Harry spun himself into the hallway the moment his cousin thudded from the last step directly in front of him. It was all he could do to skid to a stop before crashing into him directly. Dudley was big, and Harry was small, and experience told him what that meant. It meant Dudley always got his way.

Dudley's face was flushed with boyish excitement. He beamed down at Harry, and it wasn't a nice smile. It wasn't nice at all. Harry expected the shove to his chest that all but toppled him over even before it came.

"You're not allowed any," Dudley said, his smile growing smug. "Is he, Mum?"

"What was that?" Petunia called, but Dudley ignored her. With another nudge, he pushed Harry backwards a step, backwards down the hallway, and because he was bigger, because he was stronger, Harry could only stumble backwards. A step. And then another.

"You're not allowed any, Harry," Dudley said. "It's only supposed to be for good boys and girls, and even Santa knows you're not a good boy."

"But -" Harry began.

And then Dudley shoved him. Again. One last time, and that was the time that meant the most. Harry tripped backwards, feet catching upon one another, and stumbled against the door of his cupboard. His open cupboard, with its open door. It was barely an effort for Dudley to elbow him sidelong into the little cave, and —

And Dudley was bigger.

He was stronger.

Harry fell backwards onto the thin excuse of a bed, head cracking on the wall behind him. He gasped, bit his lip to keep from crying out, and immediately straightened. It wasn't like that hadn't happened before. It wasn't like Dudley didn't push him into his cupboard every day, at every opportunity, just because he could.

Dudley loomed in the doorway, his smile still spread, and peered down at Harry. "Maybe if you're a bit better next year, Harry, you'll be allowed to," he said, and that was it. That was all Harry heard further, Dudley's words discordant against the chiming of the approaching ice-cream van. Then the cupboard door was closing, the lock clattering, and darkness fell upon Harry's little cave that he hated as much as he found solace in it.

There was no solace to be found that night, however. That night Harry hated his cupboard, and its door, and the lock upon that door, more than anything.

He heard when the ice-cream van drew to a temporary pause just outside the Dursley's house. He heard an outburst of childish laughter that could have been Dudley's but he wasn't sure. He heard more laughter, the echo of a man speaking, and then the toot of a horn.

Harry heard it all from his little cupboard. In the darkness, the chill that felt colder than the snow-laden night outside, because he couldn't bring himself to switch on the little lightbulb overhead. He couldn't find the courage to curl into the uncaring wrap of his blankets.

Harry had missed out. Again. It would have been nice if it were anything new, but…

Next year, he told himself, even as he felt his lip tremble to the merry music of the ice-cream man's retreat. I'll get it next year.