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Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Harry was sitting in the waiting room of St. Mungo's, Emma next to him with a hand on his shoulder as they waited to go see Harry's aunt Petunia. Hermione had asked to go with Harry, but Professor Babbling had denied the request. The professor wasn't aware of the full extent of the history between Harry and his aunt, and while Harry could have told her or gone to Headmistress McGonagall to override their Head of House, he instead just asked Hermione to take notes for him and make sure he didn't miss anything from their classes that day. Hermione, knowing that Harry would need support even if it wasn't her, had written to Sirius and her parents to ask for help. Both Emma and Sirius were there with him, although Sirius was currently making a run to the tea room getting them each a cup of what he called 'the symbol of British imperialism,' getting a chuckle out of Harry and an eye roll from Emma.
Despite being in St. Mungo's, Petunia Dursley was still considered a prisoner of the Department for the Control of Magical Creatures, which meant that visiting her was a lot more complicated than just turning up during visiting hours. Sirius walked back into the waiting room holding three disposable cups of weak milky tea and a handful of sugar packets. "Sorry Emma, they didn't have any of the fake sugar you prefer," he said as he handed out the cups and sugar packets. Harry took three of the sugar packs and tore them open with his teeth before pouring them into his tea. There wasn't a bin nearby, so he stuffed the empty packs in his pocket, drew his wand, and gave the cup a quick tap, causing the tea to swirl around a little. It was a simple little charm taught in the first year as an introduction to putting things into motion. He gave Emma's tea a similar tap and returned his wand to his holster.
Harry was trying to go over what he expected to say to his aunt in his head, but it depended greatly on what she was going to say to him. There was definitely one thing he was going to say to her: a message from his mother, or more accurately the shade of his mother that was living in his head. He had expected her to advocate for her sister like she had for Dudley, to ask him to forgive her at least. But all she had done was give him a message to her and made him promise to deliver it word for word.
Harry was about two-thirds of his way through his tea when a wizard wearing Ministry robes came out to tell them that they could go in and visit Mrs. Dursley. Harry and Sirius both had to surrender their wands before entering the secure ward, and all three of them needed to be scanned for concealed weapons, potions, or magical doo-dads. Harry and Sirius then both had to surrender their wand summoning rings, which surprised Harry a little as he hadn't known Sirius even had a summoning ring.
He was shocked when he walked into the single room and saw Petunia. At first, he thought it was the wrong room, as the woman lying on the bed was far too old looking to be his aunt. His aunt was thirty-seven and the woman looked like she was in her mid-sixties. But then he looked closer and beneath the sallow skin he could see that it was in fact his aunt. There also was an iron cage over her head, as if someone had made a fish bowl out of bars and put his aunt's head in it. Harry realised that it must be some type of ridiculous anti-werewolf measure to stop her from biting anyone. That werewolves had no more desire to bite anyone when not transformed, and even if they did bite while not transformed they couldn't pass on the curse, probably meant nothing to the Ministry. If it was any other werewolf Harry knew he would probably be extremely pissed off, yet all he could think about as he looked at them were the bars that his uncle had put on his window after his first year at Hogwarts, and how his aunt would only feed him half a can if cold soup a day that he had to share with Hedwig. Maybe karma truly did exist.
"Hello Aunt Petunia. You wanted to see me?" Harry said emotionlessly as he stood at the foot of the bed looking at her.
Petunia stared at him for a while silently while Harry waited for her to say something. "H-harry I… " she trailed off without actually saying anything but he just waited. "Harry, I just wanted to say… I should have done better by you."
Harry waited some more, wondering if she was going to say more but when she didn't he couldn't help but let out a cruel mirthless laugh. "Is that it? Is that all you wanted to say, 'you should have done better'? Let's be honest here, you could have done a lot better and I'd still deserve an apology from you. Saying you should have done better is probably the most ridiculous understatement I have ever heard."
Emma put her hand on Harry's shoulder, reminding him that he had a real family now, one that actually cared about him, and Harry found it calming him a little. "Is that all you wanted to say?" he asked, already ready to be done with this conversation.
"Ah, no. I wanted to ask you to make sure your lot did right by Dudley. Make sure they don't steal the house or drain our accounts," she asked, sounding resigned to her fate.
Harry stared at her for almost a minute. Was she really asking him to look out for the boy she and her whale of a husband had encouraged to bully and attack him for years as they grew up? Harry wanted to lie and tell her the house was going to be sold thanks to her crime of becoming a freak creature, to get a small measure of revenge for everything she had put him through. However, common decency won out. "The house will be kept in a trust and rented out to cover its bills until Dudley is old enough to either move in on his own or act as a landlord himself." Harry told her, having already learned the particulars a while ago.
His aunt visibly relaxed, but Harry wasn't finished. "Dudley will also have all knowledge of magic and the magical world wiped from his brain, so he won't have to interact with anyone magical ever again. Of course, this also means he will have no clue what justification you had for everything you and your walrus of a husband did to me. I wonder what 'ickle Duddykins' will think of his parents when he looks back in the years to come and sees them beating a child, forcing me to act as their slave, and keeping me in the fucking cupboard under the stairs? Do you think he will think of you as normal upstanding pillars of the community? Or will he see you for what you truly are, monsters filled with nothing but hate and spite?"
Harry's little tirade was delivered without him once raising his voice or even sounding anything other than calm. Petunia just started to cry at the realisation that her 'precious Diddykins' was going to remember her not as a loving mother but as a cruel and vindictive bully who would treat her own family like that. However, she pulled herself together enough to say, "it doesn't matter any more. As long as he is well rid of you and the other freaks I will count it as a win. We had a perfectly normal life until you showed up and brought all that freakishness with you. I wanted nothing to do with it, that's why I told that no good mother of yours to sling her hook when our parents died. But I got landed with you, an ungrateful brat who did nothing but take and cause trouble. Throwing bowls of food across the room with your freak powers when you first arrived, turning your teachers hair blue, setting a snake on your cousin, and having your lot kidnap me and Vernon and turning us into these freak monsters. I'm glad I'm dying, it means I can get away from you!"
Harry let his aunt rant. When she had finished and said the part about dying, he knew it was time to deliver the message his mother's shade had for her. "Magic is amazing, and through it we know things about the world that you could never hope to learn without it. One thing we know is that the soul is real and there is an afterlife. I am even friendly with a few ghosts. There are even ways to preserve a copy of someone's consciousness and memories. It's not the same as if they are still alive, but it's possible to have a conversation with them. After I got your letter requesting my presence, I spoke with Mum's echo and she had a message for you."
"Lily?" Petunia asked.
Harry ignored her and started to deliver his mother's message. "'Tuny, you used to be such a loving person before your jealousy and envy turned your heart black. I gave you every opportunity to be my big sister, and you threw every one of them in my face. I could have forgiven you all that, you were my big sister - family. But then you got worse when you turned your anger and hate on my son, my innocent little boy. When your time's up and it's time to pay the piper, I'll be waiting on the other side for you."
Harry watched as all the fight that had been in his aunt moments before drained out of her. It was easy to be belligerent when you thought that it was all going to end with the next full moon. The realisation, however, that the moment she died she was going to have to face her sister for what she had done to her child was terrifying. And possibly not just Harry's mother, what about her own parents and James's parents as well? From what his mother's shade had told him, his grandfather Mark and his grandmother Iris were both proud to have a witch in the family and didn't stand for most prejudice, that they were progressive for their time. They definitely wouldn't be happy with what Aunt Petunia had done to their grandsons. Trying to break the spirit of one while turning the other into an unthinking brute and a bully.
Harry was trying to think of what else to say when Emma stepped in. "I think this has gone on long enough, and the only things left to say are to hurt. There is no need for this any more. Mrs. Dursley, you have your assurance that your assets will go to your son. Harry, you have said all that needs to be said. Let's go." Harry let Emma guide him out of the room. She was right, the only thing left was to throw insults at each other and there was no point in that. As soon as they were out of the room, Emma pulled Harry and Sirius into a hug with Harry sandwiched between the two adults. That hug said more than words ever could. Harry's aunt may be dying, but she wasn't his family; despite his blood relation to the woman, this was his family and they would be there for him.
Two days later Harry got a letter from the Ministry. His aunt had died due to complications from lycanthropy while in custody.
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Harry didn't want to talk about his aunt any more after that, though everyone offered to listen if he wanted to talk. Fleur even suggested she make a trip to Scotland during the next Hogsmeade weekend, but Harry had quickly convinced her not to. It wasn't that he didn't want to see her, he really did, but her exams were getting closer and she didn't need the distraction. Also, it wasn't like Harry felt he was in need of any help. As far as he was concerned, karma had finally caught up with Petunia and that was the end of it.
Harry threw himself into working on his Runes project. He was sure he had it right and all it would take is a test to see if it would work as well on animals as it did on the fruit he had been testing. However, therein lay the problem, the next round of tests needed to be done on a living animal and Harry wasn't going to let an animal die if he could help it. He ignored Quidditch practice that weekend and spent the entire two days checking and rechecking every single rune in his arrays. He didn't bother going back to his bed or to lunch, and he only ate because Hermione had taken pity on him and brought him something at every meal.
It was Sunday evening and Harry was just going over his notes for the eighth time when he suddenly felt someone take hold of his arm and start pulling him away from the table he was working at. Harry looked up as he stumbled to keep his feet to find Tracey drawing him along. "Tracey? What's going on?" he asked, confused. Tracey wasn't acting like there was an emergency bet she did seem determined.
"Oh, now you talk to me. I have been trying to talk to you for ten minutes now." She sounded annoyed.
"Um, I'm sorry. But where are you dragging me? I need to get back to work!"
"We are going to the Great Hall so you can have your first decent meal in days, then you're going to take a shower before going up to sleep in your bed. We are fed up with your brooding. Did you even notice you skipped both your date nights with Hermione and Fleur?" Tracey said as she pulled him through the portrait hole, a bunch of the Gryffindors laughing at Harry being manhandled by his adoptive sister.
"I've been busy working on my project!" Harry tried to defend himself.
"That's a pile of dragon shit Harry and we both know it. You have been brooding over what happened to your aunt. You've been delaying doing a live test even though we all know you're ready."
"Well, it seems wrong to risk the life of a mouse when I haven't finished checking the arrays to make sure it's safe. And how did you get into the Gryffindor common room anyway?" he asked as he was now being led downstairs again.
"One of your prefects let me in, apparently your decision to barely move for three days caused some concern. And don't try to bullshit me about your runes Harry, I have helped you go over them a dozen times already, we both know they are ready for a real test. How many times did you go over them this weekend?"
Harry had to admit she was right, he had gone over the notes a lot this weekend but surely he had a moral obligation to do so?
"Harry, don't take this the wrong way, but aren't you overcompensating? You're worried that you didn't do more for your aunt and uncle and now you're going to the extreme in the other direction. You need to conduct your safety tests, and I'm sure Professor McGonagall will be more than happy to transfigure a stone into a mouse for you before you test on a real one." Tracey was trying to both sound firm and supportive at the same time.
Was Tracey right? Was he overcompensating for letting his aunt die? He definitely didn't feel any remorse for her death, she had killed any affection he may have had for her years ago. But at the same time there was more he could have done. Was he trying to prove to himself that he was still a good person despite not feeling guilty over someone dying?
The two walked into the great Hall and Tracey pushed him towards an open spot at the Gryffindor table that was conveniently right next to Hermione. "Here you go. Your broody boyfriend, delivered as promised," Tracey said to Hermione in a sing-song voice as she sat on his other side and across from Daphne, a few spaces down from where the Weasleys were seated together as a family, a still rather morose looking Ginny in the middle of them.
"So, um, hi?" Harry said awkwardly, wondering how Hermione would respond. Would she be upset about the way he had been behaving?
Hermione just smiled at him before saying. "Hey Harry. How are you feeling?"
"Tired and hungry," Harry admitted. Now that he had been pulled from his work, he was very aware of just how little he had eaten or slept this weekend.
"Well, let's get something to eat then we can go cuddle up in the Room of Requirement for the night." And with that Hermione started piling shepherd's pie, minted peas, and gravy onto a plate for him. It was one of Harry's favourite meals.
The next day, Harry approached Professor McGonagall to ask her about a few transfigured lab mice to test his Runes project, and the headmistress had been happy to provide him with a cage of seven white rats in a cage. He realised Tracey was right, he should have done this from the start. Transfigured animals weren't really what they were transfigured into, they stayed whatever they started as, in this case rocks the Transfiguration mistress had summoned from the grounds. They weren't alive, and couldn't suffer. As realistic as it looked and reacted to stimulus and magic, in the end it was just magic mimicking life.
Harry took the cage of rats and his current test build of the drying frame to an unused classroom and got to work. The first test was simple enough: he took one of the rats and dropped it through the opening of his prototype. The rat passed through completely unharmed. He did the same test on each rat to check he had the same result ,and then he tried to put the same rat through it again and again until he noticed anything. After about thirty passes through the frame the rat did seem to have some dry skin issues, but that was actually something Harry suspected. Someone would have to use a drying doorway hundreds of times in a short period to do any kind of damage. If you used it normally after a shower or being caught in the rain, then you would probably only use one three or four times a day, and skin would naturally rehydrate itself from the tiny bit of drying in that time.
Next Harry did all the tests again, only this time he gave the rats a spray with the Aguamenti charm first. When he put a rat through multiple times, wetting it each time before sending it through again, there was no skin dryness he could detect. He decided to skip the next test of finding real rats, and demonstrating just why the sorting hat put him in Gryffindor he shoved his arm through the opening. The water Harry had on his hand and arm from handling the wet rats disappeared as it passed through the frame. It felt a little weird to have the water just vanish off his skin, but that was it. He pulled back a perfectly dry arm. After he examined his arm and found nothing wrong with it, he decided to use it to dry his other arm too. "Well," he said to himself, "Looks like it's time for me to start building a full size version."
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With Harry's design for the drying doorway finalised, he had a bit of a chance to relax. He still needed to build the full size version for presenting at the end of the year, but that was less stressful than developing and troubleshooting the design. Hermione, however, was the opposite, as with the exams getting ever closer she was getting more and more stressed. Harry had tried to help her calm down, but it was difficult. If he tried to distract her outside of her scheduled breaks, then all he got was an angry Hermione snapping at him for distracting her. Harry knew it was just exam stress and didn't take it seriously, and it wasn't like he was handling it perfectly either. The sixth year prefects had countermanded his punishments a few times when he had given detention to first years for making too much noise in the common room when they had disturbed him when he was trying to revise.
When Harry had calmed down and found the sixth year to apologise and thank her for stepping in, she had just laughed and explained that she had done the exact same thing as him last year, and that next year he and Hermione would have to step in and prevent the fifth and seventh years from going too far. Harry also made sure to find the first years and apologise, explaining to them what had happened. They accepted his apology, but Harry had the impression it was more because 'the famous Harry Potter' was the one apologising rather than actually understanding the stress the fifth and seventh years were under. It didn't matter, in a few years it would be their turn and then they would understand.
Harry was still concerned about Ginny as well, as she was still rather depressed, but he was sure she was getting better as he saw her genuinely happy a few times. However, any time Ginny seemed to realise she was happy it seemed to be followed by a wave of depression. She could be laughing and joking with Luna one minute, and curl up hugging her knees to her chest wanting nothing but to be alone the next. Harry asked his friends and girlfriends if that was normal, but in the end the only consistent answer he got was that everyone grieves in their own way. There was nothing Harry could really do other than just being nice to her and helping her with her Patronus.
At least, that was all Harry could do until the next Patronus club meeting. Most of them were doing rather well and were extremely close to a full corporeal Patronus, they just needed something a little more to finish it. But even their incomplete forms would drive off a Dementor or two.
"Harry, can we talk to you for a second?" Ron asked before they started practising.
"Sure, what's up?" Harry was curious as to what Ron ment by "we" and what they wanted to talk about.
"Well, a few of us were thinking. As good as the Patronus is for running off Dementors, it's not the only worry we have. My family are the biggest family of 'blood traitors' in the country, and while my parents may have thought that keeping us away from everything will keep us safe, in reality Death Eaters aren't going to care and will kill any of us if given a chance. Susan would be kidnapped and used to force her aunt to surrender, and Greengrass, Davies and Neville will be targets just because they are close to you. You have fought him before and you survived. We want you to teach us how to fight."
Harry was a little taken aback and was going to refuse, but Daphne stepped forward and started speaking first. "As much as I don't like Weasley implying that Tracey and I were in on deciding to ask you to do this, I must say he has a point. You won't see me charging in like a Gryffindor, but sometimes you need to fight."
Tracey spoke up next. "They already killed my family and they tried to take me through the Ministry. I won't go down without a fight. Harry, I know you well enough to know that you're planning to say no, but please give it some real thought. You can at least give us a better chance to survive an attack."
Over the next few days, Harry took some time to think about it and felt like he was unsure but leaning towards the idea of training them. Hermione was also on the fence. Any time that they gave up to teach others would have to come out of their revision schedules. However, wasn't staying alive and keeping others alive more important than exams, even important ones like O.W.L.s? Maybe it was a good idea to teach them a few spells and tactics; the stuff he, Hermione and Fleur had done last year to prepare for the tournament would fit. There was also the fact that he and Hermione probably needed to keep up with the physical side of their training. As much danger as the rest were under, Harry and his girlfriends were probably at the top of Voldemort's hit list after Harry had taken his arm last year. In the end, he agreed to give them all some training.
A/N
Remember my writing is fuelled by energy drinks and your comments and if you're not supplying energy drinks...
