Saving Harry
WARNINGS: Religious Fundamentalism, Sensitive Subjects Mentioned, Future Lemon - things of varying sexual nature until that point, homosexual/slash relationships, intense bullying, varying degrees of abuse. If this puts a stick in your ass and offends you, turn back now.
Concept and Story heavily influenced by premise of Steven King's "Carrie". I heat chicken nuggets on review flames.
Also yes, I did just change pen name [DementedWitch is now Audacia's Quill] & STUFF IN ITALIC IN A/N AREA IS SKIPPABLE.
REALLY LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE: Now, in response to my fabulous reviewers, I feel like I have to address something about Harry's treatment and why I've written it/his life, the way I have. This is a little personal to me so feel free to skip on to the story. But basically, British schooling isn't roses, at least, not in some areas. This is the case where I am, and having been to a myriad of local secondary schools, I can say, there's always kids who slip through the cracks. In some schools more then others, but I know for many years, that child was me. I had teachers who cared, but just as easily forgot - in a massive rough school of hundreds. I know teachers have a degree of responsibility to look out for their students, but sometimes things don't always work out for the unlucky few. I wish I had been lucky, I guess I was in the sense that I never had it as bad as Harry, but I've still got a firm collection of bruises and bad experiences. And some schools have a poor handling of "suicide kids," believe me. Before this turns into a pity-parade, I'd like to clarify why I'm sharing this. This is so all you conscientious readers can be aware that yes, sometimes unbearably cruel things can happen and we will let it slide by in society, but also, to keep a watch out for it. Please don't be one of those kinds of people that forgets, just like the rest of the world. Say no to bullying, don't do it, don't allow it, and most of all, try to extend help to the people it happens to. Sometimes, it isn't overt, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
/END PSA.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter [Warner Bros. do] nor do I own Yu-Gi-Oh! Or the great concept of Carrie by S. King
Chapter Four
They found themselves on the floor, pulled down by the boy who had leaped down from the tiny stool. Marik's question had gone unanswered, in fact many of them had. More and more questions seemed to fly from the Egyptian boy and as highly inappropriate as it was, it was simply an overcompensation for not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do. The three of them sat with their backs against the inside-locked door of the store room, Ryou seemed to be the one taking the most charge and trying to physically soothe the boy. It seemed like an hour before he'd actually said anything, and when he had, he kept his knees to his chest and buried his face away.
It was like he couldn't bare to look at them.
Those two were perhaps the worst people to find him, not because of their response, but because they embodied everything that Harry wanted to get away from. They were representative of the feelings, he loathed and the charity he had accepted, since he had accepted it from them during the PE incident. He had to stop every part of his eyes from wanting to water at how badly he wanted to accept the pity-friendship.
But he didn't because he didn't want to ruin their lives by-association and have that horrible 'freak' umbrella cast a shadow over them. Yet they still made that avoidance hard, even after he made a point of scurrying away after any lesson he shared with either of them.
"Why?" one of them - Ryou - asked.
"Everything," was the blunt, tearful response as Harry gracelessly wiped his tears with balled up fists, like a child.
Their hushed stage-whispers seemed to indicate they wanted to tell a teacher, and every internal alarm went off in Harry.
"'M not supposed to make a fuss," he managed finally, silencing the conversation between the two "-not supposed to have the school c-call home, si-David wouldn't like it very much,"
"This is serious," said Marik finally, perhaps one of the smarter things to come out of his mouth "-if we let this go, it'd be on our head if anything..." he stumbled awkwardly "-if you..." he stopped trying to say it, but the unspoken words were there: if you tried to top yourself.
"-no!" cried Harry, raising his tone slightly, then glancing back into his knees at their questioning looks.
"-the school will call safeguarding and they'll call the social and I'm just 'uposed to put my head down and get on with it!" he snapped "-I don't want to get my family or the school in trouble,"
Harry felt sick as the lies finally bubbled out of his mouth.
"Home is fine, I've just had a bad time since the kitchen thing a-and the PE accident, I mean normally it's not actually that bad and there's only a few months of year eleven really-calling people in and that just to make it harder isn't going to help," he said adamantly.
"David is good to me," he beats me sometimes, but not that hard, only when I'm bad, really bad.
"Everyone is, it was just..school," he lied, and he lied, and he lied, until they flowed seamlessly from his lips, and until the frown disappeared from the albino's face.
But Marik didn't buy it for one minute.
They had skipped school for the whole of the afternoon when the Pottery students had left. Marik had insisted on it even though Ryou insisted on trying to convince Harry to tell one of the staff at school.
Marik had a reason for this, surprisingly not a selfish one.
Because out of the corner of his eye, when Harry had been crying in that closet, he had seen a bottle of PVA glue float in mid air behind Ryou's head. He hadn't mentioned it, he hadn't brought it up, but he knew it was coming from Harry - he could practically sense the strange power in waves. Whatever else was wrong with Harry may be a matter far out of the hands of simple school administrators and could easily be to do with something else. Magic.
Marik knew Harry had it, Ryou might have sensed it or at least suspected it along with Yugi. He was one of those British wizard's he'd heard of.
There was also the more personal reasoning behind the matter. Marik - not being the most empathetic or sensible kid in the world, could easily tell that school was not the place for Harry in his state, especially as it was the heavily emphasized reason for Harry's attempted - you know..
It didn't bare thinking about.
They stayed at McDonalds, the foreign staffers didn't seem to pick up on the fact they were blatantly out of school, Marik had brought Harry a burger, and watched awed when he admitted it was his first.
"That just means he's healthy," butted in Ryou, seeing how uncomfortable Harry was becoming, as if the pain in his hands from gripping the bun wasn't hard enough to work through.
"Yeah right, I don't think I've ever seen him eat before - you're dead skinny you know that," said Marik carelessly.
Harry instead, took on a smile and began laughing with Marik.
"I know, standing next to you, you look like Godzilla," he snorted, pointing a fry at Marik as he said it.
For the first time in a long time, Harry was laughing, really laughing - so hard he could ignore the pain in his palms and finger tips. Smiling so much his face hurt, blushing so much his stomach had butterflies flying mini-kamikazes in it. Color rising to moon-pale skin, an almost healthy rosiness, however temporary it was. Food was flung, they were kicked out of McDonalds but Harry actually felt full, of some of the most deliciously unhealthy food to ever pass his lips.
The feelings were still millin' around inside of him but for today he didn't care because he began to enjoy the feeling of his toes curling and his cheeks blushing, running faster then the wind on a full stomach as they played games far too young for teenagers of their age.
The words had begun to flow easily from his lips, no longer hiccuped, just like normal kids.
Normal kids.
Except for Harry this was all sinful, but today, he didn't care.
He had such a nice laugh, such a nice smile that goes right up to his nice green eyes, he was sweeter then sugar, never swore and the concept of basic fun was so foreign that the naivety was cute. There was such an innocence and yet gleam of positiveness in the very core of the bullied boy that Ryou Bakura forgot why the kids at Stonewall hated him to begin with, he was almost un-hateable. He had a genuine child-like joy for swings as if he'd never sat on one before, fastfood, phones, games and tech was almost alien to him apart from school basics. It was a strange and yet endearing kind of innocence, as they opened up the world for the boy to try, and held his hand through it, so that perhaps the idea of wrapping a rope around his neck would seem unthinkable now. He had too many things to enjoy and there's never enough space in a lifetime to do it all, so why end it early?
As the setting sun illuminated the skies in murks of beautiful colours, they could not help but see the radical difference in Harry when they took him away from it all.
The boy did not want to go home.
Then again, it wasn't usual, kid's usually didn't after a long day of hanging out with friends, and this being Harry's first - it was no surprise. Harry seemed to actually hate going home, in fact, as they played until dark he had gathered he hated a lot of things.
He hated Aunt Petunia's chores. He hated David Dursley's chores. He hated punishments. He hated not having fun and being normal but most of all - he hated his carers. Not enough to want them reported, and to up-heave his entire life to sorting them out, but enough to resent the idea he could be saved and deprive himself from the fun of sin that he felt, he was born to enjoy. He resented them for pushing him into a self-loathing life that always said he wasn't good enough or normal enough.
"If you ever want to come over, just come," Ryou had said.
Marik and Ryou dropped Harry off a little way from his house and walked across to Number 8, where they lived, peeking from the curtains of their windows as they saw Harry be pulled in roughly by his shoulder, and the door locked with multiple locks clicking.
What a weird little house.
Aunt Petunia had grabbed him by the ear so hard it hurt, he wondered if it might bleed. He pulled a face and yelled at her to let go, then she did and struck him hard with her long-nailed hand for talking back.
"Where were you?" she yelled about him staying out all day, about the school calling to say he bunked off, about how David was in the garage fixing the car and would come in to deal with him. That David had spent hours thinking of a punishment for not coming home, for bunking off.
The words poured from his mouth, unhindered - for the first time in many years.
"I went out!"
"Where?" she snapped.
"With my friends!" he yelled back, adding confidence to the last note.
"You're supposed to come straight home! You even skipped your entire afternoon just to play with neighborhood scraps?" she screeched and his ears rung.
"You only want me to stay home to do more work, you want to keep me in," he retorted, feeling adrenaline override his self-preservation.
"You want to keep me in just like you tried keeping Uncle Vernon in while you made eyes at David!" he choked out, despite Petunia's rapid changes in shade and angry expression. She flinched and scowled as the sound of Harry stomping his foot came down suddenly.
"It didn't work with him and it don't work with me!" the sound of a heavy clatter broke the argument before Petunia could let out an insane rage.
"Get upstairs, and go to the bathroom," came a cold, hard hiss, as David stood in the doorway, oil-dripped crowbar on the carpet.
Harry would have said no, had it not been for the unnaturally unforgiving look in the man's eye.
Fear swept him as he waited, and waited, and waited on the edge of the bathtub.
He flinched as he heard loud male footsteps coming up the stairs to the bathroom, the door opening, and David carrying a grey canister, not of bleach, not of hot water, not of something he recognized. Harry's eyes widened and he screamed and spat wildly as the jug of liquid was sloshed all over him, and David bound his body so he could not fiddle with the taps, sitting him in the tub. He gagged and spat, nearly throwing up wildly as it had landed in his mouth and eyes, he cried out the tingling sensation and spat the awful taste as best he could.
It was petrol.
Forgetting something, David turned calmly and left the bathroom, unable to lock it from the outside to go downstairs and get a set of matches reserved for the candelabra.
Thrashing wildly and painfully landing himself on the floor, Harry squirmed out of the bathroom, like a combination of a worm and a beached whale, spitting wildly as he did. The taste was revolting, it was everywhere, he could feel it wetting his clothes and skin. He wriggled out of his binds and felt his freakishness do something 'warm' as they slid from his body like an old pajama set.
He ran into his bedroom, it had no inside lock but he couldn't get out from the front, they were both downstairs.
His heart jumped in his chest as he tried to barricade the door though his hands could not push the closet, and he heard approaching footsteps up the stairs. Tears and desperation over coming him, he tried to open his window, which only every jimmied a few centimeters so he couldn't sneak out.
Harry ran to the back of the room, not seeing a heavy object, he bolted forwards, leaning to his right side like he was battering down a door, into the glass.
The rain of shards and piercing sound of the shatter sent everyone within radius into flinches and sudden pandemonium. Harry screamed as he finally hit the ground, landing on his left leg and hurting his ankle horribly, he dragged himself through the street, no longer caring.
He didn't care that David was screaming out of the shattered window.
He didn't care that Aunt Petunia was trying to follow him, he dragged himself through the traffic to the other side of the road and pounded desperately on the first house he saw, tears flowing, reeking of petrol, and falling to his knees in pain as he grabbed onto the person who answered the door's clothes.
"Please, you have to help me,"
To Hell with them, no upheaval could be as bad as burning alive.
David Dursley had wanted to burn him alive.
"Oh my God, come inside," said the woman, half-lifting him in and slamming the door in the face of Aunt Petunia who had finally crossed the street.
It would all be over now, the hell at home had to be.