Chapter 27: Prison Break

"Harry."

Harry slowly opened his eyes, blinking multiple times before he was able to keep his eyelids up for longer than a second. "Hmm?"

"Harry, wake up. We have to go." Uncle Severus said urgently. Harry put on his glasses and his uncle's worried face finally came into focus.

Harry's blood turned to ice in his veins as he sat up, suddenly awake enough to gather that something horrible and pressing was going on. "What's wrong?" he asked, his voice still hoarse from sleep.

"Umbridge has been broken out of Azkaban," Uncle Severus said quickly, but gently.

Harry forcefully pulled back his bedclothes, swung his feet down on the floor, and grabbed his wand. "Is she here?"

"No, no, it's okay." Uncle Severus was speaking softer as he tried to comfort his nephew. "I just don't want to wait around here in case she does. We need to go."

"Okay," Harry said with a nod. He ran a hand through his hair. "Where are we going?"

Uncle Severus sighed and offered Harry his arm. "You're not going to like this, but you're going to have to trust me."

"I do," Harry said as he took his uncle's arm, though his curiosity peaked.

"We're off, then."

Harry's bedroom disappeared, and he suddenly felt like he was being squeezed through a hole that was much too small for him. He couldn't breath, his stomach was in knots, before he and his uncle finally found themselves standing on an empty street in the dead of night. His grip remained tight on his uncle's arm as he tried to catch his breath. He suddenly felt nauseous.

"Was that your first time?" Uncle Severus asked.

Harry nodded. Apparition was reserved for witches and wizards aged 17 and older, and required a license as it could be dangerous if done incorrectly. With enough experience, someone with an apparition license could bring someone along with them, though Harry had never had the opportunity to experience this for himself. Not until tonight.

Uncle Severus winced. "Sorry about that. It takes some getting used to." He proceeded to rub his nephew's back until he felt stable enough to stand on his own.

"No problem," Harry said, understanding that it was their best method of travel when escaping in a hurry. He finally took a moment to take in his surroundings, and his heart sank. "Are you leaving me here?" he asked, his voice more fearful than he intended. But he knew this street. He'd grown up on it.

"I'm not leaving you," Uncle Severus promised. "We're both going to stay. I'm so sorry to do this to you, but we should be safe here. At least for tonight."

Harry nodded. He'd survived 14 years in that house, he could manage another night. "Okay, let's go. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon aren't going to like it."

"I couldn't care less about what your Aunt Petunia likes," Uncle Severus insisted as the two of them made their way up the steps to 4 Privet Drive and rang the doorbell.

Understandably, they had to wait a minute and even ring the bell a second time before a groggy Uncle Vernon opened the door in his housecoat.

"Now what is the meaning of- Severus," Uncle Vernon said as he saw who'd been ringing his doorbell in the middle of the night. "What are you doing here?"

"Good evening, Vernon," Uncle Severus said. "May we come in?"

"I… I suppose so," Uncle Vernon said as he stepped aside to let Harry and Uncle Severus in, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Severus, are you aware of the time?"

"I believe it's almost 3am, Vernon."

"Bit of an odd time for a visit. Not that I'm not… pleased to see you." Uncle Vernon was unable to say the last sentence in a convincing tone.

"I'm afraid this isn't a visit for pleasure. We need to stay here tonight, if that's alright."

"Oh, um…"

"Vernon?" a bleary eyed Aunt Petunia said as she appeared at the top of the stairs. Harry's pulse quickened, causing him to realize that she'd been successful in her quest to make her nephew afraid of her, despite whatever magical abilities he held. As if sensing his apprehension, Uncle Severus placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Who was that?"

"It's your brother, dear. He's brought the boy."

"What?" Aunt Petunia demanded as she hurried down to them. "What is the meaning of this, Severus? If you're upset that I made you take custody of the boy, we can talk about it, but to show up unannounced in the middle of the night-"

"Harry," Uncle Severus said, cutting his sister off.

"What?" said Aunt Petunia.

"Yes, Uncle?" said Harry.

"His name is Harry," Uncle Severus clarified.

Aunt Petunia looked at her brother as if he had three heads. "I'm aware of his name."

"Yet, you refuse to use it."

"What are you getting at, Severus? You show up, waking the whole house, just to criticize how I refer to our nephew?"

"They need to stay here tonight, evidently," Uncle Vernon chimed in.

"Oh, that's rich," Aunt Petunia said with a joyless laugh. "You need something from me and you still can't be bothered showing me any respect."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Uncle Severus. "You owe this to Harry after everything you put him through."

"Now see here, Severus-" said Uncle Vernon.

"We put a roof over his head," Aunt Petunia snapped. "He was forced on us, and we took him in. We fed him, clothed him-"

"You didn't even feed him consistently though, did you? You'd take his dinner away if he said something you didn't like," Uncle Severus fired back. It was a rare sight for Harry to see his uncle stand up to his aunt in this way.

"I did what I had to do, Severus."

"What does that mean?"

"We let him in, we did our family duty. But you know full well that your people are dangerous, I had to keep him at arms length to protect my family, and I don't regret it. Think of me however you want. I didn't see you welcoming him into your home."

"He was only a child, Petunia-"

"Mum?" Dudley started down the stairs, rubbing his eyes. He'd always been a heavy sleeper, but it seemed even he couldn't sleep through his mother and his uncle fighting.

"Hey, Diddykins," Aunt Petunia said, her voice instantly turning soft and sweet as she spoke to her son. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, did your uncle wake you?"

"Hey, Harry's here!" Dudley said excitedly, ignoring his mother. Harry had almost forgotten the way his cousin had suddenly developed a new appreciation for him, shortly before he moved out of the house permanently. It was nice to see that he still felt that way. "Oh, and Uncle Severus." He sounded less excited to see his uncle, though Harry couldn't blame him. He would have felt the same way only a few months prior.

"Hello, Dudley," said Uncle Severus.

"Hey, Big D," Harry said with a grin.

"What are you doing here?" Dudley asked.

"We're going to be staying here tonight," Uncle Severus asserted before Aunt Petunia could interject.

"Well, maybe, we're still trying to figure out if we can manage…" Aunt Petunia stammered.

"Can Harry sleep in my room?" asked Dudley.

Aunt Petunia blinked, clearly surprised. "You want him to sleep in… your room? That's sweet, Diddykins, you're such a kind boy. But surely you don't want that-"

"We still have his old cot, don't we?" Dudley said, talking over his mother again. "From when he used to sleep under the stairs?"

Aunt Petunia had the grace to turn red in the face. "Um, well…"

"Ah, yes, that's another thing I was curious about as well," said Uncle Severus. He opened the cupboard door and peered into the space within. Harry knew it well, as it had been his bedroom for a majority of his life.

"Come now, Severus, it's improper to go poking about someone else's home," Uncle Vernon protested.

"What's improper," Uncle Severus said through gritted teeth, "is making a child sleep in a cupboard for ten years."

"Please, Severus, he was fine," Aunt Petunia said dismissively. "We weren't planning on bringing another child into this house, then suddenly we had to figure out where to put him."

"I was shorter back then, too," Harry threw in, defending Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's decision before he even realized what he was doing. Subconsciously, he was still afraid of what his aunt would do to him for being ungrateful.

"No, don't you try to justify this," Uncle Severus said to Harry. Seething, he turned back to his sister. "You had an entire spare bedroom. How did it not cross your mind for an entire decade that perhaps you could set him up in there?"

"It was always our plan to leave that as a guest bedroom," Aunt Petunia insisted. "For Vernon's sister or anyone else to come visit. I've always found it tacky to set people up to sleep on the couch. At least by the time we moved the boy up to the spare room, he was starting to spend the bulk of his time up at that freak school."

Uncle Severus's nostrils flared. He'd been listening to his sister refer to magical people as freaks for decades, and it seemed that he was just as bothered by her comments now as he was as a kid. "Your prejudice against magical kind is ugly as ever, Petunia."

Aunt Petunia smirked, clearly pleased to have gotten under her brother's skin.

As Harry's aunt and uncle continued to argue, Dudley came up beside him and said, "Come on, there's cake in the kitchen," then proceeded to grab Harry's arm and lead him past the staircase and into the next room. Leave it to Dudley to be thinking about food at a time like this. "Grab some plates," he insisted as he reached toward a cloche on the counter that presumably contained their late night dessert.

Harry went to the cabinet and grabbed two plates, finding them in the same place they'd been in his many years living in the house. "How do you always manage to block out the arguing like that?" he asked. Dudley had never been bothered by confrontations going on around him. Harry could recall many times when Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon were yelling at him while his cousin was mere feet away, never taking his eyes off the meal he was eating or the show he was watching on television.

Dudley shrugged. "Mum likes to yell and most of the time there's no stopping her until she wears herself out. I don't see a reason to get involved." He cut a couple slices of cake and put them on the plates Harry had grabbed.

Harry laughed. "That's pretty insightful of you, Dudley."

"And it's easier when you're not the one being yelled at."

"I suppose it would be."

The boys sat at the table eating their cake, and Harry couldn't help wondering what it would have been like if he and his cousin had started getting along sooner. How many other nights would they have spent staying up late together, sneaking treats in the kitchen?

"Hey, Dudley?" Harry said. Dudley looked up from his cake. "Thank you for not being afraid of me."

Dudley's brow furrowed. "Why would I be afraid of you? You're scrawny." Harry just smiled.

"What do you lot supposedly need to stay here for, anyway?" Uncle Vernon said, his voice carrying from where they were still arguing in the entryway. "You haven't said, all you've done is come into our home and attack us for how we chose to handle having to unexpectedly bring a new child into our household, something that you could have done instead, might I add, but you didn't."

"And I will regret that for the rest of my life, Vernon, but that doesn't make your treatment of that child okay in the slightest. You were abusive, I won't call it anything else because that's what it was," Uncle Severus snapped back.

"We don't have to take this," said Uncle Vernon. "I could kick you both out right now, that is my right! This is my house. So, tell me why you're here, or leave." As the voices grew quieter, Harry moved closer to the kitchen door to listen while Dudley helped himself to a second slice of cake.

"Very well," said Uncle Severus. "The woman who killed Lily was imprisoned a couple weeks ago."

Aunt Petunia gasped. "This has something to do with… with Lily?" Her voice was softer, the anger having dissipated at the mention of her deceased sister. "I thought… Wasn't it some man who killed her?"

"That's what everyone thought at the time," Uncle Severus said, matching Aunt Petunia's tone. "We just found out her murderer's true identity. Harry smoked her out of hiding. She was arrested for unrelated charges, actually, she's quite an evil woman. She's hurt a lot of people."

"Well, that's good then, isn't it? At least she's in prison."

Uncle Severus sighed. "She broke out tonight. And I'm worried that she'll come for Harry. There's something she wants, and he knows where it is. But she won't think to look for him here."

"Look, I don't know if we want to get wrapped up in-" Uncle Vernon started to say.

"You can stay," Aunt Petunia said, cutting her husband off. Uncle Vernon didn't try to argue.

"Thank you, Petunia," Uncle Severus said.

"We'll get out the cot," Aunt Petunia said as Harry rejoined them. "I suppose if the boy- Harry will be sleeping in Dudley's room, then you can take the spare room."

"That will do just fine," Uncle Severus assured her.

"Why don't you show your uncle up to your old room?" Aunt Petunia said to Harry, who nodded.

"Petunia?" Uncle Severus said as Harry headed for the stairs. Aunt Petunia turned to look at her brother. "I didn't come here to fight. That wasn't my intention." Aunt Petunia just nodded.

Harry headed up the stairs, his uncle trailing behind him. As he opened his old bedroom door, he found that nothing had changed inside. It looked exactly as it had for the past few years.

"You didn't bring much with you when you moved out," Uncle Severus said. "It looks like you didn't leave much behind either."

Harry shrugged. "It was just the guest bedroom before I moved in. This was pretty much what it looked like back then, too. The only thing that really changed was that I was allowed to sleep here."

"You've never really settled in anywhere," Uncle Severus said. It wasn't a question. "Never got the chance to make a space your own."

"Yeah, well, I spend most of the year living in my Hogwarts dormitory, anyway. I do have a Chudley Cannons poster hanging near my bed there." Uncle Severus moved further into the room, opening up a desk drawer to find it empty. "Hey, Uncle?" Uncle Severus turned to look at him. "What's going on with Umbridge? Like, do we know how she escaped, or do we have any idea of where she might be now?" In all the chaos since his uncle had woken him up, Harry hadn't had a chance to ask for details.

Uncle Severus sat down on the bed, indicating that Harry should do the same. "She had help. The prison was attacked, likely by a gang of her followers. They broke her out and took off. They haven't released much more detail than that, but it's only just happened a few hours ago," Uncle Severus explained. Harry nodded. Umbridge had always had a large group of people who were secretly loyal to her, and were willing to put themselves at risk to please her. How someone as nasty as Delores Umbridge had managed such a thing, Harry would never know. "As far as where she is now, no one knows, to my knowledge. She's likely gone into hiding, that would be the smartest thing for her to do. It's unlikely we'll see her any time soon, she'll want to regroup, figure out a new plan. Merlin knows she wasn't expecting to face any sort of consequences for her actions."

Harry nodded again. "But we've come here just in case she tries to catch us off guard, before the news of her escape has fully broken," he added.

"Exactly. I highly doubt she'll try anything tonight, but I'd rather not take the chance." Uncle Severus looked into his nephew's eyes, noting his worried expression. "We'll be safe here, Harry. I promise."

"Okay," Harry said, taking a deep breath to steady himself.

"Ouch," Aunt Petunia muttered from the bottom of the stairs. Going by the noises that followed, it seemed that she'd found Harry's old cot.

Uncle Severus stepped out into the corridor and looked down at his sister from the top of the stairs. Without saying a word to her, he took out his wand and waved it at the cot, which floated away from Aunt Petunia and up the stairs.

"Oh. Well, that's one way to do it," Aunt Petunia muttered, clearly a bit on edge over having magic performed right in front of her.

"Thank you, Petunia. I assume there are pillows and blankets somewhere as well?" Uncle Severus asked.

"Hallway linen closet," Aunt Petunia said simply.

Uncle Severus helped Harry set up the cot in Dudley's room, which was noticeably larger than Harry's old room and also much messier, though they managed to clear enough space. Dudley himself finally made his reappearance, and it was agreed that it was past time that everyone went back to bed.

"Goodnight, boys," Uncle Severus said. "I'll be right next door if you need me," he said, mostly to Harry.

"I don't think I will," said Dudley. "But thanks, I guess." Harry chuckled. Uncle Severus grinned, shook his head, and left, closing the door behind him.

"I'm not sure if I'm even going to be able to sleep after all that," Harry said as he climbed onto his old cot. It had been years since he'd slept in this particular bed, and found it to be a bit smaller than he remembered.

"I'm not tired," Dudley confirmed as he got into bed. "So, what's it like living with Uncle Severus?"

"It was weird at first," Harry admitted. "But now… honestly it's been great, lately. He's been really supportive, he's really making an effort. Did you know he could smile?"

"No," Dudley said earnestly. "He's usually so frowny."

"I know. Turns out he's just kind of private, but if you spend more time with him, he really opens up and gets more… vulnerable."

"Cool, I want to see that!" said Dudley. "Do you think I could come over and hang out next Summer?"

Harry grinned. "I think that could be arranged." And suddenly, Uncle Severus was the cool uncle. Aunt Petunia was going to hate that.