Expelled.
The letter's final words clawed through the air among the screeching of owls and the thud of paper hitting the ground, hanging like the aftershock of a distant explosion. The word slammed into Harry's skull, carving deep, gouging trenches into his thoughts. It rattled through his bones, hollowed out his chest, scraped against his ribs like jagged glass. Expelled. Like a final sentence. A death knell. A hammer striking a coffin shut.
His wand… His wand was about to be destroyed. His world was about to be destroyed.
His breath hitched—too fast, too shallow, like a drowning man surfacing just enough to realize he was still sinking. The room twisted, stretching in unnatural ways, the floral wallpaper warping like melted wax, Aunt Petunia's shrieks distorting into something high-pitched and unreal, a static hum beneath the deafening drum of his own pulse.
No. No, this couldn't… this wasn't…
His legs locked in place. The air in his lungs curled into fists, crushing against his ribs. The floorboards buzzed like quicksand, the ceiling too close, the walls pressing in. Too tight. Too small. No space. No way out.
Expelled.
The word rang in his skull again.
Gone.
Hogwarts, gone. The Gryffindor common room, warm with firelight and the smell of ink and parchment. Gone. The Quidditch pitch, the thrill of the wind slicing past him as he dove, the rush of the crowd's roar. Gone. Even the dungeons—damp, miserable, filled with Snape's sneering—gone.
Ron and Hermione.
Gone.
They wouldn't write to him. They already weren't writing to him, let alone if he wasn't a student anymore. Not if he was just—just Harry. No one wrote to just Harry. They wrote to The Boy Who Lived. To the Gryffindor Seeker. To the friend who shared their world. But if he wasn't in that world anymore—
No.
No, he couldn't—he wouldn't—
His throat closed.
His hands clenched around the parchment, the red edges burning like embers against his fingertips. He wanted to crush it, rip it to shreds, tear it apart with his teeth if he had to, but the words were already inside him, carved into his bones. A representative from the Ministry would arrive shortly to confiscate your wand and oversee its destruction.
How could they…?
He sucked in a breath. Too fast. Too much. His vision blurred, the edges of his world fading into pale static, narrowing, closing. The walls contracted, the ceiling lowered, the air thickened into something unbreathable. His body reeled, desperate for oxygen.
Not enough air. Not enough air. He had to get out. Had to—had to—had to—
His fingers spasmed, sweat slicking his palm. The red parchment crinkled where he gripped it, its edges still curling with the embers of magic. The words had already been spoken. The decree had already been set. No amount of ripping, no amount of screaming, no amount of denying would erase them. He swayed. His knees sagged, bones threatening to fold under the weight crushing his chest.
Warmth.
Warmth against his skin. A pulse against his wrist. Not a grip, not restraint, but firm nonetheless. Intentional. Fingers… Smaller than his. More delicate. Smooth skin, grimy with dirt and oil.
"Easy there, Brilliant."
The voice slithered through the static, cutting through the fog curling around his thoughts. Low. Steady. Brimming with memories of danger and fighting for one's life.
"You're gonna pop a gasket."
The copper tang of Vernon's blood clung to the air. Thick. Metallic. Coating his tongue like a mouthful of pennies. Petunia's sobs blurred into the background. Her sorrow turned into the echo of the clock that still ticked the time away. Time Vernon would never see. Time Harry would forever see once they snapped his wand, and he couldn't go back to Hogwarts again.
No way out. No way—
Another touch.
Lighter this time. The briefest press against his shoulder, grounding him. Not pulling, not forcing, just there. A presence got into his personal space. Warm. Buzzing. Electric. Hands held his shoulders as blue eyes crouched to gaze upon his from below. Eyes that knew what he was thinking. Eyes that had seen this before. Eyes that had just killed and yet showed more interest in what was happening to him than any before.
"You're crashing." The voice curled into the softness of silk sheets hugging you when you're sick. "Let's not do that, yeah?"
The room wavered. The presence's breath warmed his mouth as noses and foreheads touched. His limbs refused to move, refused to listen, locked in place like his bones had turned to iron. His heartbeat rattled against his ribs, out of sync, erratic, a drumline with no rhythm. His eyes stayed fixed on the electric blue gleam of the eyes in front of them as if staring into an ocean storm dragging ships down and up.
"Alright, deep breaths." The voice caressed his ears. "I mean it. Right now."
He couldn't.
He wanted to do it. The voice was so calm and present and there and calming. He wanted to do what it said, but he couldn't. Breathing… Breathing was so hard. Breathing was for normal boys, who didn't turn their teachers' hairs blue or apparate to the top of the school or… or—
"Follow me." A palm brushed over his sternum. "In."
The presence inhaled. A slow, dragging breath, loud enough for him to hear it over the thunder in his skull.
He inhaled.
"Good. Hold." A pause. A beat. A stillness. "Now out, nice and slow."
The air refused to move. His throat clenched. His body locked. No, no, he couldn't breathe out, he shouldn't have breathed in. How could he breathe out when Cedric would never breathe out again?
"Out." The finger tapped his chest again. "Now."
His breath stuttered, shallow, uneven, slipping out like something foreign, something unwelcome.
"Slower."
She breathed with him.
In. Hold. Out.
A tether in the chaos.
The room's sharp edges dulled. The static ringing in his skull faded to a distant hum. The walls loosened their grip, retreating an inch, then another. His ribs still ached, but the grip had weakened. He could breathe. Not well. Not easily. But enough.
"There we go…" The presence—she—Jinx—Jinx squeezed his shoulders. "Now, keep doing that, or I'm gonna have to smack you again. And honestly? Not sure I'd hold back this time."
A sound broke from his throat—half a cough, half a wheeze. A strangled thing, not quite laughter, not quite disbelief. Jinx wasn't mocking him. Not like Vernon would have, twisting his weakness into something filthy. Not like Snape, who would have sneered at him for losing control. Not like Malfoy, who would've called him a weak, half-blood.
No.
Jinx just was.
Harry's head dipped, his fingers pressing against the bridge of his nose. The parchment still burned in his grip, magic curling from its corners, taunting. Expelled. Wand confiscated. The weight of it still crushed him, still curled around his throat like a noose, but… His hands didn't shake as much now. The world no longer tilted beneath his feet.
His breath moved.
"Shh…" Jinx squeezed his wrist once. Just enough for him to know she hadn't let go. "Just keep breathing."
The house went quiet.
Too quiet. Petunia had stopped sobbing. She just lay over Vernon and trembled. The silence stood as something born of absence. The kind left behind in the wake of something gutted and hollowed out. The remnants of the Howler curled in on themselves, paper edges still smoking, like the charred remains of an execution notice.
Harry's breath, though steadier now, still rattled as he exhaled.
Each inhale carried the weight of something that did not fit in his lungs, something foreign, something unforgiving. The taste of bile clung to the back of his tongue, mixing with the phantom traces of gunpowder and copper, an acrid cocktail of what his life had become in mere minutes.
Jinx released his wrist. "You back with me, or do I need to start throwing stuff at you?"
She tilted her head, watching, but not in the way people usually did when waiting for him to fall apart. There was no smugness, no satisfaction in seeing him shaken. Just the sharp attentiveness of someone tracking the moment before a storm either dissipates or erupts.
"I…" Harry swallowed hard, his throat raw from everything he hadn't been able to voice. His fingers curled into his palm, grounding himself in the dull bite of his own nails pressing into skin. He clenched his teeth. "I'm fine."
"Sure." She huffed out a breath and rolled her eyes. "And I'm the Tooth Fairy."
Harry barely had the energy to shoot her a glare.
The air in the living room clung to him, thick with something cloying, something inescapable. The stench of Vernon's blood still seeped into the fibers of the carpet, into the curtains, into the very bones of the house. The couch gaped open where Jinx's minigun had torn through it, stuffing spilling out like viscera, white against the dark stain creeping outward in slow, methodical tendrils.
His stomach lurched, but he had nothing left to bring up.
His world was burning down around him, and he was standing still. No, not just burning—collapsing. Hogwarts had been his lifeline. His place. The one corner of the world where he existed as something other than a burden, something beyond the boy shoved into a cupboard. Gryffindor Tower, the smell of ink and old parchment, the weight of a broom in his hands, the warmth of the common room fire—all of it. Gone. Ripped away by words written in the Ministry's cold, inked decree.
His wand.
His fingers twitched, aching for the reassurance of it, for the warmth thrumming under the wood marking it as something alive, something his. It had chosen him. It had tethered him to something greater, something beyond the miserable limits of Privet Drive. They wanted to snap it. To tear it from him like it was just another possession, just another thing they could take.
His pulse surged.
The howler didn't say the words exactly, but it might as well have. It might as well have screamed into his face that the Ministry thought he was a criminal now. A criminal. For daring to protect himself from a dementor. Then again… As unfair as the whole situation was… If he wanted to keep his wand, keep even the smallest part of the life that made him him…
He'd have to break the law.
The realization struck like ice water poured down his spine, a shuddering shock that jolted through every nerve, sinking into the marrow. It dripped down, cold and relentless, soaking through his skin, through his lungs, through the frantic, uneven pounding in his chest.
Criminal.
The word wrapped around his throat like invisible chains, clamping tight, locking in place. He barely managed a breath.
He had never really thought about it before—what it meant to be on the other side.
Sure, he'd broken rules at Hogwarts. Snuck past curfew, sprinted through shadowed corridors with only the fading glow of Lumos to guide him. He had wandered into the Forbidden Forest when every instinct screamed to turn back, had thrown himself headfirst into dangers most wizards wouldn't even whisper about.
But those were school rules.
Rules that bent and snapped and stitched themselves back together in the safety of home. McGonagall might scold. Snape might sneer, arms crossed, voice dripping with venom. Dumbledore might watch with that quiet, knowing gaze, disappointment curling at the corners of his mouth. But there had always been a way back. A place to return to.
Not anymore.
The Ministry's letter wasn't a scolding. It was a severance. A blade severing him clean from the world he had bled for, fought for, nearly died for time and time again. Yet, no matter what he did, it was never enough, was it? It didn't matter that he stopped Voldemort from coming back in his first year. That he had to fight a sixty-foot basilisk to save the little girl who set it loose. That he'd tried to right a wrong that had been going on for twelve years. That he swore he hadn't put his name in the Goblet. No, he was always the liar. He was the dark wizard. The attention seeker. The spoiled brat. The freak.
A shudder crawled up his spine.
The world he had saved… didn't want him. A tremor ran through his legs, knees locking, breath stuttering as the full weight of it crashed down. The Ministry would come for him. They would hunt him. He had seen it before.
Sirius.
Hunted. Hounded. Chased through every shadow, forced into hiding, reduced to a ghost of himself. Was that what awaited him now?
A life on the run?
"You're thinkin' too loud, Brilliant."
The words cut through the suffocating static in his head, sharp and effortless, slipping past the tangled mess of thoughts that coiled like barbed wire in his skull.
Harry barely blinked.
The floorboards wobbled beneath him, slick with something thick and slow-moving, something wrong. The blood had settled now, sinking into the cracks, darkening the wood beneath the torn stuffing of the ruined couch. The air clung to his skin—copper-tinged, stale, too warm in the way that came when life had drained out of something that would never move again.
None of that mattered.
Not compared to this.
His gaze dragged back to the letter. The parchment still sat there, half-crumpled, its curling edges barely twitching in the air's faint, restless stir. The words he had heard burned behind his eyes, carving themselves into something permanent, something inescapable.
Expelled. Destruction of wand. Breach of the Statute of Secrecy.
Harry exhaled slowly, forcing his ribs to expand, forcing air into his lungs when they threatened to collapse in on themselves.
"They're coming for my wand. Do you…" His voice was barely more than gravel in his throat. Harry clenched his fists. "Do you know what that means?"
"Yeah…" Jinx tilted her head, her blue fringe slipping over her eye. "I can guess."
Harry's breath hitched.
She understood. She actually understood. Not the way Ron or Hermione might. Not in the well-meaning, but distant way of someone who had never truly stood at the edge of something irreversible, staring down the barrel of no way back.
She knew.
Jinx shifted her weight, the slow scrape of her boots over bloodied wood filling the silence like a blade being drawn. "What are you gonna do about it? You gonna sit here, panic yourself into another meltdown, and wait for 'em to rip it outta your hands?"
Harry stiffened.
The words stung—not because they were cruel, but because they were true. His breath came in tight, shallow bursts. His pulse hammered, but this time, not from panic. His whole life had been dictated by their rules. The Dursleys' rules. Hogwarts' rules. The Ministry's rules. A world of lines drawn by other people, boxing him in, telling him what he was, what he wasn't, who he could be, what he could never be. The fact that Dumbledore had kept sending him back to the Dursleys spoke enough to that fact.
And now…
Now they had decided. They had chosen for him. Not fit for Hogwarts. Not fit for magic. Not fit to even keep his wand. For defending himself against a creature they had failed to coral. What had he done to deserve that? What had he ever done to deserve any of what kept happening to him?
No.
Jinx let the silence settle just long enough to let the weight of it press down before she moved. One step forward. A flicker of movement, the metallic click of her minigun shifting on her back, the faintest scent of gunpowder still clinging to her like a second skin. She looked at him, head tilted, grin still there but—off. Less manic. Less playful. Something quieter, sharper, hiding beneath it.
"I get it." Her tone carried a weight he hadn't expected, something quieter and sharper beneath her usual manic energy. "You're used to being the golden boy. You're used to playing by the rules. You're not used to being one of the bad guys."
Harry froze, his stomach twisting as her words settled into the space between them.
One of the bad guys.
It sounded wrong—felt wrong—but the more he tried to shake it off, the tighter it clung to him.
"Trust me, I know all about it." Jinx stepped closer, her boots clicking softly against the blood-slicked floor. She tilted her head, studying him like a puzzle she'd half-solved. "Being on the wrong side of the rules. Living in a world that doesn't want you, that's ready to throw you away the second you step outta line."
"Jinx…"
"Trust me, Brilliant. If there's one thing I do get, it's being the villain in someone else's story."
He didn't want to listen to her.
He didn't want to see himself in the same light as her. She was chaos. Unpredictable, destructive, dangerous. Everything he wasn't. She'd killed Vernon. She'd done it so casually, without care or remorse. How many people had she killed before to get to such a state of mind? How many would she kill in the future?
Would Harry have to kill someone?
He didn't want to. He didn't want to hurt anyone at all. But now, with the Ministry's shadow looming over him, the line between Harry and Jinx felt thinner than ever. He was supposed to fight wizards with decades more experience than him.
What if he did end up killing someone, even on accident…?
"So… What're you gonna do, huh?" Jinx's her electric eyes locked onto his with an intensity that made his skin crawl. "Cry about it? Let them take your magic, your school, your whole life?"
Harry stared at her.
She leaned in. "Or are you gonna fight for it?"
That's a wrap for Chapter 5!
Let me know what you liked and disliked, I love and appreciate all constructive criticism, especially since I always keep editing and improving these chapters. I would love to hear all your thoughts!
Check me out on p. a. t. r.e.o.n.. c.o.m. /TheStorySpinner (don't forget to remove the spaces and dots) for early releases of new chapters and bonus content.
The following chapters are already available there:
Chapter 6: Grand Theft Vernon
Chapter 7: Drive It Like You Stole It
Chapter 8: I Told You So
Chapter 9: My Sidekick Is Having a Breakdown
Chapter 10: That Is One Ugly Gremlin
See you in Chapter 6!