A/N: Hello everyone! Welcome back to another fic :) The theme for this round is Loss, so please be prepared to face emotions, because the wizarding world apparently doesn't believe in therapy! Sorry for the depression, but hey, my muse thinks this round is depressing!

This one is for Round 3 of The Houses Competition, where I'm in Ravenclaw House and writing for Potions. This competition, we have to write a drabble (500-1000 words) as well as a standard (1000-3000 words). This fic is the Standard of the two. Prompts are listed below.

Thank you kindly to BBGrl, BeaWrites, and Jeanie for the beta!

Word Count: 2023

Disclaimers/Warnings: depression, mentions of canonical deaths

Summary: Harry finds comfort in the least likely person after the death of his beloved Godfather

Prompts:

The Houses Competition Y10 R3

[Theme] Physical loss of a person/pet

[Weather] Misty

"Home"

For once, the hazy summer British weather cooperated with Harry's desolate mood. It had only been three days since he arrived back at Privet Drive for the summer, and five days since the worst day of his life.

"Sirius," he murmured as he hid in the bushes in front of the house. Leaning his head against the wall, Harry let the mists surrounding him soak him to the bone. It wasn't quite raining, but it wasn't not either. What was that phrase he had heard once on the telly?

I like to cry when it rains, so people can't tell I'm crying.

Something like that. Harry angrily swiped his arm across his eyes to clear his face of moisture. Was it the mist? He wasn't going to tell.

Harry woke, feeling unpleasantly moist, having left his window open for Hedwig to come in and out through the night. A thick layer of dew covered everything, and Harry cursed himself more than once for being careless. Aunt Petunia was going to flip.

Harry's scowl deepened at the thought of his aunt, who had cuffed his ear when he had gotten here with the reminder of no freakish business during the summer. He refused to call this place a home. It was a halfway house that held him for two months until Hogwarts could be called home once more.

Getting out of bed was no easy feat, when all he wanted to do was mope about. Sirius, his last living relative who had wanted him, had died and it was all his fault. Had he not been so reckless, not been so stupid…

But now, he couldn't mope like a teenager. He had to prepare for Voldemort being back and for keeping his friends safe. He had to be the savior of the Wizarding World, when all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and die.

Slinking over to the open window, Harry leaned on the sill, ignoring how the collected water seeped into the sleeves of his shirt he had changed into to ward off the night chill. Staring out at the backyards of the sleepy neighborhood, Harry's eyes trailed through the mists as they swirled with the rising sun. There was a slight shimmer in the sky that drew his attention. To his untrained eye, it looked like a dome that surrounded Number 4 Privet Drive and the surrounding neighbors. The rest of the neighborhood seemed to be left out of this bubble, and Harry scowled as he realized what that was, and what it meant for him and his freedom this summer break.

"Wards," he said aloud, straightening as he glared into the sky. So that was what Professor Dumbledore had said when he mentioned adding extra protection for the summer. While the wards looked like it would work well against dark wizards and witches, it also kept him contained to the property line.

He was a rat stuck in a cage.

The sun rose as dawn broke, and Harry angrily turned away from the window before he could see the mists dissipate. He had seen many a sunrise before, both here when he had to get up before the rest of the household to start on his long standing list of chores, as well as at Hogwarts, where in some parts of the year, the sun wouldn't rise until well into their first period of the day. And frankly, with how miserable he was about Sirius' death–and his part in it–Harry didn't want to look at the sunrise.

He didn't deserve to.

The roses in Aunt Petunia's back garden had languished without Harry's helping hand during the school year. Her expecting him to get them into tip top shape in three days time was insane, although he would never accuse his relatives of being of sound mind.

He piled more mulch around the exposed roots of the rosebush, angrily muttering under his breath at the regression of all his hard work from previous years. Taking a calming breath, Harry stilled himself before the neighbors could see. They had new neighbors at Number Two, and the boney old woman seemed to be more of a gossip than Aunt Petunia. She had been craning her head over the fence for the past week, trying to get a glimpse of the 'criminally minded nephew' that the Dursleys shipped off to St Brutus' every September.

Harry couldn't help but scowl at the thought. He wished people would stop treating him like he would kill someone on a whim. He wasn't a criminal!

Neither was Sirius, whispered a voice in his mind, and Harry's scowl deepened. He leaned forward further into the rosebush, uncaring that a few thorns were scratching at his face as he reached for and plucked a few stubborn weeds, digging out their roots as much as he could so the weeds couldn't take hold. A sudden feeling of hopelessness filled him at the thought, and Harry had to shed his gardening gloves–thankfully Aunt Petunia let him use his dragonhide gloves from school for this task–in order to press his hands against his eyes, fighting back the burn of tears.

The noise of uneasy footsteps on the other side of the fence caused him to draw himself up and quickly compose himself before anyone saw him. He didn't need the neighborhood gossips to start claiming he was emotionally unstable too.

The temperature suddenly dropped and his feeling of despair grew stronger. Looking up, a frown twisted his face at the sight of a Dementor floating above head. It hovered just above where he had seen the ward in the sky a few mornings earlier.

"At least they did one thing right," he mumbled before getting up to head inside. He dusted any loose dirt from his clothes and tucked his dragonhide gloves into the pocket of his gardening apron before entering the kitchen to grab a glass of water. The kitchen was dark, and he chose not to turn the light on when he knew he was heading right back outside once he had quenched his thirst.

That was exactly the reason why he jumped when he noticed his Aunt Petunia standing at the kitchen window, her lips twisted in her own scowl at the sky.

"Nasty things," she said, making Harry stop in surprise. He looked at her warily. She tilted her head towards where he knew the Dementors were. But she couldn't see them…could she? "They had appeared a few days before your parents died as well," she added. "Your mother, Lily…gods, she was so brilliant. I will always regret my bitterness with her…and with you."

Harry looked at her in shock.

"Aunt Petunia…"

"Even when we were fighting, Lily cared enough about us to put up a barrier to protect us against most things from your world. It had shielded us from those cloaked monsters shortly before her death. And I suppose it's protecting us now."

"You can see them?" Harry asked. He drew closer to the window and watched with his aunt as the Dementor floated away, taking the feelings of depression and despair away.

"Always have. I can see that awful pub that is the entryway to that alley of yours…but it was never enough," she replied.

"Aunt Petunia, I–"

"You didn't just lose a mother that day. I lost a sister, one whom I was trying to patch things up with. But it just wasn't safe. None of us were safe. And in the end, your war got her," she said, her breath hitching. Slowly removing the apron and letting it drop to the floor, clearly telegraphing his movements in case this was a one-off moment and she would violently react, Harry reached out and drew Aunt Petunia into a hug. She allowed it, one arm wrapping around his shoulders to press him to her side.

They grieved in silence in the darkened kitchen for a few moments before Harry pulled back slightly, actually surprised that she had allowed the contact, and had actually comforted him. "Sirius died, and it's my fault," he admitted.

"Your godfather?" She didn't look at him, but Harry tensed, ready for her to push him away.

"Yeah."

"Were you the one who killed him?"

"No, his cousin–"

"Then it's his cousin's fault. Just like how my sister didn't get herself blown up–" Harry remembered Aunt Petunia using those same exact words on his eleventh birthday, and he marveled at her holding onto the conversation– "she was murdered." Aunt Petunia pulled back from him, and Harry disengaged somewhat forlornly. He wouldn't push the issue. If this was the only positive affection he would get out of his aunt, he wouldn't besmirch it by crossing boundaries. "I hate to say it, but it is not your fault, Harry. It's the enemy who did it. Those freaks," she then hissed, her face contorted with rage or grief, Harry wasn't sure which.

"I'm a freak…" he then said quietly. "Am I an enemy?" Aunt Petunia side-eyed him, her lips pursing, and Harry's heart sank. He knew it, he pushed too much, and now–

"You're our freak. You're not an enemy," she replied softly. She didn't move from her spot in front of the window, but she allowed Harry to move away. He picked up his apron from the ground and dashed the last few tears away.

The front door suddenly slammed open, preceding Uncle Vernon and Dudley's entrance after being out all day. Harry turned to look at the door leading to the hall in surprise. He thought they would have been out for longer.

"Break's over, boy," Aunt Petunia then said sharply. Harry turned to look at her, but she had her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes still outside. "That thing is gone. You can finish with the gardening, and then come in and help start dinner."

Help start dinner…

Harry noticed the different phrasing, and his heart lifted a little. Perhaps he had gotten through to her.

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," he obediently replied before heading back into the back garden. Several minutes later, as the dying sun beat on the back of his neck, he realized he had forgotten his glass of water. Standing to go grab it now, he stopped short to see a full glass of water sitting by the back door, with a slice of lemon. He couldn't help the small smile that appeared, nor the sense of relief as he took his first big gulp of his aunt's peace offering.

Maybe things were looking up for him.

Harry stayed out in the garden until he was called in to help with dinner, and afterwards, with his plate of a somewhat normal portion of food in hand, he slipped away into the darkness of the garden. Perching himself on the bench outside, he ate more heartily as he reflected on what little time he had had with Sirius.

It was a weird feeling, he recognized as the half moon was high in the sky, his finished plate in the grass next to him, the nightly mists beginning to encroach upon his surroundings. His closest friends and mentors could tell him that Sirius' death was not his fault until they were blue in the face, but he had still harbored that guilt and grief over the entire fiasco. But Aunt Petunia, the one whose regard and affection he had never quite managed to secure, telling him it wasn't his fault made it finally sink in. She, who never saw a reason to sugarcoat things, flat out told him the truth. And she was right.

Granted, what happened today wasn't the level of affection he assumed a mother would give her child, but it was a start. And as the mists swirled around him as he stood to head back inside, stooping momentarily to grab his plate from the ground, hope budded in his chest. It was time he looked towards the future and stopped moping on the past. Sirius hadn't wanted him to be so…serious.

"I promise. I'll live for you, Sirius. And my friends. We'll win this war."