11 Years Later
It all started when Aunt Petunia decided that the whole house needed to be sparkling clean from top to bottom for the Masons' visit.
Which naturally meant that Harry was going to be the one cleaning the house from top to bottom.
"...don't want to see a single speck of dust, or you'll be going without dinner!" His aunt's shrill voice called up after him as he ascended the ladder to the Dursleys' attic.
"Yes, Aunt Petunia," he replied dutifully, hoisting himself up and onto the attic floor, a broom and several dust cloths in tow.
He surveyed the space with a critical eye. Fortunately, because Aunt Petunia was a master at inventing chores for Harry, this wasn't the first time he'd been up here to clean. But it had been a few years since then, and a thick layer of dust and grime had settled over his previous work.
"And look through the boxes to see if you can find Uncle Vernon's golf trophies so he can show Mr. Mason!" Aunt Petunia added.
Now that he was safely out of his aunt's eyesight, he indulged himself in an eyeroll.
"Yes, Aunt Petunia," he agreed, listening until the sound of her retreating footsteps faded away.
Personally, he didn't see how having a clean attic would help Uncle Vernon's business deal. As he set to sweeping, he snickered, imagining Mrs. Mason standing on the ladder to the attic, rubbing a finger along the floor to check for dust, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon wringing their hands anxiously below and waiting for her to pass judgment.
At least this task kept him far away from Dudley for the afternoon. His cousin would never be bothered with dragging himself all the way up into the hot, cramped attic to bother Harry.
And at least it gave him something to do to keep his hands and his mind busy. As he swept and dusted, it became a little easier to ignore the fears and worries that had plagued him since returning to Privet Drive a few weeks ago.
Things like Quirrell's horrible, tortured screams as his flesh burned and melted away under Harry's touch. And the fact that Ron and Hermione had hugged him tightly at the train station and each promised to write, but no letters had ever arrived.
As his mind drifted to his friends, he increased his dusting, scrubbing the grimy base of a small statue with vigor to drown out the refrain in his mind that whispered, Maybe they were just lying to you all this time, and you're not really their friend. Maybe they're glad to be rid of you for summer break.
He shook himself from these thoughts, casting aside his cleaning supplies and opening the box nearest to him to look for the trophies.
It was full of boring, mundane things, like a certificate of achievement from Grunnings and some tourism brochures from the holidays Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had gone on. Harry paused to flip through a booklet about Greece, admiring the bright white houses and blue color of the sea. He'd been seven when the Dursleys had taken this trip, confined to Mrs. Figg's house for a week.
The next box was full of wool blankets, moth-eaten and slightly musty. He continued in this vein for a few hours, scouring the attic for his uncle's trophies. He had a good laugh over Dudley's baby photos, vowing to use them as future blackmail. Aunt Petunia had dressed him up in all sorts of frilly clothes and sailor suits and posed him elaborately until he became mobile enough to protest such treatment.
Even as he smirked at his cousin's pictures, he couldn't help but feel a pang over how well-documented Dudley's childhood was compared to his.
Harry didn't know when he'd taken his first steps or what his first word had been. None of his report cards or school projects had made it up into this attic. He didn't know if he'd inherited his attached earlobes and his hatred of mushrooms from his mum or his dad.
And he probably would never know.
It was amazing that Hagrid had gotten photos for him — that album was his most precious possession next to his wand and his invisibility cloak. But sometimes it felt like it wasn't enough. Like the more he learned about his parents, the more he realized he was missing.
He shut the lid to Dudley's baby box, suddenly rather eager to be done with this task. He sneezed as he lifted the lid off the next box, dust motes irritating his sinuses.
He almost shut the lid right away since the box was full of folders and paperwork, not trophies. But at the last second, as the dust settled around him, he caught sight of a green folder at the back of the box.
His breath hitched when he saw the names written on the file tab.
Timothy and Rose Evans.
His heart thudded in his ears as he pulled the folder out of the box. He'd never even known his grandparents' first names until this moment! Maybe there would be photographs or letters they'd written inside, and he could see what they looked like and what their personalities were like. Maybe—
He forced himself to stop and take a deep breath. He had to be smart about this. No matter how tempted he was to open the folder now, that's what had gotten him in trouble with his Hogwarts letter last year.
So although it pained him, he tucked the folder into his oversized jumper and kept cleaning.
When Aunt Petunia returned an hour later, she could find no fault with his work, especially since he'd eventually located three golf trophies in a hat box. Reluctantly, she told him to wash up and sent him to his room with dinner — a cup of milk and some toast.
Harry could barely contain himself from skipping down the hall. He was careful to keep any hint of excitement off his face — if Petunia caught on that he was happy, she would find a way to punish him, even if she didn't know what he was so chuffed about.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity later, he was alone in his room with the envelope. He curled up between the wall and the head of his bed, where he would have a decent chance of shoving the folder under the mattress if one of his relatives unexpectedly came in.
With shaky hands, he flipped the folder open, his heart racing.
He had been cautioning himself not to get his hopes up…but his first reaction was a crushing, sinking feeling of disappointment.
The folder had two sheets of paper in it, stapled together. There were no photos or letters or locks of hair.
Harry's stomach twisted as he scanned the top of the paper.
Last will and testament of Timothy Evans and Rose Evans
The document was dated to 1980, just a few months before Harry had been born. He had no clue when or how they'd died, he realized. Aunt Petunia had never mentioned them. If it had been anyone else, Harry might've assumed his aunt was simply grieving and it was painful for her to talk about.
But he had a feeling that Aunt Petunia might've hated her parents like she hated Harry's mum. After all — what had she said that night Hagrid came? — how proud her parents were when they found out Lily was a witch.
He skimmed through the will, desperate for any small tidbit of information — anything at all, even that they'd owned a certain painting or a collection of fine china. But it was all written in vague legal mumbo-jumbo, like the stuff they read at the end of infomercials.
Sighing desolately, he flipped to page two, where there was a list of his grandparents' requests. It was a short list; they hadn't been wealthy.
All liquid financial assets shall be given to our eldest daughter, Petunia Dursley, nee Evans. In the event that Petunia has passed away and cannot inherit, such financial assets will go to her unborn child.
Harry raised his eyebrows, not sure what to think. It seemed that his grandparents had given all of their savings to Aunt Petunia alone, rather than splitting the money between Petunia and Lily. Had Lily not needed the money, since she married into the Potter family? Had his mum quarreled with her parents and been cut out of the will?
But just as the thought crossed his mind, his eyes alighted on the word "Lily" further down the page.
Our house, located at 17 Spinner's End, Cokeworth, shall go to our youngest daughter, Lily Potter, nee Evans. In the event that Lily has passed away and cannot inherit, the house will go to her unborn child.
Harry's mouth fell open.
In a daze, he leaned back against his bed frame, tangling his fingers in his well-worn blanket just to feel tethered to something. It seemed as though the world had just completely flipped upside down, exactly like he'd felt after Hagrid told him he was a wizard last year.
This was almost as amazing as that — Harry owned a house!
The next day, he still felt like he was walking on a cloud. The universe seemed to be taking pity on him and offering him a respite for once, because Petunia ordered him out of the house right after breakfast, stating that she wouldn't risk him mucking everything up before the Masons' visit. (Never mind the fact that he'd been the one to get everything in order for their visit in the first place.)
He was ordered to return home by 3 p.m. on the dot so he could go hide up in Dudley's second bedroom before the guests arrived. And if he arrived any later, he'd be locked out of the house for the night and not be given any dinner.
It was intended as a threat, but it just lifted Harry's spirits even higher. It didn't even matter if he got locked out — he had a whole house, all to himself, somewhere out there in the world. A place that the Dursleys had no right to visit or inhabit.
No wonder Petunia had hidden that folder away — it must have driven her half-mad with jealousy to realize that her nephew owned a property, and she had no legal right to do anything about it!
He caught himself practically skipping on his way down the block. He forced himself to walk sedately, knowing that Petunia would hate it if she looked out the window and saw him in a cheerful mood. He didn't want to run into Dudley and his gang, so he broke into a run as soon as he got to the intersection, but it wasn't a frightened sprint — it was the same swooping, gleeful feeling he got when flying during Quidditch practice.
He was out of breath but still giddy by the time he made it to the local library. He'd loved coming here before Hogwarts. You needed a guardian's signature to get a library card, and Aunt Petunia would never allow it, so he couldn't actually check out books. But the space was quiet and calm and nobody bothered him — the exact opposite of the Dursleys' house. And Dudley would never be caught dead with a book, so it was a safe hiding place on the rare occasions when his aunt gave him a day off of chores.
Plus, Harry's world had been miniscule back then — restricted to his primary school, his cupboard, his relatives' property, and Mrs. Figg's house. The stories he'd read at the library had been his one and only window into other possibilities beyond his miserable existence.
He hadn't been back at all since his departure for Hogwarts last year, and on a normal day, he would've taken his time — maybe stopping by the circulation desk to see if Edna, the children's librarian, was still around. He would've meandered through the stacks, checking which of his old favorites were still on the shelves and noting any new additions that he wanted to read.
But today, he went straight to the reference section and pulled an atlas off the shelf. It was a huge volume, nearly half his size. He carried it over to the nearest table and laid it out, beginning to pore over the maps contained within.
It took him ages, but he finally — finally! — found Cokeworth. He'd nearly given up, his vision blurring with weariness from all the squinting. He'd even enlisted one of the other librarians, a man called Gordon who worked at the reference desk, for help. He'd helped Harry look for about twenty minutes, but then he'd been called away.
"Good luck, laddy," he said before leaving. "With a name like Cokeworth, could be anywhere, really."
Harry huffed with frustration, slumping back in his chair. Something was niggling at the back of his mind — some reason why the name Cokeworth seemed familiar. But he couldn't think of why.
It wasn't until he flipped to the page showing the western coast of England that it hit him. He brushed his fingers over the small collection of islands where they'd stayed the night Hagrid found them, smiling as he remembered Dudley running around in a panic with a pig's tail poking out of his pajama pants, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon chasing after him.
He let out a sharp gasp — of course! Cokeworth was associated with that long, strange journey. They'd stayed in Cokeworth one night — and it had been somewhere towards the north! He recalled the smoggy air, narrow, rundown streets, and the unfriendly stares of the people in the town. The hotel ceiling had been covered in mildew spots, and the thin cot mattresses had creaked every time he or Dudley shifted. The train had raced by every hour or so, waking him from his restless sleep.
It wasn't exactly the paradise he'd been imagining, but it was a real place, and he knew roughly where it was. He flipped to the Manchester page, and it only took him a few minutes to locate Cokeworth to the southeast.
He mulled over these discoveries as he walked home from the library, moving much slower than before as he thought things over.
It was so odd to imagine that prim, proper Aunt Petunia was from an industrial, working-class town like that. Maybe this explained why she was so obsessed with cleanliness and order. If she didn't keep everything in perfect condition, someone might know her secret — that she wasn't actually from a posh London background.
And then there was the matter of how he could get himself to his house. The Dursleys wouldn't care if he left — they'd probably be miffed that they'd lost their resident servant and punching bag, but they wouldn't fight for him to stay. Hell, he was surprised Petunia hadn't already dumped him at this house years ago and told him to survive on his own. The Dursleys would surely be grateful for his freakishness to be removed from their household and their lives.
It was stupid that this knowledge still hurt his feelings a little bit, even after all this time.
The wizarding world would pose more of an issue. He'd asked Dumbledore to let him stay at Hogwarts over the summer, and the headmaster had made it clear that Harry needed to return to Privet Drive because of his mum's protection.
But…if this house in Cokeworth had once belonged to his mum — if she had grown up there — then maybe it would offer Harry the same protections as Privet Drive?
It could be a compelling argument, if it was really true. But then there was the issue of his age. He'd be twelve in a month, and he was pretty sure wizards weren't considered adults until they were seventeen. That was way too long to wait! There was no way he could spend five more years with the Dursleys when he had his own place he could go to.
He wondered if young wizards could be emancipated from their guardians like muggles could be. He was pretty sure they didn't let twelve-year-olds get emancipated in either world. Still, if he wrote a letter to Dumbledore, maybe he'd help Harry figure something out…
"Boy!" His aunt hissed shrilly from the porch, her hands on her hips. "You're late. In the house, now!"
"Yes, Aunt Petunia," he muttered, not bothering to point out that he was thirty minutes early. He traipsed upstairs, tuning out his aunt's lecture about "making no noise and pretending he didn't exist."
He kicked off his trainers and curled up on his bed. Someday soon, he would live in a place where he wasn't hated for existing or gawked at for being famous. A place where he could be just Harry — where the cupboard would hold cleaning supplies and no horrible memories. Where he didn't have to sneak food or walk on eggshells or fend off judgments over something he'd done as a baby that he couldn't even remember.
He dozed off sometime later with a faint smile on his face, imagining a small house with a sweet-smelling garden, sun-lightened wood floors, and birds chirping near the windows.
How much could change in twenty four hours.
Just two days ago, he'd found out that he owned a house. Last night, a house elf broke into his room, warned him that he was in grave danger, and ruined his relatives' dinner party. Tonight, he was locked in his room with bars installed on the window, facing a month and a half in solitary confinement.
He paced yet another lap around the small open area of Dudley's second bedroom, tugging at the collar of his t-shirt, which suddenly seemed to be too tight around his throat, even though it was at least three sizes too large for his frame. Fortunately, he'd let Hedwig out before the handyman came to install the bars this afternoon. He was glad that she was flying free, but he desperately missed having a friendly companion close by.
He couldn't do this.
There had been a time once, when this had been typical. Harry would do something freaky, his aunt and uncle would be furious, and he'd be locked in his cupboard for a week or so straight.
At the time, he'd endured it because there had been no other choice. It had been normal to him — just another part of being Harry.
But now he knew what freedom felt like. He had walked the halls of Hogwarts for nearly a year, choosing what to eat and where to study and what to do with his free time after classes. Some mornings, when he couldn't sleep, he'd arisen before everyone else and walked down to the lake before breakfast, relishing in the fresh air and the fog rising up from the water and feeling like his heart might burst with joy simply because the world was waking up around him and he was there to witness it.
After all of that, he couldn't bear to be in captivity again. Not when he knew that it wasn't supposed to be like this.
And so Harry did something extremely reckless when his aunt let him out for five minutes to use the loo:
He flushed the toilet so that it would make a loud noise, and then he opened the tiny bathroom window, wedged himself through it, and jumped out.
With the reflexes of a Seeker, he managed to catch hold of the large tree branch just outside the window. The tug of his body weight made his right shoulder light up white hot with pain — Vernon had grabbed him there and shaken him repeatedly after the incident with the Masons — but he gritted his teeth and didn't let a groan escape. He quickly shimmied down the branch, grateful for its sturdiness, and then moved down the trunk, his palms scraping against rough bark.
A few feet from the bottom, he let go and let himself drop, taking off at a dead sprint, all too aware that Petunia would grow impatient and find her key to unlock the bathroom door from the outside in a few minutes when he didn't respond to her knocking.
He didn't dare look over his shoulder, running in the direction of the downtown area. Some part of him couldn't believe he was actually doing this. He'd tried to run away once before, when he was eight years old. One of his textbooks had slipped off his desk at school, and he'd accidentally made it levitate in mid-air for a few seconds until he could grab it. Unfortunately, the teacher and most of his class had witnessed it, and the teacher had been convinced that he was playing some kind of prank. She'd written a scathing note for him to bring home to Petunia and Vernon. Dudley had cheerfully rushed home from school to tattle on Harry as soon as the dismissal bell rang, and Harry, sick to his stomach, had meandered around the neighborhood for hours, unwilling to go home and face the music.
He'd eventually wound up at the park, where he'd paced around and plotted how he could survive on his own, to no avail. Nobody would hire him for a job at his age, and winter was fast approaching.
He'd been found by a police officer at 11 pm, sitting dejectedly on the swings, and brought home in the back of a cop car. He'd known, from the way Petunia's eyes darted around to see if the neighbors saw the red and blue flashing lights — from Dudley's gleeful expression on the stairs — from Uncle Vernon's blotchy complexion and clenched fists — that he was in for it.
He generally tried not to think about this incident and its ensuing punishment. That was the longest time period that he'd ever been locked in his cupboard. And he'd never tried running away again, even though he'd dreamed about it many times since. The problem was that he'd never had anywhere to run to. For many years, he'd fantasized about living beneath the willow trees in the park by school, but drunks and teens went there all the time to hang out and cause mischief. It wasn't a realistic plan.
But now — finally — he had somewhere to go. Somewhere they'd never think to look for him.
17 Spinner's End, Cokeworth.
Dawn was drawing close by the time that Harry made it to his new home. He'd walked to the train station in Surrey, caught a train into London, and then switched to another train to Manchester. He'd forced himself to stay awake the entire time, even though his eyelids seemed to be heavier than iron weights, afraid of missing his stop in Cokeworth.
He was aware that he made an odd picture — dressed in overlarge muggle clothes, completely lacking in possessions, traveling all by himself past midnight. Perhaps he would've received more scrutiny had it been daytime, when concerned mothers were out and about with their children. As it was, everyone traveling at this hour seemed to want to keep to themselves. The conductor gave him a long once over when he boarded the train for Manchester, and Harry's pulse ratcheted up.
"All right there, son?" The man asked, taking a swig from a coffee thermos.
"Yes, sir," Harry muttered. "Er…just on my way to visit my mum. Divorced parents."
The conductor seemed relieved that Harry had offered up a semi-plausible explanation for why he was on his own, giving a quick nod and then moving along. Harry heaved a sigh of relief and settled into his seat. It was chilly, and he hugged Dudley's oversized t-shirt close around his frame, trying to get comfortable. His shoulder ached, and his cheek throbbed from where Vernon had backhanded him yesterday. He really wished he'd been able to grab his trunk, but there hadn't been time — not only because he needed a jumper, but also because he needed his wand, and his schoolbooks, and most of all, his photo album with the pictures of his parents.
He was terrified that Vernon would try to set the trunk on fire or worse, drop it at the dump or in the woods somewhere. It had protection spells on it, but that wouldn't help much if he couldn't ever find it again.
He thought wistfully of his favorite photo of his parents, the two of them beaming at each other and twirling around on their wedding day. This was the problem with knowing things: It gave you something to miss. It had a power over you.
In a way, the past year had only sharpened his grief over his parents' death. It had almost been easier when they'd been blurry, uncertain figures in his mind — when he'd believed that they were bad people who'd driven drunk and put themselves and others in harm's way.
It was kind of like his issue with captivity at the Dursleys' house. Now that he knew what a hint of freedom was like — what his parents were like — he couldn't bear to lose these things. Even now, as he tried to conjure up his parents' wedding photo in his mind, some of the details were blurred or missing. Had his mum been wearing earrings? What color were his dad's shoes?
To distract himself from these worries, he watched the dark cities and towns flash by outside, grateful that he at least had 20 pounds of muggle money tucked away in his pocket to help him on his journey. At the end of the school year, Hermione had shown him how to send an owl to Gringotts to withdraw and exchange muggle and wizarding money.
"Er…why do you need so much?" She'd asked him, her brow wrinkled with concern when she saw the number he'd written on the parchment.
Harry had been anticipating a long, hungry summer at the Dursleys. He figured that if he could keep a stash of muggle money, he'd be able to slip off to the closest Tesco and buy himself some food to keep in his room. "Oh, you know. Just a bit of spending money to buy snacks."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "That's enough to feed you all summer! Don't your relatives give you enough to eat?"
Harry gave a quick half-shrug, not liking the direction of the conversation. "I figure it's better to have too much than too little. I can always re-deposit the leftover money at the end of the summer, can't I?"
Hermione had nodded, but he hadn't liked the assessing look in her eyes.
And in the end, he hadn't dared to keep more than 20 pounds on his person when he left the train at King's Cross at the end of the school year, for fear that the Dursleys would make him turn his pockets out and would end up pocketing the entire sum.
Fortunately, they hadn't searched him. But unfortunately, they'd immediately confiscated his trunk, which had the rest of his muggle money tucked inside.
So he only had access to 20 pounds, and he'd used 18 of them to buy the various tickets for his journey north. Still, he reminded himself. It was better than nothing. Better than being locked in a cell with bars on the window and a cat flap on the door for two months.
Out of habit, he rubbed at the scar on his forehead, and then the one on his right arm. That one was newer — it came from his first Quidditch match, when his broom had been jinxed and he'd been flung off, breaking his arm so badly that even Madame Pomfrey's strongest potions and poultices couldn't stop the wound from scarring. It still ached sometimes when it rained, like tonight.
The sky was just beginning to lighten when the conductor called out the stop for Cokeworth. Harry jolted upright. He hadn't realized that he'd been close to dozing off. Fuzzy-headed, he hurried off the train and into the chilly morning air.
Fortunately, Spinner's End was only a few blocks from the train station. He was glad he'd spent so much time looking through the atlas, because he was able to navigate through the town with relative ease.
Cokeworth had perhaps once been a bustling town during the heyday of the northern industrial boom. All the factories had long since shut down, though, and few people moved about in the streets. Those who were out tended to be older, and they walked with lost, vacant expressions, as though the rest of the world had moved on in the 70s and 80s and left them behind. He passed a few boarded-up shops, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he caught sight of a body laying in a nearby alleyway. Upon closer, it was a middle-aged man who was snoring and smelling rather heavily of the whiskey Uncle Vernon liked to drink sometimes.
Everything seemed unusually somber and momentous as he turned down the street to his new home, like the way he'd felt during his boat ride across the lake to Hogwarts — a sense that nothing was ever going to be quite the same after this.
The sky shifted from navy to bluish-pink, and then he was gazing up at number 17, his heart in his throat.
It was the last house on the block, small and narrow and neglected and identical to the other houses. The brick had perhaps once been red, but it had faded to a grayish-brownish color from the smoggy environment. Weeds and rubbish filled the small front yard. A few of the windows were broken, and Harry feared what he might find inside. The place had been neglected for at least ten or eleven years now, after all.
He was eleven years old, he was on the run from his relatives, he had lost all his possessions, and he only had two pounds to his name.
And yet, as he pushed the front gate open, he felt a wave of something warm and vaguely familiar wash over him like a gentle whisper or the faint humming of a lullaby. And when he twisted the front door knob, fully expecting it to be locked, it sprang open easily under his grip. And when he pushed the front door open and stepped inside the hushed, dark house, it was completely untouched by vandalism.
Reverent, he put one hand up and brushed his fingers against the wall, noticing the faintest hint of that feeling again. Magic, enveloping this entire place in a protective cocoon.
"Mum," he whispered. He put one hand up to his cheek a moment later and was startled to find that he was crying.
Harry spent much of that first day in a daze, wandering around the house and taking everything in. His mum's protection — he thought it was a ward, but he wasn't sure; they hadn't covered it in any first-year classes — had stopped any muggles from coming inside and messing up the house for the past decade, but time had still taken its toll. Everything was coated in a layer of dust and grime. He would have a long summer of cleaning and repair work ahead to make the space liveable again.
"Thanks, Aunt Petunia," he whispered to himself with a wry grin. In a way, his aunt had actually been preparing him for this task his entire life.
The house had two levels and a small back garden. On the first floor, there was a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. He was most pleased to discover an upright piano in the corner of the living room, music books sitting on the stand with dog-eared pages, as though they'd been frequently used.
On the upper level, there were three bedrooms and a toilet. The largest bedroom was closest to the staircase, and it had obviously belonged to his grandparents.
The room overlooked the scraggly copse of trees that separated this street from the next. It was decorated like how Mrs. Figg's house was, with frilly pillows and an old, faded duvet in a floral print. There was a full-size bed, nightstands, and a dresser with a picture of a couple who looked to be in their late fifties or early sixties. The woman had hair the same color as Petunia's but features that looked like his mum. And the man had the same long, narrow face as Petunia, but his hair, though faded, was unmistakably red.
He recognized them from the Mirror of Erised. Timothy and Rose Evans.
He didn't find too much of interest in their room. A few paperback novels, some jewelry. A knitting basket near the rocking chair. A watch that had stopped ticking. He put it on anyway, adjusting the band as small as it could go.
He didn't spend much time in Petunia's room, which was in the middle of the hall and medium-sized. Someone had stripped the room of all but the essential furniture — a small bed, a desk, and a dresser. The drawers and closet were empty. There were no decorations on the wall.
He could easily imagine his spiteful aunt removing all traces of herself from this house at twenty or so, preparing to move out and live with Vernon, and honestly, that was fine with him. The fact that she was associated with this place at all was annoying.
The last bedroom was obviously his favorite — his mum's room. It was the smallest, probably because Lily was the youngest member of the family, but he didn't mind that. It had a slanted wall where the roof sat at an angle. It reminded him of a larger, cozier version of his cupboard, actually. The bed had been placed under the angled wall, which might've made it feel crowded and close if you weren't used to tight quarters. Next to it was a small desk and a bookshelf.
The decor was dated, like a museum display showcasing a different time period. There was a rather drab brown carpet on the floor, and the matching curtains and bedspread were a bright lilac color. A faded Gryffindor pennant hung on the wall, as well as a few surprisingly skillful drawings. He recognized the Hogwarts greenhouse and the lake. There was a picture of Lily, about fifteen or sixteen years old, with two other girls in Hogwarts uniforms. One of them, a girl with a round face and dark hair, looked oddly familiar. There was no sign of his father anywhere, but Harry recalled hearing from Hagrid that they hadn't started dating until the end of their time at Hogwarts, so he supposed that made sense.
There wasn't much in the closet, probably because his mum had moved out before her parents passed away, and she had taken her stuff with her. He pulled out an old, soft charcoal gray jumper that had been hand-knit in a cabled pattern. Thinking of the knitting basket in his grandparents' room, he pulled it over his head, feeling enveloped in a warm hug.
It was—overwhelming. There was so much to take in, so many pieces of his relatives who he'd never dreamed he'd know more about. He wanted to drink it all in and absorb it all at once, but at the same time, he was terrified of how he would feel once he'd seen everything and the well of information had run dry.
He found himself standing near the window in his mum's room, rubbing the fabric of the jumper under his fingers and absentmindedly staring out at the gray, gloomy city.
All of a sudden, his heart jumped into his throat, and he abruptly dropped to the floor with a gasp. His vision wasn't great, thanks to his outdated glasses prescription, but he had the natural reflexes and skill of a Seeker. The second his eyes detected motion in the window next door, he ducked down below the windowsill.
There was a narrow alleyway between his house and number 15, just a couple of feet wide, and several of the windows faced the neighboring house. He would have to be careful by the windows and in the garden so nobody would notice him living here and call the police. He wasn't sure how his mum's ward worked, and he didn't want to find out the hard way.
Curious about his neighbor, he slowly rose up on his knees until he could just barely peek out the window. There was a man in the room opposite him next door, but Harry couldn't make out much detail given the grimy state of the windows. The man was tall and dark-haired with sharp facial features, and he was dressed in all black. He seemed to be perusing a bookshelf.
For a second, he paused, looking up from his book, and it seemed as though his head turned in Harry's direction.
Harry ducked back down, his heart racing.
He remained there for several long moments, hardly daring to move or breathe, waiting for someone to knock on the front door and demand to know why he was here.
When nothing happened, eventually he crawled away from the window and headed downstairs. The hours of the day had slipped by, and dusk would be falling soon. His stomach ached with hunger and his eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. He looked longingly at the dusty couch but forced himself to head to the kitchen. Because it was at the back of the house, he could work safely in here without being detected. The house's lights didn't work, but he found some candles in a drawer near the silverware, and some expired cleaning supplies below the sink.
As he rolled up the sleeves of his mum's jumper and prepared to battle a decade of grime, he felt certainty and purpose settle in his heart.
Now that he was here, he was never leaving and going back to the Dursleys.