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Chapter Eleven

Harry buried his head in his arms.

He should have known better than to think he had friends.

No one had replied to his letters when he sent them off, even though Hedwig always came back with empty claws. No one had sent him a letter, either. When he'd told Hedwig to wait until she could get a reply, she'd just always hooted sadly at him.

Something was going on that Harry didn't understand, but he thought he knew. The realization moved inside him, thick and bitter.

I didn't really have friends. I'm a burden and too hard to write to in the summers. Or Nott and Zabini were lying all along. I bet they're laughing to themselves every time they get a letter from me. They probably spend all their time together and share jokes—

Harry's magic exploded from him in an uncoordinated burst and rattled the door and the locks. In response, the thumps of his uncle's footsteps came up the stairs.

Harry turned to face the door. Honestly, it would feel good to argue with someone right now. At least that person would acknowledge he existed.

Even the silver ring hanging around his neck on a strip of cloth repurposed from his satchel hadn't done anything.

"Hello, Harry Potter."

Harry stared with his mouth slightly open at the strange creature who had appeared in his bedroom. It was bowing and scraping, and it had huge eyeballs and ears that stood straight up and green skin—

"Are you a house-elf?" Harry asked, remembering references to those mysterious creatures. He had never seen one, but he knew they supposedly took care of all the cleaning in the Slytherin dormitories.

"Dobby is being a house-elf indeed! Dobby is serving bad masters who are telling him to keep quiet about the plots in Hogwarts—"

Dobby darted abruptly towards one of the walls, but Harry flung his magic out and caught him. He'd got good at doing that since the day he'd used his magic to rattle the door. Wandless magic apparently didn't trigger a letter from the Ministry the way that his Housemates had warned him using his wand during the summer would, and now Dobby floated in a stringy net of power, gaping at him.

"The Great Harry Potter is being very powerful," he whispered.

Harry just nodded tightly and kept Dobby in the web. With the Masons downstairs, his relatives would get upset at any noise. "What do you want?"

"Dobby came to warn Harry Potter!"

"Of what?"

The conversation that followed wasn't enlightening. Dobby rambled, hinted, and dropped words about Darkness and evil and plots. But he wouldn't say who was doing them, or who his master was, either.

When Dobby started to wail about how his masters would punish him for coming here, Harry flexed his magic again, wrapping a strand of the wandless web around Dobby's mouth and silencing him. Dobby goggled at him above the makeshift gag, his eyes standing out more than ever.

Harry sort of felt bad for the house-elf, but he was not going to let Dobby make things worse with the Dursleys.

He said sharply, quietly, "I'll let you speak again if you promise not to shriek like that. Do you agree?"

Dobby nodded eagerly. Harry floated him back to the floor and released him, but he kept the web hovering, ready to wrap again if he needed it.

"Harry Potter is being more powerful than Dobby knew," Dobby said. There was a thoughtful look on his face now. Harry still kept a close eye on him. So far, Dobby's plans didn't seem to require that much intelligence. Who knew what else he would do if Harry just stepped back and let him do what he wanted? "Is that because he is in Slytherin?"

Harry blinked. "What does my House have to do with this?" But he did note to himself that Dobby had known his House. That strongly suggested that his masters were probably from a family with a kid in Slytherin at school right now.

Of course they are. Of course all of the Death Eaters were in Slytherin.

"Slytherins are being more powerful. Slytherins are being bad, Dark wizards—like masters! Oh, bad Dobby, bad Dobby—"

Dobby tried to dash at the wall again. Harry bound him again. Honestly, this was getting ridiculous.

"Dobby needs Harry Potter to stay away from the school," Dobby said, when he had stopped struggling and looked resigned to dangling above the floor like someone's jacket on a hook. "Otherwise, he will be caught up in the plot."

Harry sighed. "There were plots last year and I survived them, Dobby. I don't think that whatever's going to happen this year is going to be worse than the Defense professor literally being possessed by Voldemort—"

Dobby shrieked. Someone made a questioning sound downstairs.

Harry wrapped Dobby's mouth up again, staring at him. Dobby waved his hands and pointed to his mouth and waited, so Harry slowly, slowly ungagged him.

"Harry Potter is saying the name." Dobby sounded as if he were half-going to faint from fear and half-ecstatic that Harry hadn't been corrupted by his time in Slytherin or whatever the elf had been thinking. "Harry Potter is not being afraid of his enemy!"

"No. But if it has something to do with—the Dark Lord, then I can't stay away from Hogwarts. I have to be there to fight him. And all my friends are there."

"Friends," Dobby said, and sprouted a jagged grin that made Harry abruptly a little wary of him. "Friends who don't send letters to Harry Potter?"

Harry stared at Dobby. Fury dashed through him like flashfire, and he barely kept it from bursting into open flames. Instead, he channeled it into the web around Dobby, and watched him start sweating and flopping back and forth.

"What did you do with my letters?" Harry hissed. Dobby only stared at him in fear and didn't seem to understand, so Harry lifted his voice and repeated it. "What did you do with my letters? My friends have been writing to me?"

"Dobby was only—gathering them—keeping them safe—"

"You were not."

"Dobby was—Dobby was—"

Dobby looked on the verge of fainting, so Harry gritted his teeth and pulled his magic back into his body. If could do it with Malfoy when he'd wanted to murder Hedwig, then Harry could do it with Dobby, who hadn't threatened anything nearly as bad.

Except for making me think that I didn't really have any friends.

"You're going to give me the letters," Harry said.

"Dobby—Dobby will only if Harry Potter will promise not to go back to Hogwarts!"

"Didn't I tell you why I need to go back there?"

"But the Great Harry Potter would be in danger! And house-elves would be in danger if he died!"

Harry took a deep breath, and then stilled as he heard what seemed to be Blaise's voice whispering into his ear. Persuade him. You can't make any impression by yelling at him or using your magic on him. He's probably used to worse. But he's giving you a line of argument. What does any good Slytherin do with a line of argument?

In reality, Harry had never heard Blaise say anything like that, and he probably wouldn't. But he forced himself to stop huffing and puffing, and turned to consider Dobby with a slight headshake.

"Dobby, did you consider that I have to go back to Hogwarts to fight the Dark Lord? That it's the next step in my campaign to keep people free and safe?" He dropped his head and sighed a little, watching Dobby from beneath his eyelashes. "I can't do anything to help people if I just sit in the Muggle world."

He felt rather like Dudley manipulating Petunia into giving him a second piece of cake, but Dobby visibly wavered. Harry hid his smile and just continued watching him, while he said softly, earnestly, "Voldemort was at Hogwarts this year, and he tried to kill me. But even some of the Slytherins were impressed when they heard that I'd managed to survive him. I could continue impressing them and turn some of them to our side if I went back. But if I don't go back, then I'll look like a coward, and they'll probably become Death Eaters."

Dobby stared at him with his mouth hanging open. Then he burst into noisy tears. Harry barely managed to silence him in time.

When Dobby finished crying, he waved his hands again, and Harry slowly released his mouth. Dobby whispered, "Dobby—Dobby never knew—how brave Harry Potter is—how selfless—to care for the Dark wizards as well as house-elves and himself—"

"Why do I matter so much to house-elves, Dobby?"

The stories Dobby told about how other house-elves had been treated, and how some of it had got better since the Halloween night when Harry had confronted Voldemort, made an angry rhythm take up a place in Harry's chest. It wasn't right, what they had done to house-elves in the name of pureblood nonsense.

It wasn't right, either, what he was doing to Dobby.

But Harry really did believe that he was doing it for the best, and when the story finished, he said gently, "Do you see why I have to go back? But I do appreciate that you came to warn me, Dobby. Thank you."

Dobby teared up again, but luckily managed to control himself, nodding and wiping his eyes with one hand. Then he reached out and snapped his fingers, conjuring a thick stack of post from midair. Harry barely managed not to hurt Dobby snatching them away.

"Thank you, Dobby. Come and see me again, all right, when I'm in a safer place? I hope that we can work together to make sure house-elves are treated better."

Harry wasn't even lying. He might not be able to do anything about it right now, but he did intend to work on the freedom of house-elves. They might be annoying, but there was no way they deserved to be mistreated or ordered to hurt themselves, which was beyond terrible.

"Dobby will do that, Harry Potter," the little elf said, and stared at Harry with worshipful eyes before he turned and vanished.

Harry sighed and picked up the post, sorting through it with one hand while he flicked his other at the useless ring hanging around his neck. Surely it ought to have reacted in the presence of a house-elf who had had the power to hurt him.

But it hadn't. It was still a nice gesture, but a useless one.

"Boy."

Uncle Vernon's voice was quiet and deadly. Harry turned towards him as much as he could without completely taking his attention off the bacon. "Yes, Uncle Vernon?"

"What do you have around your neck?"

Harry's heart thumped oddly. He'd thought he'd slung the ring on its strip of leather down inside his shirt, but it seemed he hadn't. Or maybe it was just that Dudley's shirt was huge and always slipped off him.

He kept his voice as dull and calm as he could. "A ring, Uncle Vernon."

"What."

Uncle Vernon lurched towards him and reached out for the ring. Harry dodged. He had no desire to be pinned against the hot stove, and in any case, he wouldn't put it past Snape to have added a trap to the ring that would only activate if a Muggle touched it.

"Did you just back away from me, boy?" Uncle Vernon stopped walking and stared at him. He seemed more incredulous than anything.

"Yeah."

Harry's heart was still giving odd thumps, and his ears were full of buzzing. He found that he didn't want to back down and give in the way he always had with his relatives. The way he had all summer, letting him assign him chores and lock him in his room and starve him without complaint.

He had done it because he'd thought that maybe someone would come get him if it got too bad. But now he knew better. Even though it turned out that his friends had written to him, he was still on his own through the worst of it.

"What did you just say, boy?"

Harry lifted his head. He was alone. In the most important parts of his life, he was alone. Once he'd dreamed of his parents coming to get him even though he was also sure they were dead, and now he knew that he was alone in the face of a Dark Lord stalking him, too. No one would help him.

He had to help himself.

"I said that I backed away from you, and I'm saying that I'm not going to allow you to take the ring from me." Harry didn't think it was his imagination that the kitchen was rattling a little from the force of the magic beating around him. "Let me finish making breakfast, and we're not going to have any problems."

Uncle Vernon gaped at him for so long that Harry thought he might actually get away with it. Then he laughed, a little ugly chuckle that frightened Harry more than any other laugh he'd made, and stepped forwards, reaching out.

"Let's discuss what's going to happen to you for your disrespect."

Harry was cornered after all, not against the stove but against the wall between the stove and the refrigerator, and he couldn't escape. But he thought, as Uncle Vernon's hand closed on his arm, Heat.

It worked just as it had when he'd used fire against Malfoy. Uncle Vernon screamed and jerked his hand back. Blisters were already popping up on his fingers.

He was burned.

Harry smiled and met Uncle Vernon's eyes. The man lurched again, but this time away from him, not towards him.

"Leave me alone," Harry said, very quietly.

He never knew how it might have worked out. Dudley came into the kitchen and stared at his father, then at Harry, and laughed himself, a wavering, uncertain sound. "What are you doing with the freak, Dad?"

Vernon might have backed down if they were alone, Harry thought, but not in front of his son, not when he wanted to show Dudley how much of a man he was. He stepped towards Harry again, although his eyes were cautious.

Harry raised his head and his hand. Flames blossomed into being along his arm, up his shoulder, down his fingers. They didn't burn him, but Harry could feel the piercing heat from them. He knew they would burn anyone else.

Vernon stopped and stared at him. There was fear and rage and hatred and several other things Harry didn't think he could name in his eyes, because Uncle Vernon had never looked at him like that before.

"You're a freak, boy."

"Yeah, I know." A freak who has to live with Muggles, a freak even an enchanted ring doesn't work for. "But I'm a freak you're not going to hurt."

Uncle Vernon trembled and shivered with rage. Harry kept him at bay with the fiery hand, and ignored the way that Dudley trembled and shivered with fear. He could hear Aunt Petunia coming down the stairs, and he wanted to say this to all of them at once.

"Vernon? What are you—" Aunt Petunia shrieked as she stepped into the kitchen and saw Harry holding her husband and son at bay.

"I was just telling Uncle Vernon that he's not going to push me around anymore," Harry said pleasantly, trying to imitate the way he had heard Theo telling an older Slytherin to back off. "And the same goes for Dudley and you."

"We own this house!"

It was so ridiculous that Harry laughed. "But you don't own me."

"You ungrateful little bastard! After we provided you with the clothes on your back, all the food you've ever eaten—"

"You've starved me on a regular basis," Harry snarled, and then plucked at the shirt hanging off his shoulder. "And these clothes? You should be grateful that all your neighbors believe you about me being a criminal, or they would think you were poor."

Aunt Petunia's expression flickered. Harry leaned towards her. "Yeah, you did starve me" he said. "You're lucky that you can lie so well. But I'm not going to take it any longer."

"You can't do anything about it!"

"Yes, I can. You're going to feed me properly and give me proper clothes, or I'll—" Harry hadn't actually known what he would end the sentence with, but now he was inspired. "I'll tell the neighbors that you've been stealing money from me all along and starving me and giving me only a pittance. That all your money actually comes from my rich parents who left it to you to take care of me when they died."

"That's not true!"

Harry widened his eyes. "But I have proof. I have the statements and the papers. It's so sad, what you did to me."

"You just said that we lied better than you, boy!"

"Yeah, but I have magic," Harry said, ignoring the edge of a bellow from Uncle Vernon when he said that forbidden word. "I can make ordinary pieces of paper look like whatever I want." He was bluffing now, but Aunt Petunia's eyes darted to the fire coating his arm, probably thinking about how he'd made that appear from nothing. "What if I show them the papers and act like a pitiful orphan?"

There was a long, trembling moment when Harry thought things could have gone either way. Then Aunt Petunia spun around and glared at Uncle Vernon. "Leave him alone," she hissed.

"But Pet—"

"I told you, Vernon! I told you that someday this would backfire on us!"

Harry didn't actually believe she'd ever said that, but she was bewildering Uncle Vernon so much that he just spluttered wordlessly and threw his hands up. "All right, Pet, all right! We'll leave the little freak alone! But who's going to do the cooking around here?"

"I will." Aunt Petunia spun to look at Dudley. "And you'll do the gardening."

"What? Muuuuum!"

"You heard me, Dudley."

Harry kept his fire burning, but it seemed he hardly needed to. Maybe Aunt Petunia had always had this reserve of strength inside her. Maybe it was just because she was the one who'd had a magic sister and knew the consequences of magic. She yelled Uncle Vernon and Dudley into submission and made them leave the kitchen. Only then did she turn to face Harry. She was shaking.

Harry felt a little bad. But then he remembered being locked into his room and how hungry he was this morning. He lifted his head and narrowed his eyes.

"You won't do any of the chores except cleaning up after yourself in the bathroom and the kitchen," Aunt Petunia whispered.

"Okay."

"You'll eat, but you'll take your plate up to your bedroom."

"Fine."

"We'll take you to King's Cross on the first of September and you—you won't try to change anything else about our house while you're here."

"Does that mean not defending myself? Because that's what I'm going to do if your son or your husband try to beat me up again, or grab me, or shove me around."

Harry meant it. Maybe Aunt Petunia could tell that, because she shook her head quickly. "I'll—tell them. None of that. Don't touch them." She was whispering by the end of that declaration, with her hands trembling.

"Fine."

Harry finally let the fire drain away. He was shaking himself, with exhaustion rather than fear, but he held Aunt Petunia's eyes until she turned away and left the kitchen, calling to Vernon and Dudley on the way.

Harry closed his eyes, and then picked up and ate an entire strip of bacon, ignoring the way that it burned his lips.

He was going to live.