warning for chapter: violence
Stay safe and strong with this election you guys
As soon as the dream started Harry knew exactly which dream it would be. Last year he had this dream on repeat almost every night. The fact that he knew which dream it was didn't make it any less scary though.
He was in the graveyard. Everything was so realistic it was like he had been transported back in time and was re-living it. The night air was cold but Harry was sweating despite it. He was staring at Cedric's dead face, now motionless, and thinking that it should be him lying there. Cedric didn't deserve to die, but Harry had been narrowly escaping death since the day he was born.
"Cedric!" Harry screamed, and fell to his knees beside the body, grabbing the boy's shoulders as if he could shake life into the body.
"He's not going to wake up, you know," said a voice.
He didn't need to turn to know who it was. He had had this dream many times before after all. He knew exactly what was going to happen. And yet each time he had this dream it felt like he was experiencing it for the first time. Every emotion was just as sharp, and he couldn't alter the dream no matter how hard he tried.
He turned, and Sirius was standing there, a disappointed look on his face, his arms hanging limply at his side.
Harry sprang to his feet and rushed towards his godfather, a sob catching in his throat. Sirius was his favorite adult, and the only one whom he felt had ever truly appreciated him. And it had been so long since he had seen the man. Harry threw himself into Sirius' arms… and went right through him.
He whirled around, feeling shocked, even as he remembered. As if he had forgotten.
"You're...you're…" Harry was sticking his arms into Sirius, trying to grasp something solid, only wanting to hug the man, but there was nothing there. And now Harry could see the man wasn't completely solid looking, at all. He was many different particles shifting in different directions, making a solid shape.
"Yes, I'm dead." Sirius looked very sad, and Harry stared at his frowning mouth as the words came out. "Don't you remember? How I died? How you killed me? don't you remember, you FREAK?"
As he said the last word it suddenly wasn't Sirius speaking anymore. It was Vernon. He was panting, chest heaving, and his cheeks were rosy from anger and he held a belt in his closed fists.
Harry threw himself backwards, but slipped and ended up sprawled back on the ground, falling on Cedric's body. Only, when Harry looked down, the body wasn't Cedric's anymore. It was Sirius. His face was so still and cold, he wished he could at least be a ghost again.
"You deserve this!" Vernon yelled, shaking the folded belt in the air. "You know you do, you freak! You killed them all!"
Two clouds of glowing particles appeared on either side of Vernon, swirling together to make two images. And then Harry recognized them.
"Mom! Dad!" he croaked, the words getting stuck in his throat.
They didn't even look at him. They were staring at the ground, shaking their heads sadly, their images still blurry and twisted with particules, not even fully formed.
"I'm sorry!" Harry sobbed. "I'm sorry, I didn't want you to die! I didn't want anyone to die! I didn't mean for any of this to happen!"
Vernon advanced on him, but Harry didn't even try to scramble back anymore. He was too overcome with grief. He didn't care what happened to him. He huddled into a ball on the ground and waited for the belt to advance, sobs wracking his frail body.
"Hey, hey, shhhhhhhhh, it's ok…."
Something was rubbing circles on his back, and Harry started. This wasn't how this dream went at all. So what…?
Something wet was on his neck, and he felt that fingers were weaved through his own and something else wiping his tears away.
He blinked but everything was still black.
"What is.. Where am I? His mind was scrambling.
"Nightmare, just a nightmare. Go back to bed now." Kisses were trailing down his neck. He could feel the familiar soft wetness of them. And there was a warm weight on top of him.
Jack.
Harry was still half asleep and crying.
He felt a bit panicked that the man had came in his room, but he wasn't beating him or anything, so he let the man pet his hair as he fell back asleep.
The Dursley family seemed like how Snape expected a disgustingly stereotypical muggle family to be. Vernon was watching tv, a large bag of potato chips opened in his lap. Dudley was next to him, a whale of a boy, and he was arguing that he wanted to watch his program while simultaneously crunching on chips. Petunia was gossiping into a phone that was perched onto her sharp chin as she scuttled around the kitchen. Her voice was high as she screeched into the mouthpiece, "Yes, Margaret, I know, but did you see what she was wearing? It was absolutely appalling!"
"Shut up, woman! I'm trying to hear my program!" growled Vernon from the living room.
No one noticed that the front door had quietly opened and shut again. No one noticed the silent intruder that made his way around the house.
Snape had confiscated Harry's invisibility cloak when Potter had first arrived. When Potter had left Snape had purposefully 'forgotten' to return it for this very reason. He wanted to survey the wretched family without being noticed. He felt slightly indignant that he was resorting to Potter-style-mischief-making, but the cloak did have it's use, and then he would return it to the brat once it had served its purpose.
The cupboard was one of the first things that Snape had noticed when he walked in the door. He recollected, in the past when he had been trying to teach Potter occlumency, that there had been something of the sort. The boy had been locked up in there for time-outs, maybe. Still, he hadn't paid it much attention at the time. He had been much more attentive to torturing the boy and ripping into his mind with as much fierceness as he could to render the boy helpless and humiliate him.
Those were the good old days, when Snape was ignorant in his prejudices and he could act in hatred towards the boy with no guilt on his conscience. That had all changed recently. He didn't feel the same animosity regarding the boy. And he hated that he had been wrong about him. He hated that his feelings were changing.
The closet under the stairs perked his interest now. He cast a notice-me-not charm around him and creaked open the door that led under the steps.
The smell was the first thing to greet his nose, because it was rancent. There was a few rags crumbled in the corner and some broken toys on a shelf. He knew immediately that this was more than a simple time-out punishment location. Something living had been locked in here for long durations of time. Snape felt rage build in him as he looked around. He was tempted to turn on the muggles right then, but he hadn't hardly even seen the rest of the house yet.
Upstairs Snape found Harry's bedroom. There were multiple locks and bolts on the outside, and a cat flap on the bottom. When he opened the door everything looked vaguely normal, if not mostly empty. However, his gaze shot right to the window where there were bars on the windows. Bars! He had seen enough. Blood boiling, he made his way downstairs.
Vernon was staring at the tv, a blank expression on his face. Snape walked between the tv and the man, pleased at the way the man stared straight through him. Fixing his wand on him, he silently whispered, "legitimus!"
Dudley, sitting at his dad's side, noticed nothing. He did not know that at that very moment Snape was tearing through sixteen years of memory with a veracity that he had never before used on a human. He flung memories aside, searching for one person: Harry.
He found what he had expected. It did, however, shock him nevertheless. As a death eater and a spy he had partaken in many iniquities that still haunted him in his sleep. He had watched people be tortured and killed. Sometimes he had taken part. He always pretended to enjoy it.
The treatment that Potter had endured, however, made his stomach churn. If there was one thing he could not stand it was child abuse. Seeing memory after memory of Harry crying, begging, flinching, those terrified green eyes boring into his soul, feeling Vernon's pleasure and joy… He wanted to vomit. He wondered if his own father had felt the same when he was a child under his hands. It was sickening.
He pulled out of Vernon's mind, not paying any head to the way the memories around him ripped and shred as he did so, unphased as Vernon slumped to the side, unconscious, a horror-struck expression frozen in place on his face.
Dudley, seeing his father suddenly collapse, screamed.
"Dudley, don't worry, dinner will be done soon!" came Petunia's voice from the kitchen.
Dudley was a bully. He had seen that from Vernon's memories. But he would not torture the boy. He was still a child. There was hope for him yet, hope that he would change. Children were versatile. They deserved second chances.
He left Dudley screaming on the couch and walked into Petunia. Before Petunia could react he had legitimized her as well. He tore through her mind with the same veracity that he had used on Vernon.
If Petunia was any less treacherous in her treatment of Harry it was only because she was afraid of getting her hands dirty. She let Vernon take care of that while she sat back and pampered Dudley and pretended like nothing was wrong, like Harry didn't exist. She obviously preferred it that way. And since Harry did exist, she punished him for it.
"Don't drip blood on the carpet!" "Ew, did you really pee in the closet again? Can't you hold it in?" "Here, have a bread crust and get out of the kitchen." Her words were almost as sickening as her care-free way of speaking them.
Snape left the house with Dudley's screams ringing in his ears like beautiful music. The boy would be sent to a relative, or into foster care, or something. He didn't care. But Vernon and Petunia? He left them slumped on the ground, their eyes rolled back in their heads. They were brain dead.