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Chapter Text

On Harry Potter’s first day at Stonewall High, he did not get his head shoved in a toilet, mostly because he kept his head down, his eyes on the older boys, and his body as far from any potential watery vortexes as he could manage.

In the oversized sweater Aunt Petunia had dyed grey and the plastic glasses held together at the bridge with sellotape, Harry did not look eleven years old, or even ten. He was the second-youngest in his year, with his July birthday, but it was more his stature that was the problem. He was skinny and boney, and had black hair that stuck out at odd angles, and didn’t speak up in class at all, and all this together might have made him a prime target for bullying.

But Harry Potter had plenty of experience in pretending that he did not exist. And after careful years of study, he realized that there was a point at which the lines between pretend and real began to blur. Harry (who Uncle Vernon had always said had a poor grasp on reality) walked always in that grey space, where no one else seemed to follow, and so a good half of the time, he managed to well and truly not exist.

The boys carrying on the fine tradition of shoving heads in toilets? Well, you can’t shove a head if you don’t know it’s there.

-

At the end of his third day at Stonewall High, Ms Morris, Harry’s form tutor and English teacher, pulled him aside. Given that she was in charge of the register, and so it was her job to know whether he was or was not there, he hadn’t yet figured out how to make her overlook him.

“Give this to your guardians, Mr Potter,” she said, thrusting an envelope into his hands. “I expect you in a proper uniform no later than next week.”

Harry winced. “My Aunt said—”

“Your Aunt lives on Privet Drive, and can afford to send her son to Smeltings Academy,” she said. “There is no excuse for you not to have proper clothing.”

-

Dear Mr and Mrs Dursley, the letter read.

It has come to the attention of the faculty here at Stonewall High that your nephew, Harry Potter, is not in possession of a proper school uniform. Although a scholarship is available for families with demonstrated need, our records show that you do not qualify. If our records are in error and you wish to petition for a scholarship, please call or visit the Stonewall High front office from 8:00 - 17:00 daily.

As detailed in the informational packet mailed to all households before the school year started, the Stonewall High uniform is as follows:

• Trousers, grey (Mr Potter’s are in unacceptable condition, and several sizes too large)

• White polo shirt with Stonewall logo (Mr Potter’s is several sizes too large, and generic)

• Grey pullover with Stonewall logo (Mr Potter’s is unacceptable in every manner)

• Grey blazer with Stonewall logo (Mr Potter has expressed that he does not have a blazer or jacket of any sort)

• Black leather shoes, polished (trainers are expressly forbidden outside of Physical Education)

• Black or grey socks

• Black leather belt

• Grey backpack with Stonewall logo, with student’s initials embroidered (Mr Potter appears to be using his bag from primary school).

In addition, for Physical Education classes, students require:

• Stonewall High t-shirt

• Black or grey shorts

• Black or grey sweatpants

• Trainers (Mr Potter’s are in deplorable condition, and will need to be replaced for safety purposes).

Mr Potter will be expected to acquire the proper uniform by no later than next Friday, 13 September. Stonewall High considers adhering to the uniform guidelines essential to maintaining a proper educational environment.

Sincerely,

Joyce H. White, Assistant Principal

-

Aunt Petunia was not pleased.

She was caught, as ever, between two difficult choices. On the one hand, she was loathe to provide her nephew with anything that would provide even an instant of happiness. On the other, the Dursley family creed was, first and foremost, to never appear anything less than normal. Even Petunia, looking down at her nephew shifting from foot to foot as she read the letter, had to admit that in Dudley’s re-purposed clothing he looked more like an alley cat with more fur than fat than he did a normal boy.

“Get in the car,” she snapped, and she turned, steeling herself to explain to Vernon.

-

On Harry Potter’s sixth day at Stonewall High, the second Monday of the year, he found a comb in the things Dudley had left behind and tried to make his hair lie flat. When it got stuck in the curls, he shoved his head under the faucet, and for a while the water seemed to work well enough to hold it down, but as it dried it grew twice as large as before. Hopeless.

Maybe it was the scar, he thought as he caught sight of himself in a car he passed as he walked to school. Maybe he really had been struck by lightning, and all the energy had gotten stuck in that mark on his head, and so his hair was going to be full of static electricity forever.

Better not think that thought too loud, though, in case Vernon smelled it on him. He looked around, as though his uncle might come charging out around the corner ( You weren't hit by lightning! You were in a car accident, you hear me? A car accident! ) and, finding nothing out of the ordinary, tried with one more pat to press the hair back down towards his scalp.

Defiant to the last, it stood taller instead.

Ms Morris wondered, but Harry was in the proper uniform, at least, and she celebrated that victory.

Even with his hair askew, for the first time in memory Harry was wearing clothes that were all his own. The trousers did not need the belt to keep from falling from his hips, and the sleeves—well, he kept tugging at them, used to keeping his hands warm inside, but they were close to the right length. Without the extra fabric he felt small, but when he caught sight of his reflection the fitted clothing made him appear much larger.

The newness of it all was exciting. For once, he might not need to hide, because he would blend right in with the other kids, not a freak at all. A boy.

Such thoughts were dangerous.

It was four year ten boys who pulled him into the loo—the one no one used because it had a weird smell and a reputation.

“Are you really going to…?” Harry asked. His heart was racing, or fluttering, a morbid fascination at being caught in this ritual for normal boys worming its way in with the panic rising at being grabbed.

“You’re the only one we haven’t yet,” said one of the boys.

“Funny, that.” This one was reaching out and poking at the bird’s nest of black hair. “You’d think we’d have noticed all this, before. Were you even here last week?”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, go on.” Another of the boys, the one standing watch from the door with his arms crossed. “We haven’t got all day.”

It was a peculiar thing that happened. The moment Harry’s hair touched the water spinning in the toilet bowl—well, the simplest explanation is that the room exploded. The four bullies screamed, water blasting into their faces, even the one by the door where a toilet explosion shouldn’t have reached. When they finally stopped shrieking, the tiny first year was gone.

Harry, for his part, blinked and found himself in the loo at the other end of the hall, staring into another toilet, where the water wasn’t moving and there was no one pushing him down.

After a moment, he stood and made his way to class. New uniform or no, it was much better to keep hiding. He knew how to stick to the fringes of people’s thoughts, how to skirt their attention; he had plenty of practice. Uncle Vernon made sure of it.

-

On Harry’s twenty-fifth day at Stonewall High, his history teacher, Mr Harvey, went down his list of students, calling out questions in a pop quiz.

Harry enjoyed History. He knew the material as well as he could, having recently discovered the library on the way home from school. Sometimes Petunia sent him there herself, so she would not have to see his face, and he wandered the shelves and pulled random books off the shelves. History was a favorite subject, and a safe one if Uncle Vernon someday asked. Harry did not, however, enjoy pop quizzes, and had never once volunteered to answer a question in class. For the most part, the teachers overlooked him—even Ms Morris, who continued to fuss over his hair, often forgot Harry was there at all. If he turned his pencil three times and kept the strange coin he’d found at the museum on a field trip (an American ‘quarter’, according to a book in the library) in his left palm, their eyes wouldn’t find him at all. He only did that after the teacher checked the register, though, after one incident that left him terribly embarrassed.

But Mr Harvey was going down the list. No matter how far Harry shrunk into his chair, it wouldn’t stop the man from reading his name.

Please don’t call on me, Harry pleaded, turning his pencil over and over again in his hands, and digging a circle in his palm with the coin. He could feel his heart pounding against his chest, and clenched his fingers into fists, hidden by the sleeves of his pullover.

Mr Harvey kept calling names, undeterred by Harry's mental chanting. Just forget I’m here, Harry thought as the teacher reached Sean Nichols, who came before him on the list. He didn't hear the question or the answer, but turned his eyes to the list in Mr Harvey’s hands, as though staring could make his name disappear. He couldn’t say what made him think he could do it, but he hoped, he really did, that for once his queerness would be useful, that he could direct it...

Just go on to the next name… don’t call on me…

Sean's voice cut off, and Mr Harvey cleared his throat, glancing back down at the page in his hand. “Mr—”

Don’t read my name!

“Sorry, Miss Pullman,” Mr Harvey corrected himself. “What year did the Normans invade England?”

-

On Harry’s forty-fourth day at Stonewall High, which was the last day of October and a Thursday, Harry came home to find Aunt Petunia sitting at the table alone, two cups of tea set out before her, both untouched. She looked up at him as he went to his cupboard to stow his bag, and Harry felt his stomach twist, thinking that meant trouble.

“I have considered things,” she said. It was a beginning unfamiliar to Harry, and so he floundered, unsure of how to prepare himself. “I have considered things and, while Dudley is away at school, it has come to my attention that he does not need his second bedroom.”

This was definitely not a conversation within their usual framework. Harry waited, wondering where she could be going with this—did she plan on converting it to a sewing room? He had heard her discuss that with Mrs Polkiss on the phone, but Aunt Petunia did not sew.

“I have considered things and… that is... you are getting too large for the cupboard,” Petunia went on. “And so… this weekend… you will be cleaning and painting the second bedroom, and then you will be sleeping there, while Dudley is away.”

There had been many moments in Harry’s life where he believed things that couldn’t possibly be true. Like when he had been running away from Dudley and then appeared on the roof of his primary school—he couldn’t have done that; that was impossible. Or his dream about the flying motorbike; Uncle Vernon had hated that one. But all those things, Harry had never had trouble accepting as reality. Aunt Petunia offering him Dudley’s second bedroom, on the other hand… he must be imagining things.

Aunt Petunia scowled. “Don’t look at me like that, you ungrateful boy,” she snapped, standing. “And clean this up, and get started peeling potatoes for dinner.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” Harry repeated, but Petunia was already gone.

He took off his blazer and pullover and shirt and folded them into his neat little stack of school clothes, and put on one of the ratty t-shirts instead. He might have changed his trousers, too, but the shirt was a dress on him, and he had to fight to keep Dudley’s old trousers up around his waist. Besides, it was getting difficult to change in the cupboard. It wasn't worth the trouble.

But that weekend… starting that weekend he would have a whole room to himself. He thought his Aunt meant for him to go back into the cupboard when Dudley came home from school, but that was still three-quarters of the year that Harry would have a room to call his own. A room with a window and a light that worked, and a door that didn’t lock from either side, and even a bed, far better than a dingy mattress on the floor.

He could hardly his excitement, but he knew he shouldn’t push his good luck. Aunt Petunia had given him this hope, and she could just as easily take it away, and—he got the feeling she hadn’t talked to Uncle Vernon about this yet. ‘I have considered things’ was too… if she’d talked to him, wouldn’t she have said, ‘We have decided’? And wouldn’t Uncle Vernon be there to berate Harry about how little he was worth, you waste of goodwill and hard-earned space ?

When he returned to the table to collect the teacups, determined to prove his worth, he had to pause. Aunt Petunia was very particular about matters of interior design. Harry, having washed every piece of dishware in the house, was certain that the second cup had never been there before. It was deep, royal blue, with what looked like a star map painted in gold on the surface. Harry could have sworn a few of the dots representing star were winking at him—it must have been a trick of the light.

“Aunt Petunia?” he called, coming out kitchen into the hall and very narrowly avoiding colliding with his aunt coming down the stairs. She had her purse over one arm, and looked horribly offended at being stopped.

“Well? What is it?” she demanded.

“The… there’s a teacup someone must have left. What should I…?”

Petunia’s scowl lifted over his head as she glared towards the kitchen. “Get rid of that rubbage,” she declared, and she pushed past him, snatched a coat off the hatstand, and stormed out. The house shook as the door slammed shut behind her.

Harry frowned, returning to the kitchen to stare at it. It was such a pretty thing, he thought, and it wouldn’t do anyone any good in the bin. And she hadn’t specified to throw it away, just to get rid of it, so he couldn’t see the harm in him keeping it…

Making up his mind, Harry gingerly picked up the cup—and yelped, splashing tea across hand and floor. Despite sitting out on the table for who knows how long, the tea inside was still as hot as if it had been just poured. He eyed it, but he couldn’t see anything else strange about the cup… Perhaps Aunt Petunia had just poured it, and meant it for him?

He wasn’t sure which thought was stranger—a cup keeping tea hot or his Aunt making it for him. Both seemed equally impossible. He dumped the steaming tea down the drain.

-

On Harry’s seventy-fifth day at Stonewall High, he avoided coming home as long as he could. Petunia had ordered it. Dudley was coming home for the winter holiday, after all, and she would not have Harry ruining his holiday.

Unlike the rest of the Stonewall students, Harry was glad they still had a week left. That meant a week he didn’t have to spend trying to hide from Dudley, and a week he could dawdle on the way home until the shows Dudley liked came on, and then slip into the house and up to his room unnoticed.

But Harry’s seventy-fifth day at Stonewall was a Friday, and that meant he’d be stuck with Dudley for the whole weekend. It was raining, too, and he didn’t have an umbrella, so when the library closed at eight he couldn’t dawdle on the way home unless he wanted to ruin his one good set of clothes. Even Dudley, he thought, wasn’t worth that.

He heard his cousin before he saw him, as he slipped open the door, taking off his shoes and socks before he stepped inside, careful not to track puddles on Petunia’s precious floor, shutting it behind him as gently as he could manage. The Dursleys were arguing. Or, rather, Dudley was making a fuss and his parents were simpering. By the end of the day, he’d have some new toy promised, no doubt. As if Christmas wasn’t right around the corner. Maybe a gameboy to replace the one he’d broken last year—not that they were allowed to bring gameboys to Smeltings.

He crept up the stairs, skipping the ones he knew creaked, and padded to the bathroom, where he hung up his blazer on the towel rail to dry, then changed his mind, because if Dudley was in a mood and he saw it, Harry wouldn’t put it beyond his cousin to destroy the jacket, and Aunt Petunia would blame Harry, and even Ms Morris wouldn’t be able to get her to admit otherwise. Instead he hung it up over the radiator in his bedroom, and shucked out of the rest of his uniform and into his hand-me-downs.

“BUT IT’S MY ROOM!” Dudley shouted, his voice permeating the floorboards, reaching decibels never before achieved. Even when he’d been forced to tolerate Harry coming to the zoo with them for his birthday, he hadn’t been so loud. Maybe shouting was a course they taught at Smeltings. “IT’S MINE AND HE’S STEALING IT!”

Harry sighed and looked around the room, wondering if there was anything he needed to hide, in case Aunt Petunia ordered him back into the cupboard for the holiday and Dudley came in and smashed everything out of spite. The teacup was already tucked under the loose floorboard under the bed, along with some granola bars he’d bought for 50p with coins he’d found on the way to school. Otherwise, the room was bare; his clothes were hung in the wardrobe, and his school things were still in his bag, on the chair by the desk. Harry had put Dudley’s broken toys into a box and shoved it under the bed. There was nothing else to distinguish the room as belonging to anyone at all.

The shouting went on for some time, though Harry couldn’t make out any more specific words. He thought about going down to try and snag some leftovers for dinner, but he still had an apple he’d taken from the dinner hall, so he had that instead. The telly turned on and up, and soon he could hear the studio laughter and Dudley’s high-pitched guffaws.

Safe, for now.

Or as safe as he was going to be, in any case. Harry got out his book for English, a copy of Prince and the Pauper he’d got from the library so he didn’t have to ask Petunia for money to buy it, and put some papers on his bed so it didn't look like he was just lazing about reading (never mind that the reading was his homework), and curled up against the pillows to pretend.

-

The morning Dudley was to return to Smeltings, which was a Sunday, the boy came and stood in Harry’s door. He was so large, even at eleven, that he filled up the whole doorway width-wise, though Harry thought maybe he could do a sort of running vault and get out over his head if he needed to.

“At Smeltings,” said Dudley, doing his best to look menacing. “When someone goes and steals something, we all get revenge.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, and maneuvered so that his homework was between him and the wall, but his textbook was firmly in hand.

“We’ll put spiders in their shoes, or hide rotten fruit in their closet, or dump ice on their heads,” Dudley went on.

“Very creative,” said Harry. “I’m sure they all deserve it, too.”

“Just you watch yourself, Potter,” Dudley said darkly. “One of these days…”

He gave Harry one last look which was probably supposed to be threatening before disappearing out of the doorway, and Harry waited until he heard the stomping footsteps go back down the stairs and the telly switched on in the dining room before he got up and padded over to nudge the door shut again.

Then he returned to his homework. When you grew up with a cousin like Dudley, you got used to that sort of thing, and usually it was less threatening and more doing, to be honest. Anyways, Dudley was going back to Smeltings. There wasn’t anything he really could do, at this point.

-

On Harry’s one hundred third day at Stonewall High, he returned to Privet Drive with another envelope from Ms Morris. This time, he did not give it to Petunia.

Instead, he tucked it under his pillow and went down to help make dinner. He was falling back into routine by now. Dudley’s presence over the holiday had been a disruptor, but he'd gone back to Smeltings, and it was getting deceptively easy to live with his Aunt and Uncle. He woke up just early enough to get to school on time, went downstairs just late enough for Vernon to leave so he could make some toast and run out the door. If he got home early, he helped with dinner and took a plate up to his room to eat while doing his homework at the desk until Petunia called him to do the dishes. Then he hurried upstairs to take a shower before the nightly news ended, and if he was lucky didn’t run into his Uncle for the rest of the evening. If he was unlucky, he’d be put to doing some unnecessary task—there was no sense in weeding at night in winter, but Vernon wouldn’t hear a word of it—but mostly, if he focused hard enough on trying to make his relatives forget he was there, he was safe behind the closed door.

That night, as he swirled his chicken around his plate trying to soak it in as much gravy as possible, Harry toyed with the envelope. He didn't know what it held, but no matter: it would irritate Aunt Petunia. Harry didn’t think that he’d called attention to himself recently, unless some of the teachers had noticed how he failed to participate, but wouldn't they speak with him if that were the case? Otherwise—he’d been doing his best, and since Dudley wasn’t there to be compared to or sabotage his work, and since he spent so many afternoons in the library and so many evenings with nothing better to do than homework, his marks were the best they’d ever been. And it couldn’t be for parent conferences or a fundraiser or that sort of thing, because then there would have been envelopes for all the students, and the teacher had only given one to him. So it was a personal matter—but what? His hair—was that worth writing about? He couldn’t do anything about that, and even Petunia with her scissors and her brushes couldn’t tame the mess it made…

At last he slid his finger under the flap of the envelope. If it was something his Aunt and Uncle needed to see, he could say he lost it and get another. But he doubted that, and his eager, curious eyes ate up the message.

The letter read as follows:

Dear Mr and Mrs Dursley,

It has come to the attention of the faculty here at Stonewall High that your nephew, Harry Potter, is an exceptionally bright student. As you have already seen his term marks, this should not come as a surprise. While here at Stonewall we strive to provide quality education to all our students, his teachers have all agreed that Mr Potter is quite simply not going to be challenged by the materials we teach his year level.

Because of this, we believe it would be beneficial for Mr Potter to consider attending a different school to complete his secondary education. There are many schools, both in the area and with accommodations for boarding, at which he could thrive, and several of those provide scholarships for students of exceptional scholastic potential.

If attending a different school is not an option, it may be necessary to advance Mr Potter by a year in order to ensure he is being properly challenged. If you would like to learn more, our staff would be happy to assist you in making a choice. Please do not hesitate to contact or visit our office during open hours, from 8:00 - 17:00 daily, to set up a meeting with one of our guidance counselors.

Sincerely,

Joyce H. White, Assistant Principal

Harry read it again, and then a third time, unsure of what to make of it. Exceptionally bright—him? Well, he had got good marks—but imagine telling Vernon that. He’d have a laugh. And… while the thought of shipping off to some boarding school sounded like a dream,without Dudley around Privet Drive wasn’t so bad. Not bad enough to tempt fate asking his Aunt and Uncle for anything. Let alone something expensive. And suggesting he move up a year… that was just asking for trouble. Harry was already half a head shorter than most of his classmates, and one of the youngest students in the whole school. He’d worked hard to keep from being noticed by any of the likely bullies. Moving up a year would draw attention he very much did not want.

Harry folded up the letter and went to his door, listening until he was certain it was only him upstairs, and went over to pry up the loose floorboard under his bed, and tucked the letter in with the dusty teacup and granola bars and bottle of water he had stored there, and replaced the board just in time to hear Petunia shouting at him to come clean the dishes.

The letter said ‘if’—‘If you would like to learn more.’ Aunt Petunia would not like to. If they called the house there was nothing Harry could do about it, but Harry would just have to do his best to stay under the radar and hope that the teachers would forget.

In the meantime? He’d start lowering his marks. If he could work his way back down to average, they’d have no grounds to call attention to his performance. He’d do it slowly, and he wouldn’t go too low… just enough that his first term looked like a fluke. It had to be easier to do worse than better, right?

-

On Harry’s one hundred fiftieth day at Stonewall, however, he became concerned the matter would not be so easy to drop.

It was the first of May, a Thursday, and this time Harry had a note he couldn’t 'forget' or 'lose.' This time everyone had received one: a note for parent-teacher conferences. It wasn’t in an envelope like the other ones had been, so he knew right away that his was scheduled for the following Thursday. One of the earlier slots, despite his name. Perhaps it was based on ‘Dursley’ instead of ‘Potter’.

He swallowed and came through the door, taking off his shoes as he usually did before stepping inside. But this time he carried them with him into the kitchen, where Petunia was leaned on the counter, watching Neighbors on the telly from across the room. She gave him a sharp look. She didn’t like anyone making noise over her soaps, in case she missed any of the dialogue.

Harry waited until the commercial before holding the note out to her. “What’s this?” she asked, peering down her nose at it.

“Parent-Teacher conferences,” Harry mumbled.

“We’re not your parents.”

Harry shrugged. “Maybe you can phone and cancel?”

Petunia sniffed, turning around to the calendar hanging on the fridge, flipping it over from April to May and penciling in the appointment. “I had better not hear about any freakishness, boy.”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that. To his relatives, his very existence was ‘freakishness’. No matter what his teachers told her, Harry was certain that nothing good would come of it.

-

On Harry’s one hundred fifty-third day at Stonewall, Petunia’s conference was right after school got out, so Ms Morris made Harry sit out in the hall while they spoke. She was smiling as she led the way to the administrative wing, directing Harry to sit in one of the chairs normally reserved for students in serious trouble, since it was in the hall with the principal’s and the three assistant principals’ offices. Harry didn’t think she would be smiling for long. Petunia was already inside, standing stiffly with a blond woman Harry did not recognize. Ms Morris entered, closing the door behind her, and the brass name-card on it rattled. Joyce H. White, Assistant Principal.

Harry swallowed, and looked down at his hands, gripping tightly at his knees, knocking them together because that attracted less attention than bouncing his leg, not that there was anyone else in the hall to see it. He didn’t think most conferences were held in the assistant principals’ offices.

He listened, but the walls were thick, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. There wasn’t any shouting, so that was good—there’d been shouting when the teachers tried to tell Petunia that Dudley was behind in maths, and that no matter how many times he stole Harry’s worksheets it was never going to convince anyone. Harry got thrown in the cupboard for telling tales after that—but there was no shouting this time. There wasn’t much of anything, just a looming door and Harry's shaking knees.

When Petunia came out of the office, her face flushed and her lips pinched, she spotted him and sneered, made a jerking motion with her head, and strode away with the haught of a strutting crow. Harry caught sight of Ms Morris through the gap in the door, hissing something to the assistant principal, but it swung shut before any of the words got through. Not sure what else to do, Harry chased after his aunt, keeping out of sight and reach a few good paces back.

She didn’t speak to him until they came to an intersection several minutes later. They'd just missed the crossing light. Harry, wondering if they should cross the other way while the light was green, looked up to see what his Aunt was doing, and jumped at the sudden eye contact.

“You—” she started, but her voice died as she stared down at him with that sort of disgusted bewilderment on her face she might show if someone came up to her to beg for money on the street— why does it expect anything from me? And yet—that tiny glimmer of human decency left in her withering heart—

“Yes?” asked Harry.

Her mouth shut with an audible click, and she tore her gaze away from him, looking up and gesturing with one hand to the Tesco across the street. “Go and find something for Vernon for dessert,” she ordered, digging in her purse for her wallet. “He’s had a big sales opportunity at work. A notable achievement.” She thumbed through the bills, paused, thumbed them again, and turned her eyes warily toward Harry, grinding her teeth as she brought out a £20 note. “Make sure it is something decent. And bring me a receipt!” she snapped as she thrust it towards him.

Harry wasn’t sure why she didn’t just go herself, but he managed to bite his tongue on that. He turned away, shoving the bill in his pocket, and ran across the street before the light changed, skidding to a halt when the door didn't register him, and jumped up and down until the sensor finally responded. The cashier eyed Harry as the bell on the door went off. It was the older sister of Dudley’s friend Gordon, a tenth- or eleventh-year at Stonewall; their mum was the owner or manager or something like that. Harry ducked his head and hurried back into the aisles.

He was quick to locate the shelves of desserts and pastries with their alarmingly distant sell-by dates. Harry didn’t have sweets very often himself, since it was better to buy something more filling and stable if he had the money, but he’d had to fetch this sort of thing for Dudley loads of times. Now, he eyed the boxes, unsure of how to judge what wasn’t garbage, not that Vernon had the taste to tell the difference—and that was when he spotted it. There, at the end of the aisle, was a little yellow tag sticking off the shelf.

Buy one, get one free.

He glanced around, almost half-expecting to see Petunia watching, but there was only a woman with a baby on her hip trying to fit a loaf of bread into an overloaded basket. Gingerly he pulled one off the shelf, so he could see inside the clear top. It was roughly the size of a shoebox cut in half, small enough to fit inside his bag without getting too squished, and inside was a chocolate cake layered with a weird, lumpy sort of frosting. German Chocolate, the label said. There was a sticker with the sell-by date on the top: 8 May. That was tomorrow… well, he could peel off the sticker so Petunia didn’t know he’d bought something on sale.

“Two cakes, Potter?” the girl at the cash register said, raising an eyebrow as she waved the first box in front of the scanner. “Isn’t your cousin—come on, bloody useless thing—isn’t your cousin off at some fancy school?”

“It’s for my uncle,” Harry said. He couldn’t remember her name. “And it’s buy one, get one, so… might as well.”

She ignored him, scowling at the computer. She grabbed the other box and tried that as well, angling it this way and that. When it finally beeped, she brightened up, but it faded fast. The little display now read ‘ITEM NOT ON FILE.’

“Oh, what the hell,” she muttered. “The tag said, what, ten fifty?”

“And buy one—”

“Get one, yeah, you said. You gonna pay, or what?”

Harry waited until he was across the street and down a block before ducking into a gap in the bushes and stuffing the second cake into his backpack. It didn't quite fit without squashing the corners of the box in, but it would taste the same. Then he pried off the tag off the other box. It tore the top layer of the cardboard with it, leaving a rough spot, but he doubted Petunia would notice.

When he returned to Privet Drive, he used his toes to pry off his shoes and dropped his bag by the stairs before carrying the cake into the kitchen. Petunia watched as he put the box down on the counter, and he dug in his pocket for the change and crinkled receipt. She made a point of studying every detail.

“‘Miscellaneous item’?”

“It was on special.”

She sniffed, and counted out the coins, then turned her beady glare back to him. “Well? What are you standing around for? Go wash up. And get started on dinner!”

-

Harry waited until he was absolutely certain the Dursleys were asleep before he dared open the closet to retrieve the second cake from under the pile of dirty laundry, so it was technically his one hundred fifty-fourth day at Stonewall before he sat cross-legged on his bed and opened the lid. He tentatively reached down to swipe his finger into the frosting, wondering at the shaggy texture, and lifted it to his lips for a tentative lick.

It was sweet—exceptionally so, and not the sort of sweet from the overripe fruit Petunia sometimes gave him rather than let go to waste. It was sweet in the way the little cakes they had in the lunchrooms on Fridays were sweet, an unnatural, even chemical sweetness, almost to the point where it stopped tasting like sugar and started tasting the way alcohol smelled. And it was rich too, the sort of chocolate flavor that’s good for the first bite, amazing for the second, and then somewhat sickening on the third.

Harry didn’t stop after the third. He didn’t stop at all, from first bite to last, so caught up in his terror that Petunia was going to come in and find out what he had done that he ate and ate and ate, and even when his stomach rolled he kept on eating to the last crumb.

By the time box was empty, Harry’s hands were shaking in violent jerks and there was a mad pounding in his temple that made his vision flash with spots of darkness. He folded up the box as flat as he could and tucked it under the floorboard, and stood on shaky legs, peering out the door and tiptoeing out into the hall—breaking into a sprint as he was nearly overcome with nausea. He had the presence of mind to run to the loo downstairs, where Aunt Petunia might not hear him as he retched into the toilet, horrible chunks of barely-digested brown matter filling the bowl like oral diarrhea. He heaved and heaved, and between heaves noticed that his hands were sticky with frosting and leaving marks on the ceramic, and feverishly stood to try and fetch a paper towel to wipe away the evidence of his crime, and in doing so nearly missed as the next burst of it came spewing up from his throat.

After what felt like hours Harry’s stomach was pushing up only bile, and he fell back against the wall, panting, heart racing like he’d been running several miles. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that, expecting Petunia to come racing down the stairs after him at any moment, resigned to his fate, but no one came. He grabbed the sink and pulled himself up. He was desperately thirsty. He turned the faucet just enough to let out a trickle of water, and cupped his hands under it, only they were still sticky with frosting or vomit and he ended up scrubbing them instead, then looking up and catching his face in the mirror, chalky-skinned and wild-eyed with dark smears around his mouth, and scrubbed that too, and then flushed the toilet twice and scrubbed that and the sink before he remembered he needed water.

By the time he mustered the strength to pull himself back up the stairs to his room, the edges of the sky were beginning to lighten, and some overzealous bird was singing outside. It’s calls echoed in Harry’s head as he fell across the blankets, and chased him into sleep, and he dreamed of a feast, massive tables laden with foods beyond imagination, children laughing as they ate all the candy and desserts they wanted, and was sickened by it all.

-

Chapter Text

II.

When the summer holiday began on the 13th of June, Harry had lost track of the days, having spent the last several in exams with a headache so splitting he’d fainted and woken up in the nurse’s office. She concluded Harry needed to eat more iron. Harry couldn’t understand how she expected him to consume a metal, so he had simply nodded until she let him leave.

When the holiday started, he had three days before Dudley came home, three days of tiptoeing around his Aunt and Uncle, hoping they’d forget to tell him to move back into the cupboard—

And they did. Whether by his freakish wishing or their negligence or hidden design, when Dudley came home there was no mention of Harry vacating his space. He was given chore after chore and performed them with diligence, but even when he slipped and misread ‘clean the landing’ as ‘clean the laundry’, he was sent up without supper, not shoved through the door to the too-small, darkened space.

Vernon’s big sales opportunity meant that he was home less than usual, even in the evening. It also meant Mr Mason, his vital customer, and his wife were coming for dinner. And dinner happened to be planned on July 31st. Harry’s birthday.

Not that Harry had ever done anything in celebration of his birthday beyond wish for some escape, but the dinner party was, to make the most of the term, the gift that kept on giving. In the two weeks since Vernon had set it up, Harry had heard nothing out of his mouth that didn’t have something to do with the affair.

“Paint the front fence, boy,” he’d ordered not once but three times already. If Harry hadn’t been so worried about losing the room, he would have protested, and if Dudley hadn’t been glued to the telly he might have tried to Tom Sawyer his way out of it. Instead he just put a fresh coat of white paint over the already pristine surface, and hoped it wouldn’t start raining again before it dried.

“I won’t have the boy in the house!” he heard Vernon shout, the night before, through the half-open sliding door, which led out to the garden, where Harry sat leaning up against the wall, trying not to get his clothes wet, obscured under the rhododendrons.

“Vernon,” Petunia said, much quieter, her voice quavering. “The neighbors…”

“I don’t care about the rutting neighbors. They know the boy’s a menace! I will not have him—ruining my big break!”

“We’ve talked about this, Vernon… Mrs Figg is visiting some relative, and there’s no one else quite… no one else to take him…”

“He’ll find a way to ruin it with that freakishness of his, just you wait—”

“He’ll be upstairs. They’ll never even know he’s there.”

“But we will, won’t we? And that’s just as bad…”

“Well, what would you have us do, then?” Harry heard Petunia’s footsteps on the linoleum, and pressed himself closer to the wall. “You know we have to keep him here; they’d know if—”

The door slid shut before Harry could hear who ‘they’ were or what ‘they’ would do. The authorities, he supposed, which generally meant very little. Ms Morris had gotten him a uniform, and that was more than anyone ever had, except may the nurse who’d gotten him glasses.

Harry edged slowly along the wall, careful to keep his head below the line of the windows, making to loop around the house and come in through the front door, so his uncle couldn’t yell at him for listening. Not that it mattered; Harry had been told a hundred times already his role in the dinner party. Harry didn’t want to be there any more than Uncle Vernon did, and unlike Dudley he wasn’t getting bribed with a new gameboy game. Or anything else, for that matter, even though it was his birthday. If he was lucky, Petunia would save the dishes for him so he could get the leftovers while he cleaned.

Coming out from behind the bushes, Harry paused to scowl at the sky, willing it to rain again. It had been thundering all week; the least it could do was disrupt Vernon’s micromanaged evening with an unexpected rainfall.

It didn’t. It remained grey and still and unaffected as ever, which Harry thought was just typical.

-

“I will lead them into the lounge, introduce you, Petunia, and pour them drinks. At eight-fifteen —”

“I’ll announce dinner,” said Aunt Petunia. “And, Dudley, you’ll say —”

“May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs Mason?” said Dudley, offering his fat arm to an invisible woman.

“My perfect little gentleman!” sniffed Aunt Petunia.

“And you?” said Uncle Vernon viciously to Harry.

“I’ll be upstairs, making no noise and pretending I’m not there,” said Harry.

Happy Birthday, Harry.

It was nothing out of the ordinary.

-

Harry’s second year at Stonewall began on the 31st of August, 1992, which was a Monday and a whole week before Dudley was due back at Smeltings. Harry didn’t mind, so much, because school meant out of Privet Drive, and there were only so many hours he could spend lurking in the shelves at the library before the librarians started asking questions.

He’d grown over the summer. Not much, but enough that he couldn’t pull the sleeves on his pullover down over his hands anymore, at that there was the beginning of a gap over the ankle of his shoes. Harry had never had clothes get too small for him before; usually the old things of Dudley’s were stained and filled with holes long before Harry could grow into them. But Aunt Petunia said she would let out the hems if he insisted on growing, and his shoes were tight but he could still get his feet into them, so there was no new uniform to start the year.

Ms Morris caught Harry before he could find a seat in his new homeroom and work on being unnoticeable, and asked him to follow her down to Mrs White’s office. He wasn’t sure why —she only taught the Year Seven students. Maybe it was the headache he’d had during exams—maybe he’d failed and would have to take Year Seven all over again—maybe they were kicking him out of school like Uncle Vernon always said they would, because, because—maybe it was his hair, but that wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t!

Mrs White was smiling when Harry sat down in one of the two seat in front of her desk. His legs were finally long enough that his toes touched the ground, and he kept them firmly planted there. Ms Morris took the other seat.

“Now, Harry,” said Mrs White. “Your aunt hasn’t replied to any of the mail we sent. So, since we haven’t heard back either way, we’re in a bit of a… quandary. As to which classes to put you in.”

Which classes? The normal ones, he would expect; that was why he had gone straight to 8R's form room, following a few of his classmates who seemed to know what they were doing. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked. He’d rather get straight to the point rather than worrying about it anymore, and there were rules in place to stop teachers from slapping kids who mouthed off, and he thought he would be faster than them, anyways, or at least Ms Morris, who was wearing heels. And Mrs White was on the other side of the desk, so...

“Oh, no, dear,” said Ms Morris. “Just the opposite. Perhaps your aunt might have mentioned it to you—about moving up a year?”

The both looked at him until Harry squirmed in his seat and shook his head. His aunt hadn’t mentioned it to him, and he wasn’t about to admit to reading her mail.

The two women sighed and exchanged a look. “Of course not,” said Mrs White. “Could you tell me, Harry... do you and your relatives talk about school?”

Harry dipped his head, letting his bangs fall in front of his eyes, unsure what they wanted to hear. “Uncle Vernon didn’t like the new book fee,” he offered.

“I imagine he wouldn’t, but I mean classes, Harry. Do they ever talk to you about your school work?”

Harry thought about it, but ever since Dudley had been sent off to Smeltings Harry hadn’t been yelled at for his marks. If they wanted to compare with Dudley’s, Harry figured they would just say that Smeltings was far more challenging, so Harry’s marks weren’t really better. He shook his head.

“Right,” Mrs White said. “So, they aren’t likely to ask which classes you’re in.”

“No.”

“And you’re not likely to bring it up.”

Harry shrugged. How would he know? If he were smart, he’d never start any conversations with his aunt and uncle at all, since those were usually the ones that went poorly. He wouldn’t shrug, either, since that was the sort of response most adults didn’t like, but Mrs White didn’t seem to mind. She and Ms Morris even exchanged smiles, for whatever reason.

“For now, at least, I think we’ll start you out in year nine classes. At least until we hear back from your relatives.”

Harry didn’t share their satisfaction. “Year nine?” he echoed. “But… I haven’t had year eight, I mean, not yet. I’ve only just turned twelve.”

“It’ll require a bit of doing, but we’d rather not keep you stuck plodding along behind what you’re able to do. You’re a talented boy, Harry. And you wouldn’t want to be bored in classes, would you?”

“B—? I’m—I’m not bored. Honest.”

“We’ll just give it a go,” Ms Morris soothed. “Tell you what, if you get to the end of the week and you absolutely hate it, you can come back down here and Mrs White will move you back to the year eight classes. Or if you’re not doing well, we’ll pull you out. But, well, just give it a go first. And if you have any questions—on the materials, I mean—of course your teachers will be happy to help you.”

They didn’t leave him an out, unless he wanted to go home and tell Aunt Petunia, and she’d either raise a fuss or not care at all, and Harry didn’t think either of those would really help his case. And he knew he wouldn’t come back on Friday, because they’d try to talk him out of it, or express disappointment, which would make him lose his nerve. And he didn’t really want to go and fail his classes right off the bat, because then all the teachers would think he was stupid, and he would be stuck with them next year, anyways.

But who was he kidding? It wasn’t really up to him. Chances were he’d fail out no matter how hard he tried, and somehow Petunia and Vernon and so Dudley would hear about it, and laugh and laugh and laugh. Maybe if he tried hard enough, the teachers would forget him so thoroughly, they’d forget to mark his work, and there’d be nothing for the Dursleys to hear about at all.

-

Harry did not fail out of his courses. In fact, he did rather well, once he’d figured out the exact ritual for making his classmates forget about him (they were trickier than the kids his own age, and he had to watch the clock to make sure to switch the way his feet were crossed exactly halfway through the hour) and found a year eight maths textbook in the library to get caught up with (the librarian had to order it in for him, and then he spent three hours after school every day just to get caught up, but he’d always liked maths) and figured out which books they’d read in the year he missed for English and what they’d talked about in History. It wasn’t the most exciting way to spend his afternoons, but he didn’t have anything better to do… at least, not until one of the younger librarians asked if he wouldn’t rather be reading the comics.

It was safe to say that realizing that the library could order in comics was a turning point in Harry’s life. Not only because it gave him something else to do other than homework, but because it gave him something to do that was actually fun. Before, he’d only had his homework to do in the evenings, or a book to read if he was daring enough to bring fiction home where his Uncle might find it, but that had never been fun so much as something to occupy his time with. With comics, however, he discovered a form of entertainment that, if he was careful, his relatives wouldn’t even know to take away from him.

He read everything he could get his hands on, especially the ones with superheroes. He hid them inside other books when he was at home, so Petunia wouldn’t see them and take them away, because even Dudley wasn’t allowed to read superhero comics. (Too freakish, said Petunia. She would have hated X-Men, which of course made it Harry’s favorite). He even tried, one weekend, to sit down and draw his own, but he’d never been good at drawing, and even when he copied straight from the books the faces looked childish and bodies unidentifiable, so he gave up on that.

Did it hurt his school work? Perhaps. He would only take one issue out at a time, though, so that if Vernon found out and tore it apart it would only be the one that he would have to figure out how to replace, and one comic was only a few hours out of each evening. He certainly wasn’t going to be moving ahead another year any time soon, but that suited Harry just fine.

(The teachers, in the staff room, commented that he seemed to have settled in and was happy enough, and marked the issue resolved. They hadn’t thought it would work out this well, and only Mrs White’s big reveal at parent conferences would really mark the end of the issue, but they were hopeful.)

-

For Christmas, Dudley got a video game that Harry just knew had superheroes and even magic in it. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon clearly hadn’t spent too much time looking into each item he’d put on his thirteen-page Christmas list, though no matter how loud Dudley screamed and shouted about the other boys getting the comics and sneaking them into the dorms at school, they didn’t budge. Harry didn’t tip him off about the library. If Dudley suddenly took interest in that sort of place, the Dursleys would know there was something strange at work, and besides, Dudley would probably try to steal the good ones to take to school.

Harry received a pair of grey socks. That was a pleasant surprise: his had holes in the heels and toes. These were brand new. He’d gotten a pair of Vernon’s old ones for his tenth birthday, along with a coat hanger, and those had been the nicest he’d ever had before, but these… he was living in the lap of luxury. Or his feet were, at least. It was as pleasant a Christmas as he’d ever had.

The trouble came later—much later. At one forty-three in the morning on Boxing Day, to be precise, when Harry awoke with a scream, convinced he was drowning and struggling to swim to the surface of the dark water, which was revealed, when Uncle Vernon switched on the light a moment later, to be the ceiling, far closer to his face than it had any right being.

Harry, coming to his senses, crashed back down, landing on top of Dudley, his excess of fat breaking Harry’s fall.

As Vernon hoisted Harry back into the air by the scruff of his nightshirt and shook him, Harry tried to figure out what had happened. It was rather difficult when he didn’t have his glasses on and his head was shaking back and forth so hard he could almost hear his brain bouncing around in his skull.

“He—did he—Harry was flying, dad!”

For once, Vernon’s monumental anger turned on his son. “HE DID NOT FLY!” he snarled, jabbing his finger. Harry could just make out the white blur of Petunia’s nighty in the vicinity of the doorway. He squinted, and saw her hand was up over her mouth. “PEOPLE CAN’T FLY!”

“But I saw it!” Dudley cried. “He was up in the air, and he wasn’t—”

“HE JUMPED,” Vernon bellowed. “THERE IS NO—SUCH—THING—AS A PERSON FLYING!”

“Come out of there, Dudders,” called Petunia, in a strained, almost pleading voice.

“But I saw him,” Dudley repeated, though he showed his first real bit of intelligence and edged around his father towards the door, where Petunia grabbed his shoulder and pulled him out a bit quicker. “I saw him, mum!”

“You’re very tired,” said Petunia, almost too quiet to hear, and then they disappeared out of sight.

That left Harry, still dangling in the air with his shirt cutting into his skin, inches from his Uncle’s face. He didn’t need his glasses to see the blood vessels dilating, blooming a vicious red across Vernon’s nose and cheeks, or to smell the nightcap tainting his breath.

“And you,” he growled, and Harry tried not to cough at the hot air. “What have I told you about this sort of—freakish—funny business?”

“I don’t see what’s funny about any of this,” Harry said.

He wasn’t quite awake enough to think through that.

A moment later, he landed on his bed, only to hiss in pain at the sudden coldness digging into his back—but he didn’t dare move, not with Vernon looming above him.

“Never—never—mention this again. And if you so much as think about repeating this—”

A fist rose threateningly in the air. Harry swallowed, pressed back into the cold, and nodded.

When Vernon stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him, Harry sprang up, trying to get away from whatever was wet and cold on the bed, and slipped on something equally wet and cold on the floor. He flailed, trying to catch himself, and at least managed to turn his face so that it was his cheek that collided with the wood rather than his nose. For a moment, he lay there, stunned, dark spots drifting through the room, but then the cold broke through, and he registered that there was an ice cube just in front of his left eye, and thought maybe he ought to sit up.

After a moment, he twisted around to grab his glasses off the desk and jammed them onto his face, wincing as they scraped across his cheek. He prodded it gently, and flinched again. There was no blood, at least, but it was going to be a nasty bruise. Maybe it would fade before school started up again… He’d have to ice it—

He looked quickly down.

The ice he’d woken up to was scattered on the floor around him. Ice and water, and the two pitchers that Dudley must have used to carry his trick in discarded beside the meltwater puddle forming on the floor. He stared at it for a moment, trying to process why on earth Dudley thought this would be some clever prank, and as he stared he realized the water was slipping between the cracks of the boards. His eyes widened, and he scrambled to his dresser, grabbing out his pile of dirty laundry and throwing it at the puddle to soak it up.

Petunia came in a moment later, a short stack of towels in her hand, and Harry spun around to face her, wide-eyed, holding a shirt to his chest. For a moment, she gaped at him, at his bruised face and half-soaked night clothes, and then she shut her mouth smartly and thrust the towels forward. “Get that bedding into the wash,” she snapped. “And out of those—things. You can sleep on the sofa for tonight, once you’re dry.”

Harry took the towels and spread them out over the floor to soak up what the laundry had not. He wanted to pull up the loose floorboard right away, but there was always the chance that Petunia would come back, or Dudley would get it in his head to try and ask about the—whatever it was that had just happened. Freakishness. So he hurried downstairs to grab a laundry basket, and put it down at the end of the bed so he could roll the covers all off at once, and dragged it down to the washing machine, thunk-thunk-thunk as it bounced off the stairs, not quite able to pick it up with the ice still melting into the comforter.

When he managed to get the covers into the machine, he came back up. The gap under his aunt’ and uncle’s door was dark, and when he pressed an ear to Dudley’s door he heard the pinging of Gameboy music. It was as safe as he could get, and he darted back into his room, shutting the door softly, and pried up the floorboard.

The granola bars, being individually wrapped, were fine; an apple that he probably needed to eat or throw out in the next day was just a little wet, and the star-patterned blue tea cup seemed to have been perfectly placed to colled a steady stream of water, though if he’d waited any longer to soak it up it would have overflowed.

Harry didn’t bother to check on the rest of the regular contents of the little space—they were unimportant. Instead he lifted the copy of X-Men he’d stashed out, his hand shaking uncontrollably. The comic was soaked through. Gingerly he tried to pry the pages apart, but they were sodden and fragile and determined to stick together.

How was it, Harry thought miserably, that Dudley managed to ruin things he didn’t even know about?

He sat there for a long time, trying to coax some of the water out with the dry corners of the towels. Eventually, the radiator shuddered on, and Harry put the comic on the window sill above it, setting some of his old homework on top to disguise it, not that it really mattered any more. Whether or not anyone came in and destroyed it, it didn’t matter; there was no way the library was going to let him take out any more comics, now that he’d ruined this one. They probably wouldn’t even allow him into the building any more. He drug his feet to the closet and found some dry clothes, and took another shirt with him to put between his wet hair and the sofa, and went down to the sitting room to huddle unsleeping in the dark.

He awoke a few hours later, without having realized he’d fallen asleep in the first place. He craned his neck to work out the kink that had formed there, and found Petunia coming down the steps.

“You’re up,” she said. “Move the laundry.”

Harry turned to watch her move into the kitchen, and listened as she filled the kettle with water. It was easier to think now, even if it hadn’t been much of a rest.

Of course Petunia would tell him to sleep on the couch when there was a perfectly serviceable bed in the guest bedroom.

It was better than getting shoved back in the cupboard, though. He had better move the comic before Dudley found a way to make things worse.

-

Harry held off on returning to the library until the 2nd of January, the Saturday before school started up again, and one of the days he knew the librarian who’d introduced him to the comics was working. It was a younger man, whose nametag read ‘Michael Jones’. Harry wasn’t particularly fond of him, and in fact usually avoided all the men who worked there in favor of the kindly older women when he could, but he felt, strangely, like he owed it to him.

Jones was working at the large box computer at the front desk. It was a relatively recent acquisition that sometimes made strange beeping noises and stopped working in the middle of whatever they were doing, which drove several of the normally quiet librarians to bursts of profanity.

“Hello,” he said when he saw Harry standing there. He had very white teeth, all visible when he smiled, and his eyes crinkled in genuine good humor. “Back to return—what’d you have out? X-Men, again?”

Harry nodded slowly, but couldn’t bring himself to say anything as he took off his backpack and unzipped it. When he managed to get the comic up on the counter, he found he couldn’t look up again, and he mumbled when he spoke. “I— m— my cousin— he— it was a prank and I—”

Jones picked up the comic after a minute of Harry’s stammering. He tried to pry the pages apart, as Harry had several times before, and there was the awful sound of the pages stuck together tearing, inordinately loud in the quiet of the library.

“Well,” Jones said after a minute. “Quite the number he did on this.”

Harry’s eyes darted up to it, wrinkled and torn, stains from where the ink had spread seeping onto the page. He looked back down just as quickly.

Jones flipped over the book and squinted at the back, trying to make out something through the blurred ink. “It’ll be five pound fifty, to replace it,” he said after a minute.

Harry shifted, and dug in his pocket. He’d brought everything he had, which wasn’t much, only the change he’d collected from what Vernon had left in his pockets when Harry was doing the laundry, plus a pound coin he’d found on the walk to school and had been holding on to just in case. He spread it out on the desk, sorting the coins by type, and totalling it in his head. It amounted to £2.35.

“Erm,” said Harry after a moment, and he glanced up at Jones. “Can I come back Monday?”

 “Suppose you’ll have to,” said Jones. “What’s your name again, kid? Porter? I’ll have to put the fee on your card.”

“Potter,” Harry said quietly. “Harry Potter.”

-

The benefit of living with the Dursleys when Dudley wasn’t there was that they’d gotten more lax about leaving him home alone. They couldn’t lock him in the cupboard anymore, or, at least, the option seemed to have fallen off the table, and there were no locks on his door, and Petunia was often out in the afternoons when Harry got back from school, so it had become somewhat normal for him to be left with free reign. So when Vernon and Petunia packed Dudley into the car to take him back to Smeltings the next day, Harry got a stern warning to stay in his room and we’ll know if you touch anything in the kitchen, boy, but that was it.

And for the most part, he’d earned that trust. Sure, he might check for open packages in the cupboards, to see if there was anything he could take without being noticed, and if he was brave enough he’d turn on the telly, but no matter how often he was warned of it he’d never burned down the house or broken anything.

He’d also never snuck into his relatives bedrooms before, and definitely never tried to steal from them. If Vernon found out… it was suicide to even try.

That in mind, he went into Dudley’s room first.

Petunia hadn’t cleaned it yet, so the room was a mess. It smelled vaguely like onions, which got stronger as Harry approached the pile of laundry. Disgusting. Harry knew his own didn’t smell exactly like flowers, but his room was at least breathable.

Still, he sorted through the stack, digging through the pockets of the trousers that had been left behind. There was what Harry suspected at one point been a candy bar plastered inside of one, and a toy car from a set he’d gotten at Christmas, but no coins.

Well, Harry didn’t recall him going off to the store, since it had been raining so much. But he knew there had to be money around here somewhere—Vernon’s father, who was in a retirement community in Dorset (which might have been Sri Lanka for all the excuses Vernon made not to see him) never bothered with actually buying Dudley anything when he could just send a few quid.

A thorough search of the desk produced nothing except half-empty bags of crisps, and his wardrobe smelled almost as bad as the stack of laundry but revealed no stashes in the sock drawer.

He’d almost given up when he spotted the Lego box sitting open in the corner, a partially constructed structure off to one side, looking like it had been hit by a freight train or, more likely, Dudley’s foot. Well, the box had originally been for Legos, if the decorative label Petunia had put on it was to be trusted; now it was as much miscellani as not, army men and toy cars and a plastic t-rex that might also have been the assailant on the structure. For a moment, Harry was overcome with the urge to fit the blocks back together, but then he heard a car pulling up outside and he panicked, darting out of the room, thinking it was the Dursleys back for something forgotten.

It wasn’t. The car had pulled up across the street, the neighbors in their church clothes piling out. Harry sat on his bed for a minute, feeling his heart flutter in his chest, but thought of the fee he owed and steeled his nerves.

He struck gold, sifting through the plastic with all its sharp edges and cringing at the noise. Or copper and nickel, rather: £0.78 in mostly smaller coins. But the real windfall was hidden in a little treasure chest. Inside, folded up several times over itself into a dense block of paper, was a £20 note.

Twenty pounds.

What Harry could do with £20—paying the library fee aside, he’d still have £14.50 left over, on top of what he already had. Dudley wouldn’t even notice; he’d probably forgotten all about it; Harry could get more granola bars than could probably even fit under the floorboard—

But after a few minutes of fantasy, he folded it back up. He couldn’t… he couldn’t take that. Dudley would, if it were him, but Harry just couldn’t. That was more money than he’d had in his life, and… he wasn’t here to steal, not really. Dudley owed him for the book, since he was the one who ruined it, but…

He left the room before he could change his mind, careful to make sure he hadn’t left any traces. The £0.78 jangled in his pocket, insufficient, but that was all he was going to find in Dudley’s room.

His Aunt and Uncle’s room was more daunting to face. For one, it was darker, with the curtains shut, and Harry wasn’t going to risk turning on the light. For another, there was a carpet spread on the floor in front of the door, which Harry tiptoed around, terrified of leaving footprints.

He tried the drawers of the bedside tables first. Aunt Petunia’s had a pair of reading glasses and a book with a man with his shirt open on the cover, a strangely twisted woman in a torn dress clinging to his arm, both posed in front of a train engine. Full Steam Ahead. Harry closed the drawer quickly, wishing he could erase the thought of his aunt reading that from his head.

Vernon’s also held a book—some motivational business thing, thank God—and a number of pill bottles. Harry picked one up, frowning. FOR BLOOD PRESSURE. TAKE TWO BEFORE BED. AVOID ALCOHOL. It was mostly full, though it was dated back in September.

He put it back, exactly as he found it, and shifted a few more things carefully about, but there weren’t any coins in the drawer. He closed it, frowning. They couldn’t have taken all their coins with them—that was ridiculous. Harry’s paltry collection was already weighty in his pocket, and the Dursleys certainly had more than £0.78 in the house. He tried Uncle Vernon’s drawers next, not daring to touch Petunia’s. Nothing but clothes, there, but on top—it was above Harry’s line of sight, but he could see some things were stored up there.

He checked in their private loo first, not that he really expected to find anything there. Then he came back, opened the bottom drawer, and carefully, carefully tested his weight on it.

It held.

On top of the dresser were several things. A few more of the motivational sort of books, though they didn’t look like they had been read, and several coiled belts that Harry eyed with distaste, but also an old biscuit tin, of all things. He pried off the lid with one hand, careful not to shift it out of place.

Jackpot.

There must have been hundreds of coins in there, and Harry was tempted to grab a handful and be done with it. That would have made noticeable indent, though; better to take only what he needed, avoid the risk. He carefully picked out two pounds and a seven-sided fifty pence coin, and gave the tin a little shake so the rest settled in place. Then he put the lid back on, climbed down, closed the drawer, crept back out around the carpet, and shut the door, as quietly as he would have if his relatives were actually in the house.

Then he went back to his bed and counted out the coins again, just to be sure. He had £5.63 total, now. More than enough.

-

“What happened to your face?”

Harry looked up, startled, as he pulled the pencils from his bag. It was Monday morning, the first day of the new term, and he hadn’t had a chance to do his ritual yet. Bad luck he’d been spotted.

“Slipped,” he said. “What’s it to you?”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” the girl said, meaning, clearly, you’re being rude. “I’m just wondering. It looks like it hurt.”

He shrugged, and went back to his things. Maybe she’d go away, and once he did his ritual she’d forget about the conversation.

“Slipped on what?”

Harry looked at her through the edge of his glasses, shifting so her face was obscured by the rims. She had two chestnut brown plaits, lumpy and uneven, tied off with plain rubber bands, one sitting on each shoulder. He couldn’t remember her name.

“Ice.”

“It didn’t freeze over the holiday at all.”

“From… a cup of water,” Harry said. He wished she would just go away; he wasn’t planning on telling anyone about the prank. Except Jones, but that was only because of the book. But definitely not some strange girl. If he could, he’d make her go away, but it was hard to affect people without the rituals, and he couldn’t do one of those unless she left him alone first. That meant he had to stick to conventional means. “What’s it to you?” he repeated.

There was a long silence, and he tilted his head slightly, so her face wasn’t obscured. She looked puzzled, but not particularly offended. “I can see why no one ever talks to you,” she said after a moment, but then she went away, and Harry very nearly let out a sigh of relief.

He didn’t, though. That sort of thing attracted attention, and he’d had quite enough of that to last the year, Thank You Very Much.

Instead, he sat down, turned the pencil just the right number of times, and pressed the quarter into his palm. I’m not here, he thought forcefully, over and over again. For good measure, he added the words from that summer. I’m making no noise, and I don’t exist.

-

The coins he’d stolen were noticeably heavy in his pocket. He’d got them wrapped up in a bit of an old shirt he’d torn off, tied up with a bit of twine so they wouldn’t jingle, but he didn’t dare leave them in his bag, half-convinced that the moment he wasn’t touching them they wouldn’t be real any more. It was more money than he’d had in his life, if he could really call it his own, and he was terribly aware of it all day.

That wasn’t a good thing. If you were self-conscious, then other people would pick up on it and notice you too, and if anyone noticed Harry had a good chunk of change in his pocket he’d be cornered and have it stolen and probably get his head shoved in a toilet, too, since they hadn’t gotten him last time. He tried to be diligent with his rituals, and disappeared into a supply closet for the lunch hour, but the fluttering in his stomach stubbornly persisted.

Perhaps that was why the girl wasn’t fooled into thinking he didn’t exist. Maybe it was the extra phrase that he’d added that had messed it up. She reappeared by his desk before Maths, fidgeting with the rubber band at the end of one of her braids.

“I don’t think you slipped,” she said.

Harry thought about this accusation, and shrugged. “Okay.”

“I’ve been watching you. You’ve got reflexes—fast reflexes, I mean. You dropped your pencil last class, and caught it before it even hit the floor.”

Oh, right. He had. That was probably why the ritual was off—or maybe he was just so distracted by the money. He didn’t know. “So?”

“So, you would have caught yourself before you hit anything.”

Harry let his finger run over the rough edge of the quarter. If she didn’t want to believe him, it wasn’t exactly anything new. And he didn’t see why she cared to begin with. It was just a bruise. No one else had noticed.

“So what did happen?”

“I already told you.”

“Yes, but that was a lie.”

“If you say so.”

He picked up his pencil to doodle in the margins of his notebook, only, with her standing over him, he couldn’t bring himself to do more than draw a wobbly circle and trace it round and round, wasting lead.

“Did you get into a fight?” she asked, still not leaving. Never mind that they were in the middle of a classroom filling up with other students. She seemed to want him to say yes, for whatever reason. “Was it Perkins? Or Smith—David Smith, I mean, the one with the mullet.”

Harry shrugged, trying and failing to remember anyone with either of those names. She could think what she wanted.

“Did they take anything from you?” She paused, but he didn’t answer. “You could go to a teacher, you know. You should. They’re awful. Ms Morris would listen to you, or Mr Khan.”

“You’re the one accusing them,” Harry said.

If she had anything to say to that, she didn’t get it out before the bell rang.

Harry did his ritual to the letter, and didn’t think about maths once the whole lesson. He was too busy trying to convince himself he didn’t exist, since convincing himself was the first step to convincing the rest of them, and planning his escape when the final bell rang, to go to the library and get the coins out of his pocket.

-

It didn’t make any sense. He’d tried everything—ducking into the crowd in the hall, making it seem like he was going to the loo but changing direction and blending with a group coming out—but when he got out to the front steps she was there, waiting for him.

Why? Why was she interested, why hadn’t she forgot—what did she want?

He ducked his head and tried to walk past, but she reached out for him. That lead to a collision with a group from year ten as Harry tried to dance out of reach, and he stammered out an apology to them before fleeing.

She caught up a moment later, falling into step.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said. “I just—you’re over on Privet Drive, aren’t you?” she asked. Harry stiffened, but didn’t reply, watching her feet scuff against the concrete as she walked. “I’m on Magnolia Crescent now,” she went on. “I moved in over the holiday. We’re just around the corner from each other.”

Harry frowned. He walked down Magnolia Crescent almost every day, to the library, or to hide from Dudley in the park, and sometimes to go on errands to the store. He hadn’t seen any signs of anyone moving recently, or, for that matter, any houses up for sale in the last few years. “No we’re not.”

“Vanessa Lindsay told me. She’s my neighbor, now, and her brother Gordon is friends with your cousin, um… Dudley?”

Harry paused on the corner of an intersection. Maybe she did live there, then, but that didn’t mean anything good to him. “Magnolia Crescent is that way,” he said, pointing down the street. “If you live there, that’s the way home.”

“I know.” She smiled. She had a gap between her two front teeth. “Thanks, though. Where are you going, then?”

“Where—nowhere?”

“Nowhere?” Her smile faltered. “Can I join you?”

He was probably gaping at her. He didn’t care. He just wanted to know— “Why?”

For a moment, they just stood there, silent, on the street corner. Then a car went past, and they both jumped.

“I,” she started, and hesitated. Then, for whatever reason, she started to roll up her sleeve. When her forearm was exposed, she held it up, and Harry recognized the sickly shade of greenish-yellow in a ring around her tan wrist, and another, a bit higher up, a slightly more faded patch that blended into her skin. “I slipped, too,” she said. “And I bruise easily.”

Suddenly Harry felt overwhelmed with the need to look away, but she rolled the sleeve back down fairly quickly. Another car went by.

“I’m Samantha Ellis,” she said. “But I’d like to be called Sam.”

“I’m Harry Potter,” he said after a minute.

“I know.” She paused. “Where are you going, Harry?”

-

She came with him to the library, against Harry’s better judgement. She was at least six inches taller than him, and walked quickly, and didn’t say much other than to point out one of their classmates behind the counter across the street at a sandwich shop. He must have had to run to make it to work on time, though Harry was surprised anyone his age had a job at all. Well, a year older than him, and taller than Sam, but still. Wasn’t child labor illegal? Or was that only for factories…? Then again, Gordon’s sister—Victoria? Veronica? Sam had just said it—worked at Tesco, so maybe it wasn’t that odd.

When they got to the library, Harry hesitated outside the door. He needed to pay the fee, but that meant letting Sam in on information that only him and Jones were privy to. That there was a fee at all, which she might see as meaning Harry was the sort of person to damage or lose books. He wasn’t, but he wasn’t going to tell her about the incident—he’d told her to begin with, essentially, and she hadn’t believed him, because she wanted—

Sam opened the door for him, and Harry hurried in, feeling foolish. She didn’t even know him and she’d shown him that bruise on her wrist, and he didn’t want to let her see something as small as a library fee? He was being ridiculous.

Jones was fixing pockets for cards inside the covers of a stack of new books when Harry approached. “Potter,” he said brightly, glancing curiously over his shoulder at Sam. “Right? That was your name?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, and he pulled out the bundle of coins from his pocket, working out the knot in the twine, and counted them carefully out. His ears were burning, and he chewed on his lip, feeling both Jones’ and Sam’s eyes on him. “Five pound fifty,” he announced when he was done, pretending it was just Uncle Vernon. He was never shy around Vernon. That was why he was in trouble so often.

“Very good,” said Jones smartly, and he made a show of pulling out a piece of paper from the filing cabinet by his desk and crossing something out. “Now do us both a favor and don’t try reading any more comics in the bath.”

In the bath…? Had he forgotten, or not believed… no, Jones was smiling at Sam. He was trying to do Harry a favor.

“I… I can still take out books, then?” he said in disbelief. “Even though I…?”

Jones’ eyes widened for a second. “Well, this is a library,” he said. “It would be kind of silly for us to not let one of our best patrons take out books just because of an accident, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh,” said Harry, and he found himself smiling back. A tightness in his chest loosened—he’d thought once he’d paid, he’d be kicked out, never to be let back through the doors again. He didn’t know what to say. “Thanks.”

-

Sam had to be home for dinner by six thirty, and mentioned this to Harry around six. It was the nervousness in her voice that made him look up. They were only a ten-minute walk away, but she was looking out the window to the street, already dark, as though it were somehow a different place after nightfall.

Maybe it was, to her. Since Dudley had gone to Smeltings and Harry had started walking to school, not worth the drive, he’d fallen happily into the freedom to wander around Little Whinging, and so knew the streets as well as anyone, day or night. Sam, on the other hand, said she had just moved to Magnolia Crescent. He knew she’d been in the area before, since she wasn’t new to the school, but maybe she hadn’t explored much, and didn’t know where they really were, and didn’t know how long it would take to get home. Or maybe she was scared of the dark.

Either way, Harry closed his comic and stood up. “I’m going to take this out,” he said. “Do you want anything?”

“I haven’t got a card,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll have to come back with Dad, now that I live with him.”

Harry shrugged, putting the other comics he’d been planning on reading back on the shelf. Jones was gone from the front desk, leaving behind one of the other librarians, an older man with a narrow face. Harry had never spoken to him before, and for a split second nearly fell back on his usual reaction of waiting it out until one of the librarians he knew to be friendly came back, but he had someone else with him. How was he supposed to explain making her late to dinner just because he didn’t like the look of this man?

The librarian had a pair of glasses that sat so low on his nose he had to tilt his head back to look at Harry. Harry didn’t say anything as he pulled out his library card and set it on the counter with the book.

“A comic?” the man observed, even as he picked up the book and busied himself with the card. “Do all young boys have to waste their time on this garbage? Would it pain you to take out Dickens? Or Golding, perhaps? Boys like that.”

“We’ve read Lord of the Flies, in school,” Sam said from behind him. Her voice was a bit higher, but she sounded very confident; Harry was impressed. Harry was always stuck in two modes: inarticulate mumbling, or poorly received sarcasm. Maybe it was because she was a year older. “And I thought it was dull. And I like comics, too. If we like them, why shouldn’t we read them?”

“Why not, indeed,” the librarian muttered, but he stamped the book and passed it back to Harry, who shoved it into his backpack and hurried out.

Sam followed him, and they paused to look at each other for a moment before Harry led the way off down the street. “I don’t like people like that,” she said lowly as they walked. “People who think they can tell us what to do just because we’re kids. We can think for ourselves, don’t they know?”

“I liked Lord of the Flies," Harry said.

“Me too. But I didn’t like him.” He could hear her smile. “And I don’t know if I like comics or not. Maybe I’ll come back and try them again.”

“You should,” Harry said automatically. A moment later, he nearly tripped, realizing it probably sounded like he was inviting her to join him in the future. Not that he was particularly against it; she seemed, well… she wasn’t annoying, aside from the bit where she’d followed him when he hadn’t wanted to be followed. He just hadn’t meant an open invitation, and now to rescind it would be rude. And he didn’t want to be rude, at least, not to her.

A car went past, splashing water up on to both of them from a puddle at the edge of the street. They both groaned in disgust, then giggled, then caught it, and walked on in silence the rest of the way. When they got to Magnolia Crescent, Sam perked up and took the lead, finding a house at the end of the curved row.

“This is me,” she said, coming to a stop in front of—number four.

“You’re in number four?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. It’s my Dad’s place.”

“I’m in number four too,” he said. And, after a moment, “It’s my aunt’ and uncle’s.”

“That’s funny,” she said. And then she reached to her neck, and tugged out from under her pullover a key on a piece of string. “Dad’s not home yet. What time do you think it is?”

“Six-fifteen? Maybe?”

“Oh. I thought it was later.”

“You said six-thirty.”

“Yeah, I—yes.” She started up the sidewalk, and then paused, and turned around. “See you around, then?”

“Yeah, alright,” said Harry, and awkwardly parroted the phrase. “See you around.”

He turned back to the street. The way it was curved, he wasn’t sure whether it would be faster to go up to the end of the street, where it connected with Privet Drive, or back down to where the alley connected to Wisteria Walk, and before he could make up his mind, Sam spoke again.

“Harry?”

He looked back over his shoulder. Sam was standing on the front step, fidgeting in the dark.

“Do you think you might, I mean, would you mind… could we walk together, tomorrow morning?”

Harry opened his mouth, and closed it again when he realized he didn’t have a clue what to say. Walk together? To school, he presumed, but why would she want to… was this one of those things that friends did?

“Only, I’m not supposed to go anywhere alone, see… and Vanessa’s got her own friends, and she’s in lower sixth, and probably doesn’t want to walk with some kid. And Gordon, well, he doesn’t want to walk with a girl, and he’s not very nice, see? And…” She stood, twirling the string with the key around her finger. “Unless you don’t want to walk with a girl, either, but…”

“I’m always running late,” Harry said. He stepped a bit closer, eyeing the houses on either side of them, reminded that Dudley’s friend Gordon was in one of them and might be watching and Dudley might find out and through him Vernon. “I can’t leave until around eight fifteen, and then I have to run, because it’s twenty minutes to the school.”

“I can run with you,” she insisted. “I’m fast enough, you’ll see. I won’t slow you down.”

That wasn’t what Harry had been worried about. “If you really want to…”

“I do,” she said. “I’ll wait for you tomorrow. Don’t forget, please.”

And then she turned and stuck the key in the door and gave it a twist, and disappeared inside before Harry could say anything else.

-

Chapter Text

III.

Sam liked comics. She liked mystery novels more, but most every time she went with Harry to the library after that first afternoon (and there were many, long hours spent sitting in silence broken by giggles and tentative exchanges), she would sit and read the comics with him and then check out the mysteries to take home. And Harry, now knowing he wasn’t going to be denied access to the comics, started taking out other books again, things that would be safe to read even if Vernon barged in.

Sam also liked football. She said her dad supported West Ham, but she said that was only because they were having a good year, and the year before they’d been terrible. She preferred Chelsea. She’d tell him all about the matches that were on and who’d won what against who as they sat together in chapel, whispering it without moving her lips, her head turned ever so slightly towards Harry so only he could hear and no one else could see.

They didn’t sit next to each other in their courses, though, because Harry had always sat in the same seat (second row from the last, far right of the room) and if he changed that now someone might notice, and because neither of them had figured out how to bring it up to the other. And Sam still usually ate lunch with the same cluster of about half the girls in the class, the ones who called her ‘Samantha’ in the halls, the ones who she had, after all, been in school with since she was small, but never been particularly close to, or so she said. Harry watched them, sometimes, when he dared to find a place in the dinner hall, and wondered why not, and if they knew she’d come back from holiday with half-faded bruises under her sleeves, and what the girls were if they weren’t really all friends, and what on earth Sam was doing wandering around Little Whinging with him when the bell rang and everyone else went their own ways.

He didn’t meet Sam’s dad for a month, until one day in February when they were a bit late coming back from the library and his car was already in the drive. Her eyes had widened, and she straightened up considerably, and insisted that Harry come in, just for a minute, please. And she’d called her dad to the door, too. He still had on his tie, but his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he had an apron on, and Harry could see there was an intricate tattoo running down to his forearm. And he had an easy smile, and very neat hair, though there were dark circles under his eyes.

“You’re Harry, then?” he said. He wiped his hand on the apron and held it out to Harry. It was a bit cold, and a bit wet. But he didn’t squeeze the way some adults did, the strange sort who sometimes ran into Harry in stores and delightedly insisted on shaking his hand.

Adults were weird.

“You can call me Will,” Sam’s dad said, “Which shouldn’t be hard, since that is my name. Sam’s told me you live over on Privet Drive? Just around the corner, that.”

Harry nodded.

“Well, you’re always welcome over here. I’m not around much in the week, with work in London, but I’d rather Sam not have to be alone…”

“We’ve been going to the library, remember,” said Sam, smiling tentatively at Harry.

“Every day? Well, even Lydia can’t argue with that…”

Sam rolled her eyes.

A timer went off in the other room, and Will excused himself after it. “Lydia’s my gran,” Sam explained as he disappeared. “She’s a bitch, and even Dad won’t tell me off for saying so.”

“I will too!” Will called.

“You’ve called her worse!” Sam called back. They could hear Will laugh, and he didn’t deny it. Her smile was brighter after that.

Harry found the whole exchange rather peculiar. Maybe it was because Will was so young; he didn’t seem like he could be Sam’s dad. An older brother, perhaps. Harry didn’t have much experience with people and their dads outside of the Dursleys and books, so he couldn’t say that how she talked with him was different from how other kids did. But it might have been that she just moved in with him. She hadn’t talked about where she was living before, but if she hadn’t grown up with him, maybe it was easier for both of them to be more casual.

“Do you want to stay for dinner, Harry?” Will asked, sticking his head back through the door. “It’s not much, just pasta, but if you’d like, you could phone your family. Or pop around the corner and back in; it’s not quite done yet.”

“Oh, um, no, thank you,” said Harry, stepping back towards the door quickly. “I’d better, er, get home.”

“You sure?” asked Sam.

He looked at her—her backpack tossed casually to the side, shoes toed off and a sock sticking out from one, her dad leaning in through the door, the smell of tomato sauce wafting in past him, and, he realized, the sound of a news program on the telly carried along with it. “Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “The Dursleys will be wondering.”

“Well, alright,” she said, frowning, and she opened the door for him. “See you tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah,” he said, and hurried out.

The Dursleys would not be wondering. He doubted the Dursleys ever wondered after him, unless they suspected him of some crime, stealing some food they’d eaten or carefully laying out dirt in the form of one of their footprints on the rug. There was a high chance he could stay out all night and neither his aunt nor uncle would care at all.

But he couldn’t risk them finding out where he’d been. Sam and Will were so incredibly unlike the Dursleys, he couldn’t bear the thought of them ever coming into contact with one another. It was the Dursleys’ shared ambition to destroy anything good in Harry’s world, after all, and they only way to prevent it was for them to never know.

-

February and March disappeared into April, which was half-consumed by the Easter holiday. Harry spent most of that hidden in the library, far out of Dudley’s reach and eternally thankful for the heavy rain that kept his cousin glued to the television and not running around with any of his friends, and thankful that the Lindsay family (and so, by extension, Gordon Lindsay) had gone off to visit their grandparents in Bristol and so not around to put into Dudley or anyone else’s ear the notion that Harry had a friend, a friend who was a girl, a friend who was a girl who lived on Magnolia Crescent and went to the library with him.

He thought they were friends, at least, him and Sam. It was hard to tell.

He was also thankful when the holiday ended and school started again, because school meant not having to worry about Dudley.

“Harry Potter?”

“Here sir,” Harry called absently, focused on his book.

The teacher cleared his throat. It was Mr Khan, who taught Maths, and was also Harry’s form tutor for the year. Harry didn’t recall ever having a single direct word with the man outside of the daily exchange, so the pointed pause made Harry tense. It wouldn’t be appropriate to run, he reminded himself, and looked up.

He found Mr Khan standing over his desk. “Mrs White would like to see you during chapel,” he said, holding out a note for Harry. “I trust you know where her office is?”

Harry slowly reached out to take the note from the teacher as several of his classmates jeered. They didn’t know who he was, of course, but everyone jeered when someone was called to administration.

Mr Khan went back to taking the register, and Harry looked down at the note, not really seeing it. Sam leaned over from her desk, directly back and to the right of his. Her chosen seating had slowly been moving closer and closer to his.

“What’s she want you for?” she whispered.

Harry shrugged, and put the slip between the pages of his book, intent on going back to reading.

“You aren’t in trouble, are you?”

“I haven’t actually gone to see her yet,” Harry pointed out.

“Well, alright…”

She sat back, and Harry stared at his page. He’d bet it was something to do with his schedule; he had managed to avoid talking to either the assistant principal or Ms Morris since they had moved him up a year. He didn’t think he’d done anything worth commenting on recently; he’d gotten a ‘C’ on his last geography test, which was lower than his ‘B’ average, but not particularly worrisome. The ‘B’ was very purposeful—he didn’t aim for any ‘A’s, in case they thought that was a sign he needed to move up more, though he really only had so much hope of actually earning one to begin with.

Whatever it was Mrs White wanted to see him for, marks or otherwise… it wouldn’t end well.

-

“Harry,” said Mrs White. “Please, sit down. Sorry to pull you out of chapel like this…”

Harry took one of the chairs in front of her desk. Ms Morris wasn’t there this time, but then again, she wasn’t his form tutor any more, just his English teacher. She probably had a new batch of kids from year seven to keep track of.

“So. I’ve been pleased to hear you’ve settled right into your new classes. And Mr Khan tells me you’ve been spending more time with your classmates? Good, good…”

Harry didn’t say anything. What was he supposed to say? I find it supremely uncomfortable that you’ve been using teachers to spy on me, please stop? He supposed it was her job, to keep track of this sort of thing, but he had trouble enough with Sam asking him about his day when she’d been there the whole time, let alone this woman he hardly knew.

“To get right into it, Harry,” said Mrs White after a long pause. “Parent conferences are coming up next week. Which means we will be discussing the changes we’ve made to your schedule with your aunt.”

Harry stared at her. That seemed like an unnecessary risk, especially since they had gone to the trouble of moving him up without asking her in the first place, but he supposed the conference would be more uncomfortable if they tried to avoid mentioning it at all. “Good luck?” he said.

She tapped her fingers on the folder on the desk in front of her. It had his name on the label— Harry James Potter, Class 9R, Khan. “Your marks have remained steady, so there is nothing to worry about there,” she said. “And really, I’m not sure what complaints she could have, aside from, well.”

Harry used one foot to scratch the back of his other ankle.

“Would you like to join us? For the conference, I mean?”

Now that, Harry had a simple answer to. Intentionally putting himself in Petunia’s presence? “No, thank you.”

Mrs White looked flummoxed.

“Er,” she said. “Have you been enjoying your courses, Harry?”

“...I suppose,” he said. He mostly spent his time doing his best to stay under the radar, which was increasingly difficult since Sam had started talking to him. He hadn’t figured out how to make purposeful exceptions to who his rituals affected, and once one person noticed you, the rest were like sheep. It was more like a science than an art, and he didn’t know the rules.

“Would you prefer to return to the group you were previously with?” she asked. “That is, 8R, correct? You’d repeat year nine, but if you’d rather, we could make it happen.”

After they’d gone through all the trouble of moving him up? After they’d ignored his protests at the beginning of the year? What was she playing at? Did she want people to think he’d had to be held back a year?

“No?”

She didn’t seem particularly gladdened by his answer, but nor did she look angered by it, either, which he supposed was optimal. “In the end, it will be up to your relatives,” she said. “I’ll make a good case, if I need to, but if Mrs Dursley says so, you’ll have to repeat, regardless of what either of us want.”

“I know,” said Harry.

“That… doesn’t bother you?”

Harry thought that was a rather silly question. Of course it bothered him, but adults made decisions for kids and expected them to be followed all the time. They were in a school, for God’s sake. Some students groaned every time homework was assigned, but Harry didn’t think it was worth it. And regardless of how it had turned out, and whether she had conveniently forgotten it or not, she’d forced him into moving up to begin with, and that was basically the same thing.

Besides, making Harry repeat a year of school was the least of what Petunia could do to him.

“Not really,” he said, tugging his sleeves down over his hands.

It didn’t garner a response. After a minute, Mrs White stood up. “Well,” she said. “We can still catch the end of chapel. Mr Khan will give you the time for the conference. If you change your mind about attending… just give it some thought, would you, Harry?”

-

“Harry?”

Harry blinked, then reached up to rub his eyes, knocking off his glasses. Sam caught them, then stared at the plastic frames for a moment, as though surprised to find them in her hands, though Harry did not register the blur of her face as any particular emotion.

“Sorry,” he said, shoving them back onto his face. “What were you saying?”

“Are you alright?”

“...yes?”

She looked at him doubtfully. Harry shifted in his seat.

“I just didn’t get much sleep last night.” Or the night before that, or any of the nights since Mrs White had called him to her office. It was adding up—over a week with dread and the specter of Petunia’s potential anger lurking in the shadows of his room at night, and with today being the day of the conference, the previous night had been the worth. When he did fall asleep, it was filled with fitful dreams. “What were you…?”

“I was wondering what you got for number six.”

Harry glanced down at the open notebook in front of him. Something involving linear equations, apparently, and he’d gotten most of it done before he’d nodded off. “Zero,” he said, stifling a yawn. “It’s zero for most of these.”

“Oh,” she said. She started erasing that part of her page, then gave up and crossed it out instead. “How many of them?”

He paused, and counted. “Half.”

“Ten? I only have eight.”

Harry glanced up. Mr Khan was on the other side of the room, helping Dennis Miller, who Harry thought liked pretending to be slow just to waste class time. It was a cruel joke, when there really were kids who didn’t understand. “Let me see,” he said, and reached for her notebook.

When he handed it back again, pointing out the other two she’d gotten wrong, Sam barely glanced at it before looking back up at him. “You sure you’re alright?”

“Not like you’ve never fallen asleep in maths before, Sam.”

“But you haven’t. It’s… it’s not like you to even get distracted.”

Harry shrugged.

-

They were flopped on the couch when Will got home that evening. Or, rather, Harry was perched at one end, his feet tucked under him and a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream open on his knees, a notebook balanced on the on the armrest and a ballpoint pen hanging out of his mouth, and Sam was stretched out at the other end, her knees bent over the armrest, a copy of Wonder Woman held open at arm’s length over her head. They’d left the radio on, playing one of Will’s R.E.M. albums— Out of Time —exactly the sort of music Petunia would have hated, which meant Harry would have liked it even if it hadn’t been as good as it was. It was loud enough that they didn’t hear the door open. They did, however, hear the sound of voices in the hall: one familiar, one lower and indistinct.

“Dad,” Sam called over the music, propping herself on one arm. “Harry’s here again.”

The voices cut off, then Will appeared in the door. He looked more energetic than he had the last time Harry had seen him, and his hair—thin and curly, unlike Sam’s, which was straight and thick and always trying to spring free from the braids—was messed up. “Hello again, Harry,” he said, crossing the room to turn up the radio, just a touch. “Are you going to stay for dinner, this time?”

“Um, yes,” said Harry. His voice sound strained, even to his ears, but he didn’t want to shout. “If that’s alright. Sir.”

Will burst into laughter. “Sir? Sir! You hear that Niall, I’m a sir!”

Niall was the man Will had been talking to. He appeared in the doorway with a bag of takeout hanging off his arm. “You?” he said with false incredulity. “Never.”

Harry studied him carefully, wondering who he was. He had dark skin and dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail, and, like Will, was dressed in a suit and tie. He grinned down at Sam, who waved her book back at him, but when he saw Harry, the easy expression slid off his face. Harry shifted as the man’s eyes widened, pulling his knees a bit closer to his chest, but Will didn’t notice.

“Harry, this is Niall. Niall; Harry. Harry has the distinct honor of being in Sam’s presence at Stonewall every day. And Niall has the distinct honor of working with my company!”

“Really?” Niall said. There was a touch of Scottish in his accent. “You make it sound like you own the place, Will, but even I have better standing than you.”

“Don’t listen to him, Harry.” Will tugged the bag on Niall’s arm. “Hope Chinese is alright with you; I didn’t feel much like cooking. But we’ve got about ten pounds of chow mein to work through, here. Sam, would you help me set the table?”

She jumped up and followed her father out of the room. Harry, not wanting to be left in the room with this man who didn’t seem to like him much, quickly set his book aside and stood up to follow her, but Niall didn’t move out of the doorway.

“You said your name was Harry Potter?” he asked, sticking out a hand. Harry stared at it for a moment before he realized he was supposed to take it.

“Er, yeah,” said Harry.

“Niall Jordan,” the man said. His hand completely enveloped Harry’s as he took it, and he shook with a bit too much vigor to be comfortable, but when Harry looked up the grin had reached his dark eyes again. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Harry said, confused. This man sure had a lot of emotions for meeting some kid.

The four of them sat comfortably around the table in the table in the kitchen on folding chairs, where Sam had set out four mismatched plates. Harry swallowed when he realized that Will had clearly been planning for three with this meal—there were six of what he called ‘spring rolls’, and that wasn’t divisible by four—but there was enough food set out on the table that Dudley could have joined them and had enough to eat. ‘Chow mein’ turned out to be a oily sort of noodle dish with chicken, and there was also a box of steamed vegetables including baby corn and water chestnuts, and another something Sam called ‘sweet and sour’, which was chunks of meat in an alarming gelatinous sauce that was the same color as the pepper flakes that Harry quickly discovered were far too spicy for him. Will, Sam, and Niall were all surprised that Harry had never had Chinese before.

“What’s your favorite food, then?” Will asked.

Harry had to think about that carefully. “I like jam,” he decided at last.

Will blinked. “What sort of jam?”

“...fruit jam?”

Will and Niall exchanged a look.

“The Dursleys aren’t adventurous eaters, are they?” Sam said quickly.

“Not really, no. Mostly, I—Aunt Petunia cooks at home.”

“My parents were like that, too,” Niall said, consoling. “Didn’t start getting more international fare until I left school.”

“Well, how about Indian, have you had that? A good curry?” Will pressed. “Everyone’s had curry.”

“Sorry,” said Harry.

“What do you eat, then? Other than jam?”

Well, he rarely ate jam, but he imagined that would just get more questions. Mostly his diet consisted of bread and granola bars and the leftovers from dinner. “My uncle like bacon.”

“Not you, though?”

Harry shrugged. He’d had it a few times, but food was food, except if it was too spicy.

“No wonder you and Sam are always at the library,” Will said with a sigh. “If they’re boring with food, I guess they’re probably boring with everything else.”

“Will,” Niall chided. “Don’t be rude.”

Will pouted, but Harry quickly shook his head, choosing his words quickly. “Boring’s probably an understatement, with the Dursleys. Their idea of ‘fun’ is having me mow the grass.” Or weed the garden, do the laundry, paint the fence, et cetera. No need to say that much, though; speak the truth, but not entirely. It’s more believable than lying. A quick way to get them off your back.

“Oh, I get it,” said Will, brightening up. “We’re Tosche Station to the Dursleys’ moisture farm.”

Niall and Sam snorted, but Harry stared at them. “What?”

“Oh, you know,” Will said. “From the very beginning of a New Hope , when Luke’s still back on Tatooine, living with his Aunt and Uncle. Though maybe it’s better if they don’t meet the same end…”

“Um,” said Harry.

Will paused, his face freezing. The others were looking at Harry, too, and he swallowed, wondering what he’d said.

“You know,” Will repeated slowly. “From Star Wars?”

“Oh,” said Harry. He recognized the name—there were comics based of the films at the library, but he hadn’t read any of them, because, “I haven’t seen it.”

The chopsticks slipped from Will’s hand to clatter onto his plate. “ You haven’t seen Star Wars ?”

“Sorry?” Harry wasn’t really sure what he needed to apologize for, and he was beginning to feel alarmed by Will’s vigor. He hadn’t seemed this… boisterous, when Harry met him the first time. What would he say when he realized Harry hadn’t watched any movies except the ones they sometimes watched in school—or was it just Star Wars he cared about?

Will turned and grabbed Niall’s sleeve. “Am I really hearing this, Niall? He hasn’t seen—”

“Peace, Will,” said Niall. “Plenty of people haven’t seen Star Wars. I hadn’t seen Star Wars.”

“And we resolved that,” he said. “You can’t go through life without having seen Star Wars.”

“But he’s—you’re, what, twelve, Harry? So he would have been a baby when the last one came out. What do you expect, Will?”

“I’ve seen Star Wars, and I’m thirteen,” Sam pointed out.

“But that’s because your dad’s a nerd,” said Niall.

“Hey!”

“In any case, there is a solution. You own them on VHS, Will. Just let him watch them, and decide for himself whether he wants to descend to your level of obsession.”

At that, Will stood up, pushing his chair back with the force of it, grabbing his plate off the table. “Good plan,” he said, marching out of the kitchen. “Come on, kid; we’ll fix you up. Episode four, here we come. You can watch all three.”

Niall sighed, and reached to add more chow mein to his plate. “Here we go again,” he said. “More for you, Harry?”

“No, thank you,” Harry said automatically. The R.E.M. they’d left playing in the other room cut off.

“I’ll have some,” said Sam. “Are we really watching them now? Don’t you have work tomorrow?”

“I probably shouldn’t have reminded him you own them,” Niall allowed. “Do you have to be home soon, Harry? We don’t have to watch tonight. Will has no problem picking them up any hour of any day, it seems.”

“No, I don’t,” said Harry. He stood to follow them out. “Um, did he say… Episode four, though? I thought there were only three?”

Sam laughed and leaned in close. “Episode four is the first one. I don’t know why. Don’t ask Dad, though, he’ll go on for hours and I’d rather just watch the movie.”

-

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Harry finally left the Ellis’s place. Sam had fallen asleep on the couch halfway through The Empire Strikes Back , and Will and Niall had gone upstairs after the first movie and not come back down. Harry slipped on his shoes without turning on the light in the front hall, and let himself out onto Magnolia Crescent, taking the alley over to Wisteria Walk to avoid the streetlights. Many of the neighbors in the area believed Petunia’s garden party tales that he was a delinquent, after all. No need to fuel their suspicions.

If anyone was awake to see him darting down the street, they didn’t call him out on it. He made it to number four without incident and was pleased to find the lights off inside. Less pleasing, however, was the locked door.

He stood on the step for a minute, wondering what to do. He could go back to Sam’s place, but Petunia would surely give him grief for being out all night. And he didn’t want to make it look like he was running away. If he didn’t show up at all, it would only make him look more guilty.

But the door was locked. He stepped back and looked up to his window—closed. Besides, climbing up there would make a good deal of noise, and worse than staying out all night would be waking up Vernon.

Instead, he went around the side of the house. There was a gap between number four and number five with a path down to the back alley, and if he stood on the bins he could grab the top of the fence and pull himself over. He tumbled to the ground, landing in a heap next to the greenhouse, and froze, looking up across the garden. There was a light on in the kitchen, the one over the stove, but no shadows in the windows. Probably even if anyone was awake, he hadn’t made enough noise to alert them.

After a minute, he straightened up, brushing the dirt off his knees and dislodging a sharp bit of debris from his palm. He’d have to rinse his trousers in the sink, but he’d caught himself well enough to avoid any major damage.

Moving as quietly as he could, Harry hurried to the sliding door. He found himself holding his breath as he grabbed the handle, and forced himself to breath normally. No need for suspense. He gave it a little tug.

Unlocked. Thank God. Harry opened it just wide enough to slip inside, and closed it with just as much care to avoid making noise—

“Where on earth have you been?”

Harry whirled around, his heart jumping to his throat. Aunt Petunia sat at the table, lit only by the stove light, a mug of tea in her hands.

“Well?”

“Out,” said Harry, turning to close the door the rest of the way. His heart was pounding in his chest, but it was just Petunia. The worst she could do was—well,  she could throw her tea at him, he supposed; she’d thrown frying pans before. But the mug would probably shatter and then Vernon would wake up, and she wouldn’t want to wake Vernon any more than he did.

Vernon probably hadn’t even noticed Harry hadn’t come back.

“Sit down,” she said sharply, when Harry tried to make his way to the hall. Harry looked back to her, perplexed. At the table? There were only four chairs there, and one was for Dudley and the other guests, and none of them for Harry. But she seemed serious, so he set down his backpack and went over to her, and, after careful consideration, selected the chair for guests. He definitely wasn’t sitting in Vernon’s.

Petunia stared at him over her tea mug. It was still full, but not steaming—he wondered how long she had been sitting there. “Why didn’t you tell us you’d been moved up a year?”

Harry swallowed. He’d been doing so well at forgetting the conference. “Does it matter?”

“It matters that you didn’t think to mention it,” she said sharply. “It matters that you… conspired with your teachers in this… deception.”

“I didn’t conspire,” he said incredulously, and had to pause to check his volume. “I didn’t. I showed up the first day of class and they ordered me off to the other room, and didn’t care what I had to say about it. I didn’t want to argue with a teacher, so…”

Petunia raised an eyebrow, and Harry did his best not to scowl. Of course she didn’t believe him; he argued with her and Vernon all the time. But he didn’t normally argue with adults, it was just that if he didn’t stick up for himself here, no one would. So, sure; regardless of whatever points he made he was only going to get in trouble, but… he was getting better at holding his tongue, he thought. Just not now.

“Besides,” he said, trying to be reasonable. “The sooner I graduate, the sooner I get a job and enough money that you never have to see me again.”

Petunia’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and her lip curled back, and she started: “You’re just a—”

But she cut herself off before she could finish her insult. For a moment she looked down at her hands, and Harry followed her gaze. They were shaking. She set her jaw, and with apparent effort forced them to be still.

Then her eyes darted back up and met Harry’s, and he looked away, a moment too late.

“Go to bed,” she snapped. “God only knows what sort of trouble you’ve been causing, out this late.”

This time, Harry didn’t say anything. He grabbed his backpack and hurried up the stairs, eager to get away.

He sat awake on his bed, listening to the house creak and occasional car go by outside, but never did hear Petunia follow.

-

Chapter Text

IV.

The remainder of the school year passed without incident. Well, there was the time one of the girls Sam ate lunch with spotted them walking together and thought it would be funny to start making  jokes about it— It must be hard, dating a boy so much shorter than you; you know, there’s a reason it’s normally the other way around— and soon found herself unable to produce sound beyond an awful croak like a toad… but they didn’t talk about that. Sam had been perplexed, but she’d also stopped eating lunch with the girls. Harry couldn’t deny the little surge of satisfaction he got when he spotted them looking around for her the next day, but if they found her sitting across from him it would be even more attention, so he concentrated on pretending it was nothing out of the ordinary. Act like nothing is noticeable, and no one will notice, after all.

But he and Sam only sat together for a week. Then summer was upon them, and he had bigger things to worry about. Dudley, namely, and the chance that he’d hear about Sam and it would get back to the elder Dursleys.

Despite that, in his eagerness to get as much time away from Privet Drive as possible, he ended up spending more and more time with Sam, either reading at the library, wandering around Little Whinging, or curled up on the couch watching movies for hours on end. Will seemed more than happy to stop by the rental shop on his way home from work, especially when he realized Harry had seen next to none of his favorite movies. Harry’s favorites were, unsurprisingly, things like Batman and Superman, comics in another form, but he wasn’t about to complain about any of them.

They’d watched Return of the Jedi, too, the last of the Star Wars trilogy, but after one incident where Harry was daydreaming about flying an x-wing and he thought he made his bed float, he tried to push them out of his mind. It was just his imagination getting away from him... Of course it was. But it had felt so real he’d almost believed it, and that made it worse. He was tempting fate even thinking about anything unnatural in the Dursley’s house; better not to risk pretending his freakishness was something wonderful, like the Force. It wasn’t, simple as that, and while Will might have been obsessed with the galaxy long-ago, far-far-away, Harry feigned disinterest until the topic dropped.

It was easier than he’d expected, as outside the handoff of movies and occasional shared meal, they didn’t see much of Will. When they did, he was increasingly exhausted. More than one Saturday morning Harry let himself in to hear Will yelling at someone over the phone, Sam in a tight ball on the living room with headphones plugged into Will’s old Walkman, blasting The Clash or The Cure and humming along. Will must have been able to hear the door, because he would end the conversation fairly quickly, then come to make his apologies before disappearing back to London.

“They’ve got a block they’re trying to work on near Tottenham Court Road, but weird complications keep popping up,” she told him. Will and Niall worked for a real estate development firm. “Dad says it doesn’t make any sense—the architects will come in and measurements that were accurate the day before have been changed. Once they ended up with a shipment of fifty thousand bricks, except none of what they’re building uses bricks... All I know is it keeps him late at work.”

Regardless, Will always greeted Harry with a smile, and always made time to find them new movies. And when he came home late and exhausted and fell asleep practically as soon as he settled into the armchair in the living room, Harry showed Sam how to cook things more filling than canned soup or instant noodles. They always made enough for Will, too, and if he woke up and wandered into the kitchen to find them working through a recipe from the cookbook Sam had taken out from the library, he’d ruffle Harry’s hair and roll up his sleeves. He always called Harry ‘chef’ in those instances, and asked how he could help—it was odd, in the face of the Dursleys.

But everything about Will was odd, for an adult. He celebrated his thirtieth birthday in early June—Niall came over again, and Harry and Sam baked him a cake—so he was definitely the age that he ought to start judging Harry for breathing the wrong way like the other neighborhood parents did. Instead, he seemed to approve of Harry’s goal of staying away from Privet Drive as often as possible. Whenever Harry dodged a question about whether his aunt and uncle knew where he was, Will would smile. He didn’t comment, usually, but Harry felt like if he did it would be to say, attaboy. And if he came home and found them camped out on the couch with a bag of microwave popcorn and a cheesy horror movie on, he’d join them. And he very rarely asked them to turn down the music, even if they were blasting his copy of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols when he came home half asleep.

But he was an adult. An overworked overtime employee, who barely saw his daughter unless she woke up early or stayed up late. And the rest of the time, when Harry was stuck doing chores or had been ordered to his room, Sam was home alone.

And for the first time, Harry found himself wondering what their lives were like when he wasn’t there, that made Sam brighten so much when he came in.

—

Harry and Sam were watching Hitchcock’s The Birds one afternoon when there was a knock on the door. The two children started, glancing at each other, neither one wanting to admit that they’d actually been engrossed in the film and the sudden noise had their hearts pounding.

“Are you expecting someone?” Harry whispered. Sam shook her head. “Maybe we can just ignore it and they’ll go away?”

The knocker didn’t go away: they knocked again. The curtains were drawn, so they couldn’t see who was standing on the step. No doubt they could hear the movie, though; Harry could see the shadow moving back and forth —

And then, in a voice muffled by the door, they heard: Sam, I can hear the telly. Would you please let me in?

Niall. The pair jumped to their feet and hurried to let him in.

They were greeted by a tired smile. “Sam. Harry. Sorry to drop in on you like this.”

“Are you with dad?”

“No, I… no.” Niall sighed, glancing down at his watch. “I’ve only got a few minutes myself, Sam. I’m just… I left some things upstairs that… I’d better take home.”

“Oh,” said Sam, her shoulders falling, taking a step back. Harry glanced between them in confusion, but she didn’t say anything else, just turned and went back into the front room. She grabbed one of the pillows off the couch and wrapped her arms around it as she sat down, folding her knees in front of her chest, staring intently at the screen as birds attacked a birthday party.

Harry sat at the other end of the couch, but he couldn’t get back into the movie. He could hear Niall moving around upstairs, and wondered, vaguely, what it was he could have left up there. When Niall returned a few scenes of the movie later, he had two bags full of things, but Harry couldn’t see into them to see what they were. Harry supposed it was none of his business, except that Sam had gone quiet in a way she didn’t unless she was upset.

“Well,” said Niall, after he’d stood in the doorway watching the movie with them for a minute. “That should be everything.”

“CDs,” Sam said.

“Those were gifts. I’m—I’m not going to take back a gift, Sam. I know you probably don’t think much of me right now, but really, I’m not that bad.”

Sam tore her eyes from the screen at last, slowly turning to look up at him. “Are you really… you know he’s just…”

Niall sighed. He dropped the bag in the hall and came around to sit on the coffee table in front of Sam. “Sometimes things just don’t work out, kiddo.”

“I know that,” she said, fists tightening on the pillow. “I know that better than…”

“Yes, I suppose you do, don’t you. Look, Sam, your dad and I… we’re very different people. We come from extremely different backgrounds, and have much different expectations, and…” He sighed again. “It’s not easy, you know? But sometimes it is better to… find someone you’ve got more in common with, rather than sticking around when things aren’t working out.”

“But it’s not fair,” she said, burying her face into the pillow so she didn’t have to look at him. “Everything was fine until the project.”

“No, Sammy, it wasn’t,” Niall said softly.

“But it could have been.”

“Maybe.” He sighed again, and his eyes settled on Harry, who was watching the whole exchange with confusion. He was missing something—a good number of somethings, really—but Sam was upset. “There are differences that can’t be overcome. Some things that can’t be spoken. You’ll understand, someday.”

“You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better,” Sam snapped. “I bet Dad doesn’t agree.”

“Maybe not.” Niall sighed, and, after a moment’s hesitation, ruffled Sam’s hair as he stood up. “Look after him for me, would you, kiddo?”

Sam didn’t respond. Niall looked to Harry again, and his voice was a bit softer when he spoke: “And you, Harry. You look after yourself, alright? Maybe we’ll all meet again someday, and it’ll be on better terms.”

And then he left, picking up the bags in the hall as he went. The door clicked shut behind him, and over the sounds of the forgotten movie—birds pouring down the chimney of the house and attacking the family trying to eat dinner—Harry could hear his car turn on and back onto the street.  At the other end of the couch, Sam still has her face pressed into the pillow.

“Sam?”

“He’s an idiot.”

“Niall?”

“Dad.” She lifted her head slightly so she could peer over at him with one eye. “He’s always spending so much time worrying about himself… Niall’s the one steady boyfriend he’s had in years, you know?”

Boyfriend. The word rolled over Harry, making him blink in surprise. He hadn’t made the connection, but now that she said it, it was obvious.

“And now he’s gone and screwed that up too, spending so much time at that stupid job he doesn’t even like…”

“I thought they worked together?” Harry asked, grasping for solid ground. Cursing his own… naivete. Recalibrating.

“Sort of. Different parts of the same company. They’re on the same project, but Niall never lets it get to him, does he? Not the way dad does. Dad’s gotten himself all worked up over it and can barely give Niall the time of day.”

“Maybe we just don’t see it,” Harry said. “I mean, they’re hardly ever here.”

She squinted at him, not answering, and lifted her head to rest her chin on the pillow, wiping the snot dribbling out of her nose on the sleeve of her jumper before realizing what she’d done, scowling down at it, and peeling off the garment, tossing it across the room. Not that she really needed a jumper in the middle of summer, but she, like Harry, was accustomed to wearing long sleeves. The bruises she’d showed him that first day were long gone, of course, but some habits live on even after logic deems them unnecessary.

“Gran will be happy, the old bitch,” she mumbled, sinking her fingers like claws back into the pillow. “You can’t imagine how glad I was to hear she couldn’t have kids in her building. Otherwise, she’d have never let me come live here. She thinks Dad’s sick, but she’s just as bad as mum is, I swear.”

-

When Will came home, he didn’t say anything, But for two weeks when he arrived he’d switch out whatever they were listening to for Depeche Mode. Harry wasn’t entirely sure it was related, but it gave the evenings a strangely haunted mood.

Sam, for her part, eventually got sick of it and filled the Depeche Mode cases with Queen, and, just like that, the house was ringing with joy. Will came home and barely looked at what cassette he was loading up, and when he jumped at the sudden shouts of BICYCLE! BICYCLE! BICYCLE! even he couldn’t help but laugh. He tugged one of Sam’s braids as he went by, but he smiled, and he didn’t change the music.

-

Queen followed them through the rest of the summer, and while Harry sometimes had trouble raising his voice when he wasn’t angry soon enough Will and Sam had him belting along to Bohemian Rhapsody with them. His Aunt caught him humming once while he was vacuuming the sitting room, and had set him mulching the garden instead, complaining that he was ‘making a racket’ and giving her a migraine, but Harry didn’t mind. The back of his neck and tips of his ears were sunburnt, a rare experience in Surrey, and it meant he was stuck on Privet Drive longer than he’d have liked, but Petunia and Dudley weren’t about to go outside in the heat, so Harry could hum as much as he liked.

After, he ran off to Magnolia Crescent before Petunia could saddle him with any other chores that didn’t need to be done. Sam took one look at him and pointed him towards the shower. His clothes, a pair of Dudley’s old shorts that reached halfway past his knees and one of the hole-filled polo shirts he'd worn for primary school, were dusted with mulch and reeked something terrible, so she found him some of hers that weren’t too strange and left them outside the door. The jeans needed to be belted and the shirt was oddly cut, but even in girls’ sizes they fit better than any of Dudley’s old things, and Sam leant him the claret West Ham hoodie Will had gotten her in an unsuccessful conversion attempt, which covered up the shirt, anyways.

A quick snack of crackers and they made their way to the library, only to find an unwelcome sight—Dudley’s friend Piers Polkiss’s mother was just getting out of her car to go inside. Harry managed to dodge behind a tree before she looked their way, earning a strange look from Sam, but she didn’t question it until Mrs Polkiss had gone inside.

“You know her?”

“She has tea with my aunt,” Harry explained. “And I don’t want Piers to hear—er, that’s her son; he’s friends with Dudley. He’d make the rest of my summer hell if he found out.”

“What,” Sam demanded, putting her hands on her hips. “That you’re friends with a girl?”

“That I’m friends with anyone,” Harry clarified. “He used to beat up anyone he saw being nice to me.”

Her irritation vanished as she stared at Harry. It took him a moment to realize what he’d said. He didn’t talk about the Dursleys, when he didn’t have to, least of all as directly as that.

For a moment Harry thought she was going to raise a fuss, but then she seemed to recover herself, licking her lips and glancing around. “Well, I guess… we could watch Back to the Future again, if you’d like? And come back later, I mean. When she’s gone. Or… we could wait for her to leave.”

“Later,” Harry decided. If at all. He didn’t care for the feeling of Mrs Polkiss being there. It was an invasion, a contamination, the corrupting influence of the Dursleys seeping beyond Privet Drive. It was because of her he’d slipped up, after all. Given Sam an unwanted glimpse. That was warning enough for Harry.

They walked back slowly, the way they came. The same route they usually came, on the side lined with rowan and ash trees, though Harry was eyeing the street, watching for Mrs Polkiss’s car, in case he needed to duck his head.

“Did Will finish his project?” he asked Sam eventually, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between them.

“He says the worst of it is done. He didn’t get home until eleven last night, though.”

“Well, he said he was going to take some time off once it’s over, right?” Harry asked. “Maybe he’ll have time to take you to a game, or something?”

“Maybe.” He could see Sam chewing on her lip. “Do you want to go with us, if we do? I’m sure dad wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, um, thanks, but no. I—it’d be too loud.”

“But that’s half the fun. And you like football. I know you do. If you weren’t so caught up in trying to hide from everyone, I bet you’d get on the school team.”

“I’m too short,” he said. Not out of embarrassment—they'd played together at the park and in sports a few times—but out of the strangeness of someone noticing how far he went to hide. It wasn’t an entirely bad feeling, but he didn’t know how to place it. Normally, being noticed was a bad thing...

“But you’re fast. Not as fast as me, of course, but you’re faster than any of the boys, and you think before you kick the ball. And besides, there’s plenty of players who are…”

Her voice trailed away, and Harry realized she’d fallen out of step. “Sam?” he asked, looking back.

Sam was frozen in place, staring into the street. He followed her gaze—a Vauxhall with chipped red paint was at the light, and there was a woman in the driver’s seat, staring back at them, or, Sam, really. She started to roll down the window, and Sam took a step back—but then the car behind her blared its horn: the light had changed. The woman scowled, and jabbed her finger towards them, but slammed on the gas, the car lurching forward with audible protest.

Harry looked back to his friend quickly. “Sam?” he repeated.

“That’s—that’s my—”

Harry took in the wideness of her eyes, the way the blood had drained from her face and left her pale, how she was looking down the street towards where the car was waiting at the next light for a right turn. He grabbed her arm, looked both ways, and pulled her out into the street, dodging across towards the Tesco. When he looked back, he saw the car swerving into a U-turn, the other cars honking—she must have seen them. He hurried inside, looking around for somewhere to hide.

Vanessa Lindsay was behind the counter, reading a magazine, as they hurried in. “Alright, Sam?” she asked as she caught sight of the pair, setting it down. “Potter, what did you—”

Sam broke free of his grip and staggered forward, grabbing the edge of the counter as though she wouldn’t be able to stay upright without it. She finally spoke, but it was like she was choking on the words, trying to get them out. “My—my mum, she’s…”

She trailed away, spotting the red car pulling into the carpark visible through the windows over Vanessa’s shoulder. Harry grabbed her and pulled her down out of sight as the older girl looked, and when she turned back around her face had hardened.

“Come over here, Sam,” she said. “Don’t get up. We’ll hide you. I’ve got a panic button if we need it, but it’d be better… come on.”

Sam crawled forward, hurrying towards the gap between the counter and the wall at the far end. Harry followed her, looking around for something to grab. There was a row of magazines and newspapers on a slanted shelf in front of the checkout, and he grabbed one at random, though his eyes were on the woman slamming the door of her car shut and stomping towards the store.

She was skinny, and tall in her high heels, wearing a long, light blue sweater that stopped mid-thigh over a pair of ripped jeans and an oversized bomber jacket on top. When she came into the store, her hair, thick and the same chestnut brown as Sam’s, fanned out around her as she jerked her head this way and that. Harry saw her look towards him, and quickly looked down at the paper he’d grabbed. Don’t see her, he thought desperately, remembering the look of terror in Sam’s face. She’s not here, you don’t know where she is…

“You—boy! Where did Samantha go?”

He made a show of looking up and blinking, as though confused at being addressed. “Samantha?” asked Harry slowly. He glanced around. The store was nearly empty, except for him and Vanessa and Sam's mother coming back up the aisle. “Who’s that?”

“My daughter!” the woman snapped. “I saw you drag her in here, boy! Where is she?”

“Look, ma’am, he came in here alone, I saw it,” Vanessa said. “If you’re going to make a fuss, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Harass—” The woman cut herself off, and her aggression shifted into a tight smile. “Never mind that. Where’s the aspirin?”

“Third aisle over, near the back,” Vanessa directed.

The woman shot Harry a haughty look, and then stalked off, peering obviously down each aisle she passed. Harry kept his head turned towards the magazine and followed the sound of her footsteps through the floor, watching as she wove around. The magazines were kept on a display half the height of the other aisles, so he had as good a view as he could. When he glanced towards the counter again, Sam was peering up at him with wide eyes. He barely had time to motion for her to move behind the counter before the woman came around the far end of the aisle.

“Are you actually reading that garbage?” she demanded as she came close to Harry again.

He glanced down. He was holding a copy of The Mirror. The headline seemed to scream up at him—DEVON MAN TELLS ALL: ‘THERE ARE ALIENS EATING MY CARROTS! ’—accompanied by a badly doctored image of what looked like a lawn gnome crossed with E.T.

“What’s it to you?” he asked, holding it closer to his chest. She had hazel eyes, but her pupils were unnaturally dilated and they were rimmed with red, like she’d been crying, though she didn’t look particularly sad.

She snorted, and stalked past him, trailing the stench of cigarette smoke. She’d made a complete cycle around the store, and apparently collected some items on her way. She slammed them down on the counter: a container of aspirin and a bottle of some sort of alcohol.

Harry swallowed. He could see Sam’s shadow alongside Vanessa’s, as she pressed herself into and under the counter, but it was only luck that kept her out of sight—luck, and the fact that the woman was still looking around the store, not at Vanessa, as though expecting Sam to pop out from around some corner.

She’s not here, she’s not here, she’s not here...

“I’ll need to see your ID, ma’am,” said Vanessa.

“What?”

“It’s store policy to ask for ID for any alcohol.”

“Do I look like a child?”

“Store policy, ma’am,” she repeated. “ID, or I can’t sell it to you.”

The woman sniffed loudly, but dug in her coat for a battered wallet, from which she extracted her driver’s license and a credit card. She threw both down on the counter and tossed her hair with practiced disgust, catching sight of Harry staring at her.

“What are you looking at?” she snapped at him.

He shrugged, rolling his eyes, and looked back down at the paper, though he didn’t read a word of it. She’s not here, he thought firmly, and he closed his eyes and believed it. You can’t see her, she’s not here, you can’t—

“Is he messed up, or something?” he heard the woman ask Vanessa. “You know, sick in the head?”

“Your total is £22.89,” Vanessa replied. A moment later he heard her slide the card, and the bag rustle, and then—“Would you like your receipt with you or in the bag?”

If the woman replied, she didn’t do it audibly, and a moment later he heard the bag rustle, and then—footsteps away. Harry opened his eyes again, just in time to see the woman look back over her shoulder at them. Sam had slid around to the gap between the counter and the wall, out of sight— she’s not here— so the woman sniffed again, and shook her hair out, and stormed out the door.

One of the other employees on duty, a man in his twenties, maybe, wearing a knit cap pulled low on his head, came forward as the doors slid shut behind her. He glanced at Harry, but seemed unconcerned by him. “Um, Nessa? You know that lady? The fuck’s her problem?”

“Shh,” said Vanessa, watching the woman cross the carpark.

He snorted, coming closer. “She can’t hear me through glass and across—” He nearly stepped on Sam, but glanced down at the last moment, eyes widening. “Okay, hello. Who’re the kids?”

“Shut up a minute, won’t you?”

They all waiting what felt like an hour, watching out the window, until the taillights of the beat-up car turned on, and at last she pulled out onto the street. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but they all let out a long breath.

Vanessa grabbed for the phone on the counter and punched in a number. “Hey,” said the other guy. “What’re you—”

She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Yes, hello, I’d like to report—there’s someone who looks to be driving while drinking, or something like that. It’s a beat-up red Astra, and there’s a tail-light out, and she was swerving all over the place, going down Magnolia Street—yes.” She paused, glancing outside. Harry could hear the voice coming through the line, though he couldn’t make out any of the words. “South. It started with B31, I think? She had a bottle of Archers and—what’s that? No, sorry, I can’t—”

She pressed hard on the button to hang up the phone, then set the receiver down with a shrug, looking down towards where Sam was still hidden behind the counter. “Well, maybe they’ll chase her down, Sam. I dunno.”

“She was high as a kite,” the guy said. “Eyes all wooahhh and everything. You know her?”

Vanessa offered Sam a hand and pulled her up. “Sam’s mum. They’ve got a non-molestation order on her,” she said. “You see her car around, punch in the window or something.”

“D—don’t do that,” said Sam. She glanced up at Vanessa, only to flinch and look down at her feet again. “I… can I call my dad?”

“Sure,” said Vanessa, and she pushed the phone towards her.

“Mum’s not gonna like that,” the guy warned.

“Yeah, well, she’s my mum, not yours, and she wouldn’t like hearing you’ve got that bloody hat on again, would she, so I’d keep it to myself if I were you.”

He held up his hands, surrender, and went off back towards the aisle he’d been in before, sparing Harry a bemused glance as he went by.

Sam dialed the home phone, but it was still too early for Will to be home. She tried his company, too, but there was a long wait before the call went through to someone in his office, who explained that Will was out with his team at an on-site visit, would she like to leave a message? Sam declined, and hung up the phone, still looking shaken.

“Wait ten minutes, and I’ll be off shift, and I’ll walk you home,” said Vanessa. “Just… if you want to choose a sweet, or something, I’ll let you use my discount.”

-

They didn’t see Sam’s mum on the way home, though Vanessa peered around each corner they turned the whole way along and Sam jumped at every sound. Sam didn’t want to go to the Lindsays', so she and Harry went inside the house and locked the door again. They didn’t turn on any of the lights, and pulled down the blinds in the front room, but neither of them could get comfortable there. After a few minutes, Sam led Harry upstairs.

The house had a similar design to the Dursleys, only the rooms that would have been the pairs of his and Dudley's didn’t exist, so she was in what was the guest room at number four.  Some of her things were still in boxes, but she had a few Chelsea F.C. posters on the walls, and a stack of books on the desk. He took the desk chair and she sat on the bed, and they both tried to read, but every time a car went by outside Sam would jump and look at Harry, and he’d peer through the blinds down at the street and shake his head when it inevitably went by.

It was a few hours before that pattern broke. The car didn’t go by, it pulled into the driveway, and shut down. Sam looked at Harry in alarm, but he peered out and found a familiar sight—“It’s Will. I mean, your dad.”

She was up before he finished, and running down the stairs before he could follow her out the door.

“Hey, kiddo. Harry here? I got take-out,” Harry heard Will call, and he arrived at the door just in time to see Sam crash into her father, throwing her arms around his waist in a tight hug. Will was startled, barely managing to keep his balance and the bags in his hands from getting crushed. “Sammy?” he asked, but she didn’t seem like she was going to reply.

Harry picked his way more carefully down the step, mindful of his bare feet, glancing up and down the street for the red car as he went.

“We were walking back from the library,” he told Will quietly. “Her—her mum spotted us. Vanessa let us hide in Tesco until she was gone, but…”

Will’s face tightened, and after a moment, he passed Harry the bag of take-out, and shifted under Sam’s tight grip until he managed to pick her up. Her arms came up and wrapped tightly around his neck.

“I’m not going back,” Sam mumbled into his shoulder, as Harry turned away. “I’m not. She can’t have me.”

“You won’t, Sam,” Will replied, but he sounded tired. “You won’t.”

Harry hurried inside. He’d stayed with her, but this was… too personal. A moment he wasn’t supposed to be witnessing. Maybe he should just—

“Harry,” Will called after him. “Could you grab the plates? We’ll eat in the living room.”

-

An hour later, Sam was curled up on the couch, asleep over a movie, take-out containers and abandoned plates spread out over the coffee table, when Petunia appeared at the door of the Ellis’s place.

When Harry saw her, he felt lightheaded. It must have shown in his face, because Will, who had answered her knock, looked even more concerned, and lodged himself firmly in the door between them, so Petunia had to look at Harry over his shoulder.

That only made it worse, seeing them within inches of each other. If all was right in the world, the Dursleys and the Ellises would be on opposite ends of the universe, never to meet.

“You’re going home, now,” Petunia said.

“Why?” said Harry.

She glared cooly towards Will, her nostrils flaring, but he didn’t move from the doorway, or uncross his arms from in front of his chest. “I need to take Vernon to the hospital,” she said shortly. “And there’s a roast in the oven, and I need you to take it out.”

That was—reasonable. Harry stood in place for a moment, and then turned and found his shoes. It was the quickest way to get her off of the step and away from here. “Could you tell Sam?” he muttered.

“Sure,” said Will. “Harry—if you need anything, just call.”

Harry nodded, and stepped out, following his aunt. Vernon was in the passenger seat of the car, for once, and his face was both flushed and pale. Petunia stopped Harry before he could get in the back seat, thrusting a copy of the key to the house into his hands. “There’s no time to waste waiting for you,” she said. “Walk. And get the roast out ten minutes before the timer says. If we’re not back by eight, wrap it and put it in the refrigerator.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia.”

-

Chapter Text

V. 

Harry’s birthday, for once, was marked by the Dursleys. Or one Dursley, at least: Uncle Vernon barged into Harry’s room around eight AM, a piece of paper in hand, and thrust it towards him.

It had been a week since Aunt Petunia had taken Vernon to the hospital, and since then he had been even more bad-tempered than usual. Petunia was fussing over his meals, and every time Vernon spotted Harry and started fuming about his wretched existence or assigning more chores, she would swoop in and cut the tirade off before he could well and truly work himself up. Not out of goodness to Harry, of course, but because the doctor had told Vernon to avoid stress.

Harry still wasn’t sure how long she’d known he’d been going to the Ellis’s place. He wasn’t about to bring it up, either.

“What’s that?” Harry asked, closing his book, keeping it—and himself—safely out of his Uncle’s reach as he stood up.

“An application,” Vernon said, pronouncing the word clearly. “Petunia’s heard from that friend of hers that runs the Tesco on Magnolia Road, and now that you are of the legal age—” He looked down at Harry scornfully, as though doubtful that anything about Harry could possibly be legal. “—it’s about time you went out and got yourself a job.”

“A what?” Harry looked down at the sheet of paper, and indeed found it was a form with the Tesco logo printed in a corner.

“A job,” Vernon repeated. “Where they pay you to do work—not that you’ve done a good day’s work in your life, but you’ll bloody well fill that out and take it to the store and start earning your keep.”

“Earning my keep?” Harry echoed, failing to mask his incredulity. Aside from Petunia, he was the only one who did any work around the house, and he did a good deal more than her, besides.

“Paying rent!” Vernon snarled. “And for food—and those ruddy— shoes—”

Harry had been going through something of a growth spurt recently, which was to say he’d grown an inch since the start of summer. His feet had finally grown large enough that five days ago, while Harry was weeding in the garden, wondering if he should just take his shoes off for how tight they squeezed him, they had burst apart at the seams. Dudley, home for the summer, had laughed and laughed at them, which was probably the only reason why Petunia hadn’t gotten more angry. But she had ordered him back out into the garden, feeling ridiculous in the summer sun in a pair of old rain boots, and come back from the store a few days later with not only a pair of trainers but also a pair of black leather school shoes, second hand but perfectly serviceable, and with only little bit of scuffing on the toe that he could probably hide if he dared knick some of Vernon’s shoe shine.

If it had been anyone else charging the nephew left in their care for a pair of second-hand shoes, Harry would have thought it ridiculous. Instead, he looked down the paper and ran some quick calculations in his head. “How much?” he asked.

“What?”

“How much do I need to pay?” Harry asked. “For the room. If I’ve got a job, I can get myself food, and clothes, and things.”

Vernon scowled but seemed to realize it would work out more in his favor. It took a minute of his eyes darting back and forth to decide on a figure. “Twenty-five pounds per week,” he decided. “And you’ll still help Petunia with the cooking.”

Harry frowned; he didn’t know how much a job would pay, or what was reasonable to pay for rent if you weren’t stuck living with the Dursleys. He hoped more than twenty-five pounds. “I’ll need a bank account,” he said cautiously. “For the check.”

Vernon’s nostrils flared, but again, he seemed to find the request more in his interest than not. Or maybe he was just minding his temper—Harry would have no chance of getting a job with a black eye or clear limp.  “Ask your aunt,” he grunted. “And get downstairs. Marge’s train is in at ten, and I want that grass trimmed before she arrives.”

“Aunt Marge?” Harry echoed, eyes widening. He’d managed to forget all about her visit, after great effort. She wasn’t really his aunt, being Vernon’s sister, but she was just as horrible as one, and she usually came with her dogs, or at least Ripper, her favorite, who seemed to hate Harry as much as Harry feared him. It was the teeth. Harry had white ghosts of them imprinted on his right ankle, from when he was nine or ten. She hadn’t visited the past few years, too obsessed with her dogs to visit long at Privet Drive, and Harry wasn’t looking forward to her return… especially since it meant he would be expected to be home. Now that Petunia knew about Sam’s place, he couldn’t just run off to hide there.

“Do I have to repeat everything I say?” Vernon snarled. “Get out there and mow that lawn, and turn in that paper to Tesco, too! I had better hear about a job at dinner tonight!”

-

Vernon did hear about a job at dinner that night, which came as something of a surprise since Gordon’s mum had said she’d think about it for a few days, and maybe put him on trial first. But the phone rang just as Harry was dishing potatoes in a heap onto Marge’s plate, and Petunia picked it up. She seemed surprised to be hearing from Gordon’s mum—Mrs Lindsay, he reminded himself, that was her name—but she’d given the phone over to Harry quick enough.

Five minutes later Harry had a job. Vanessa Lindsay had broken her ankle at football practice, so she needed someone to fill her spot in. He was going to be paid £3.25 per hour, and he could only work twenty-five hours a week over the holidays, twelve during the school year, and only two on Sundays, but that was still more than the £25 per week Vernon was demanding, and more than the £20 note Marge had given Dudley earlier, and Marge was only here for a week besides. Harry had some more papers to come in and fill out the next morning ( after Church, dear) and he would start on Monday.

“Well,” Marge said, eyeing him. “Can’t imagine hiring an ungrateful brat like you, but you must be doing something right, Vernon, to make him presentable... Of course, Tesco is the only sort of work someone like you could ever do—what was it you said that Potter did?”

Despite the insults, Harry perked up. The Dursleys never talked about Harry’s parents, if they could avoid it, even if his mother had been Petunia’s sister. Any information he could get was like finding a gold nugget in a dog’s shit.

“He, er…” said Vernon, suddenly coughing into his brandy. “Nothing. He was unemployed.”

“Well,” said Marge, and settled back into her seat (which groaned, under the bulk of her). “That’s what I’ve said. A no-good drunk, wasn’t he, no wonder. And your sister, too, Petunia; of course, you turned out alright… What was the name of that town you were from? Before London?”

“Cokeworth,” Petunia said. “But it isn’t worth mentioning at all.”

“That’s it, that’s just it, isn’t it? You took it upon yourself to choose the right place in society, not that you belonged somewhere like that to begin with. And, of course, you made fine choices with our dear Vernon here. Not like your sister, who ran off with that Potter . Of course nothing good would come of that...”

Harry clenched his teeth and carried the potatoes back into the kitchen, giving Ripper the bulldog a wide berth, and began running through the first few lines of the periodic table in his head. It wouldn’t be any use trying to listen in on the conversation if she was just going to repeat the usual swill.

-

The following day, he went back to Tesco, his school shirt and trousers still damp, not having had enough time to dry. Mrs Lindsay was behind the counter and had to ring up six customers before she was able to get away, leading Harry past the door with ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ printed on it in big red letters. Behind it, the walls were white and the floors uncovered concrete, and the back-stocked items were kept in large boxes or still stacked wrapped in plastic, and another employee was chatting with a delivery man while checking over paperwork. Harry didn’t get a good look around before she led him into her office, shutting the door. There was a picture of the Lindsay family sitting on the desk, her and Vanessa and Gordon and a man in a striped polo shirt, but otherwise the room was stuffed with papers and boxes and multiple calendars and a computer whirring angrily on the desk, a field of blue with white text proclaiming an error on the screen.

Mrs Lindsay was a businesslike woman, not unkind, but to the point, or maybe it was just that there were so many customers out front and she was stuck back here dealing with him. Either way, the job description she gave him was brief: he’d be stocking shelves, or running the cash register, or doing whatever else needed to be done around the store. Harry took it in with silent nods, filling out another form as neatly as he could manage while he was still standing.

“Let’s see, what else… You’ll start at three twenty-five an hour. Did I tell you that already? And there’s a store discount after three months,” she said, looking back down at her clipboard. “Since you’re just a child. Not bad at all, really. More than you’d make mowing the lawn.”

If Harry thought it was funny she thought his relatives would pay him anything for mowing the lawn, he didn’t mention it.

“For now I’m going to put you on all the shifts Vanessa was scheduled for. That’ll put you starting Monday at eight o’clock sharp, get here a quarter-till, you hear? Ready to work and all—oh! Uniform.” Mrs Lindsay looked down at him doubtfully. “I’ll see what I can order for you, but it’ll probably be too big no matter what I get in. Still. For now, you wear your school trousers and shirt—a white button-up. That’ll do. I’ll have a name tag ready for you tomorrow. You’ll come in and ask for Robbie, you hear? He’s one of the closing leads; he’ll be here to show you around. Do as he says, not as he does, and you’ll be fine... And I’ll be in around nine-thirty. Any questions?”

Harry shook his head. Mrs Lindsay narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.

“You know, I’m giving you a chance as a favor to Petunia,” she said. “But don’t think I don’t expect quality work out of you, you hear me? If you’re getting paid, you’re going to work for it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied automatically.  It wouldn’t be a problem. He’d worked for years without getting paid, anyways.

She looked like she wanted to say more, but the phone on her desk rang, and she sighed, picking it up, and waved Harry out.

-

When Marge finally left Privet Drive, leaving Dudley with a stuffed wallet and Harry with a sore ankle from Ripper’s aggressive heel-nipping obsession, the summer began to fall back to routine. A new routine, one with far fewer chores than previous years, but also more work. As Mrs Lindsay had told him, he could work twenty-five hours per week while school wasn’t in session, which was more than he had been scheduled for, so he was quick to snatch up the shifts others were trying to get out of, openings and Friday and Saturday afternoons, and the like. Of course, Uncle Vernon demanded his entire first paycheck, on account of rent and the shoes and the like, but after that, Harry could make £70 per week. Seventy pounds! It went into his bank account. His own bank account, freshly opened, in his name and everything, though he did keep some cash under his floorboard, since Petunia’s name was on the account, too. It was exciting, at first, though there was never much money in reserve once he began to buy his own things.

Food was the regular charge. Petunia would still permit him to take extras from lunch and dinner when Vernon wasn’t around to see it, but when he was, Harry needed to have food that he’d bought if he wanted to eat. After some bargaining, he had a small section of a shelf in the refrigerator to himself, though he didn’t keep anything there that Dudley might find appetizing.

Mostly, he lived by what was on sale at work, keeping an eye on prices while he stocked shelves. He learned quickly which stores had markdowns on their baked goods at the end of the evening, and the ones which sold damaged boxes cheap, and how long fruit would stay good for when it looked like it was at the end of its life. He tracked sales of canned soup, especially, and kept it stored under his bed: an easy, filling, cheap meal, if a bit bland.

And he wasn’t around the Ellis’s place at meals so often, so he wasn’t leeching off them all the time, either, which was a relief. Every time he ate there, he could hear Vernon’s time-old outrage at freeloading welfare-abusing charity cases ringing in his ears. Not that he believed a word Vernon said, but it was difficult to shake.

So he bought his own food. It was expensive, especially considering that once school started again he’d only be able to work twelve hours, but despite his necessary thrift Harry was eating better and more regularly than he ever had before.

Whether by that or simple coincidence, he found himself growing more quickly than he had in years. He still wasn’t as tall as Sam, but the gap between them was less noticeable, and if she talked him into playing footie he wasn’t at as much of a disadvantage just by his height.

The trouble with growing was that his one pair of good trousers—the ones he’d gotten with his uniform when he’d started at Stonewall—were too short. It was noticeable, too, in the way that had Mrs Lindsay clicking her tongue at him when he came into work. Eventually, Will offered to take them shopping, and drove Harry and Sam out to a second-hand store.

At first, Harry had been grateful. If he had gotten a new uniform... Well. The thought of needing a new uniform for fall, of all the money he’d earned being torn away from him with only a set of drab grey clothes to show for it, of the money for several weeks’ worth of meals spent in a single blow, had frankly been terrifying. The clothes at the shop Will found were used, and some of them had strange smells or stains or tears in awkward places, but with a bit of poking about Harry was able to find not only several still-serviceable uniforms but also clothes to wear at the Dursleys without drowning in Dudley’s old things, and even two pairs of extra shoes that fit and would be good as long as his feet didn’t grow too much.

It had been much later, as Harry was gleefully shoving Dudley’s cast-offs into the garbage bag they belonged in, that the anger had set in. He’d bought himself all that, most of a functional wardrobe that actually fit him without being ridiculous, on a fraction of the part-time paycheck a thirteen-year-old could earn working at Tesco over the summer. In his whole lifetime, he had gotten one uniform at the beginning of primary school, before there were cast-offs to be tossed his way, and another at the beginning of secondary, after Ms Morris’s intervention, and beyond that the one pair of socks he’d been given the previous Christmas. That was all the money the Dursleys had ever afforded him, and everything else had been what Dudley didn’t need—the clothes he didn’t wear, the food he didn’t eat, the room he didn’t sleep in.

In the kitchen, seated at the table with a tub of ice cream, Dudley let out a groan and whined—“Dad, the telly’s gone all fuzzy. Fix it!” A minute later, Petunia let out a shriek as the lightbulb in the kitchen shattered, and then every other bulb in the rooms they occupied.

“BOY!”

Vernon came up stomping up the stairs, but Harry was already outside, shoving the bag of clothes in the bin. He looked up, hearing his uncle’s voice through his open window, and his scowl deepened, but he waited a few minutes before creeping out and sneaking down the street, away from this horrible place.

-

A week later, Sam was waiting for him at the library, sitting on the low wall that contained the bushes running along the front wall of the building. She had a book in hand—Terry Pratchett, probably; she’d been on a kick all summer—but she wasn’t reading it. Strange, considering she must have been waiting at least half an hour. Usually she went inside at that point.

“Sorry I’m late,” Harry said, and she looked up, as though startled to see him. “Robbie was out sick, and Jordan had to call Mrs Lindsay, only Vanessa’s still… are you alright?”

Sam was staring at him, but didn’t seem to be hearing anything he said. “Gran found out about Niall.”

“What, that they… broke up?”

“No. That they were dating at all,” she said. “He—apparently Dad told her he would stop dating while I lived with him—I dunno. He told me not to mention Niall to her, but I figured it was just, you know, don’t remind her. But apparently… she’s trying to get custody again.”

“What?” said Harry. He felt a lump forming in his throat. “But… I thought she couldn’t have kids in the building she’s in.”

“I know,” she said. “But she’s talking about moving out—down the street, or something, because of course she wouldn’t want to move here, disrupt her weekly bridge group or whatever. Never mind that—”

Sam cut off, which was good, because a moment later a woman holding the hand of a little girl came out of the library. The little girl grinned at them, proudly holding her picture book, and they waved back, and the woman smiled for their indulgence. They both watched the pair climb into a blue Volkswagen and pull out of the carpark.

“My mum,” Sam started again, seething. “She lives about a fifteen minutes here. I’ve never lived anywhere but Little Whinging. Even when we were stuck hopping from flat to flat, we stayed in this area.I went to one primary school, and now I’ve gone to Stonewall for three years, and Gran… she thinks she can just take me away because Dad had a boyfriend? Because she doesn’t approve? She doesn’t care what I think. She thinks she’s just gonna drag me off to bloody Dorset, because it would be inconvenient for her to move over here, and she thinks I’m going to believe she’s doing it out of goodwill? Who the hell lives in Dorset ? I’ll tell you who, my grandmother and all her fucking old lady friends, who she thinks she’ll sit around with, soaking up praise for being so wonderful for taking in her nutcase daughter’s bastard, out of the goodness of her shrivelled little heart, sparing me and my eternal soul from my bent dad’s influence, because Goodness knows Sam can’t think for herself!"

Harry didn’t know what to say. Uncle Vernon’s father lived in Dorset, but he didn’t think that was what she wanted to hear. And he… he didn’t want to go back to being completely without allies in Little Whinging. “Is it… is it a sure thing?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and she seemed to deflate. “I don’t… I don’t think that she can , legally… but it involves going to court, and getting social workers involved again, and… And I sure as hell am going to try and tell them I want to stay here, but…”

She shifted, looking around again. It was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, and there were plenty of cars parked, but no one seemed to be going in or out of the library. “Look, it was… it wasn’t exactly fun , last time. I mean, when mum…” She paused, and shook her head. “I don’t really want to talk about it.” Another pause. “Mum was picked up by the cops and I ended up in the hospital, and Gran was the one to put her foot down, and Dad wouldn’t have found out except for that, probably, since he’s so busy with work and mum’s family doesn’t talk to him, and that’s on record. They decided it’d be better to keep me in here with Dad, even if it meant running into mum, since Gran couldn’t take me, and… I just… if Gran tries to fight it… what if she does get custody?”

She looked miserable. Harry was still struggling to understand the situation. He came around to sit next to her on the low wall, measuring his footsteps and movements carefully. “I don’t know how it works, but… they’d have to listen to you over her, right?”

“I hope so?” Sam sighed, and tugged at her ponytail. She was chewing on her lip. “Have… have you ever… you know, tried to get away from your family?”

The breath caught in Harry’s throat.

They didn’t talk about the Dursleys.

Well, sure; they came up every now and then—like at that first dinner with Will and Niall, or when Mrs Polkiss showed up at the library. But Harry didn’t bring them up intentionally, and Sam didn’t ask, normally.

He forced himself to breathe out. He’d been there when Sam’s mother showed up, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have the right to ask for the same level of personal information. And the question wasn’t even that specific.

But Harry had to pause and think about it. There was a time, when he was younger, when every time he was shut in his cupboard he would think about running away. He’d worked out a whole plan: steal Aunt Petunia’s purse and run to the train station, get to London, live on the streets, and never think about the Dursleys ever again. Except then he’d remember the times he’d been shut out at night because he hadn’t gotten the yard-work done soon enough and had to sleep out in the greenhouse, and at least at the Dursleys he’d had the cupboard and could steal food from the kitchen if they didn’t feed him enough. And worse was the thought of what would happen if he got caught running away—if the cops found him and dragged him back. Vernon would have had his hide for the fuss, and Aunt Petunia wouldn’t feed him for a week.

But there was once… “Dudley broke my arm, once, and Aunt Petunia had to take me to the hospital eventually. And someone at school got suspicious, and someone came to the house. But Aunt Petunia showed them Dudley’s second bedroom, which… it had all Dudley’s broken toys in it, until it really did become my room, but she told them they were mine, and that I liked to break things for attention, so an arm was really not that different.” He scowled. “The lady looked at me like I was dirt, going out. She never even asked me anything, after Aunt Petunia showed her that.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Sam. “If Gran shows up and tells them dad’s some sort of… of… she calls him a deviant, and that sounds… If she convinces them he’s, I dunno, corrupting me or something… people have to be smarter than that, right?”

“I dunno,” said Harry. He bit his lip. “I mean… if it were my Uncle… my Uncle probably doesn’t know about your dad, or we’d hear about it every time he drove past the Crescent…”

Sam sighed. “I don’t get it,” she said. “My mum—she’s my mum, but she’s actually a horrible person. She should be in jail, but somehow they thought taking me away would be enough, because they don’t realize how horrible she is. Dad isn’t. Dad is great, and he works really hard, and he’s kind to everyone, and yet people still… what is it to them who he sleeps with?”

“Erm,” said Harry. He really didn’t want to think about Will sleeping with anyone . He was… well, Sam’s dad. It would be like thinking about Petunia and Vernon— ugh …

She sighed. “Well, maybe nothing will happen. Dad and Niall have been broken up for over a month, and he hasn’t brought anyone else home since then, so…” She trailed away. “You know the worst part? It’s only two years until I’m sixteen, and after that, she’ll have no say where I live. Or less than she has now, anyways. She’s just doing it to cause trouble for dad. She tries to blame him for everything that happened with mum, since he wouldn’t marry her even after she had me, which is ridiculous because mum was messed up to begin with, and, and—”

Sam cut off again, kicking one of her feet back to bounce off the wall. They sat in silence for several minutes, a woman with a stack of books going by giving them a strange look but not saying anything, a car pulling up and six young men in football jerseys climbing out and heading inside while the driver sped away.

“Sorry,” said Sam, eventually. “I didn’t mean to keep you from going in. Should we see if Jones brought in anything new?”

“Maybe… would you rather just take a walk?” Harry asked. He’d been on his feet all morning, and normally after work he didn’t want to do anything but settle in with a stack of books and not interact with anyone, but he didn’t think he’d be able to focus today, and surely Sam wouldn’t, either. “We could go up to get ice cream from that place on the Avenue, or… up to the park on Queensway.”

“You…” Sam started slowly. “You want to? I mean, I’m fine either way…”

“Why not?” said Harry. He stood up. “We’re here every day; not like it’s going anywhere. Come on… Sod your Gran, she doesn’t have the right to ruin your summer. We can take care of ourselves.”

-

School started again—without, to Harry’s relief, any interference from Ms Morris or Mrs White. His hours at Tesco were cut back, but working at all still meant his time at the library and with Sam was less spent reading comics and watching movies and more getting caught up on homework. Since he’d been moved up, he was also in year ten, and that meant his GCSE courses had begun, and the teachers loved to remind them that each time they announced the more and more frequent tests and quizzes.

Sam had talked Harry into taking French with her, mostly as an excuse to talk Will into renting them more movies in the language, claiming it was revising. Never mind that the VHSs came with English subtitles, or, if they didn’t, they sat around making up lines for the characters, not nearly at the level of making sense of what was actually being said.

Sometimes Will would come home and sink into the armchair next to their couch, and they’d look over ten minutes later and he’d be fast asleep, never mind if they were watching comedy, horror, or action. On weekends, he seemed to alternate between drinking copious amounts of tea and napping wherever he got too comfortable.

“He’s got another big project at work,” Sam muttered as they tiptoed around the kitchen, where he’d fallen asleep in the breakfast nook one Sunday afternoon. “I think they saw how well he’d done on the last one. Luckily he’s not working with Niall this time around.”

-

One evening in early October, coming up on the end of his shift, a familiar face appeared at the counter Harry was manning the register at. She was looking down into her purse as she set her basket on the counter, and didn’t seem to notice Harry as he began the automatic process of scanning and bagging her purchases. He considered letting it go, but… she was bound to look up at some point, so…

He mustered his courage. “Did you find everything alright?”

Ms Morris looked up, meeting Harry’s eyes over the counter. The register beeped— item not on file. Harry sighed, looking away to key it in by hand.

“Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick,” she said faintly after a long minute. Harry looked back up in alarm. It wasn’t every day you heard a teacher say something like that. “Mr Potter… Harry. How old, exactly, are you?”

“Thirteen?” said Harry, bagging the can of… creamed style corn, apparently.

“Thirteen,” she echoed. She looked around, as though trying to find someone else to commiserate with, but there weren’t any other customers in the store, and Robbie, in one of his typical sulks over something Mrs Lindsay had shouted at him, wasn’t paying any attention as he shoved cans on the shelf. “Thirteen. And you’re… working. Here.”

“Vanessa Lindsay’s worked here since she was thirteen, miss,” he pointed out.

“Vanessa Lindsay’s mother runs the place. And she doesn’t live on Privet Drive, and she just does it for the pocket money.”

“She lives on Magnolia Crescent, just around the corner, miss,” said Harry.

“But you’re…”

“I’ve got an early start on my CV,” he said. It was a line he’d heard Mrs Lindsay give to Mrs Figg, the old cat lady from Wisteria Walk, when she’d asked what on earth Harry was doing shelving toilet paper.

“Here,” she repeated. “Harry, you’ve got potential for much better things.”

“Gotta start somewhere, miss,” he said, because really, where did she think he was going to work, at age thirteen? What would she rather he be doing? “Your total comes out to ten pounds, forty-eight pence.”

-

“Do you think I’m more like my mum or my dad?”

Harry looked up from the book he had open and found Sam’s eyes across the table. She was staring down at the sandwich in her hands, looking at it as though of all the things and people in the dinner hall, it would be the one to unravel the mysteries of the universe. She was asking him, though, and Harry wasn’t sure he had heard her right over the din of the other students.

“What’s that?”

“Am I more like my mum or my dad?”

Harry folded the corner of the page of his book and shut it, picking up instead his water bottle and popping open the seal with his teeth. He took a long sip, trying to figure out what Sam wanted from him, asking something like that.

“I’ve never really met your mum.”

Sam looked up, and seemed to realize where they were as she did so. Around them the other students were distributed in their usual bunches. And Harry and Sam—they were in their usual spot, too. It was strange, but Harry had never realized this had become normal. When had he gotten so used to sitting in the dinner hall, so comfortable he could get absorbed into his reading, where he had spent so much time trying desperately to hide, before? When had Sam stopped eating with the other girls altogether, and sitting across the table from him?

“You’ve seen her before. She looks like me. She—sometimes I say things, and there’s words, phrases—they’re hers.”

“You say things that Will does, too,” Harry said. “You guys laugh at the same things.”

It didn’t seem to satisfy her. Was it a trick question?

“But you like Chelsea, and he supports West Ham,” he went on. “I think. You both spend so much time yelling at the players I’m not really sure if you support them or not.”

That tugged edges of her mouth up, though it wasn’t quite a smile. She gave up on the sandwich, setting it down, and looked around again. There wasn’t much out of the ordinary to see: students in their identical uniforms, eating their identical lunches, living, as far as Harry knew, identical lives. Maybe not. Maybe every one of them had a mum like Sam’s or relatives like Harry’s, and were prone to asking questions with no good answers at the table. He didn’t think so, but what did he know? People were… Difficult. Complex. Confusing.

“Your parents… are you like them?”

She’d gotten more daring, since she’d asked Harry about getting away from the Dursleys. Harry shrugged. “Probably not? Aunt Marge says I must be, which is a pretty good sign otherwise. But I don’t remember them at all, and Aunt Petunia doesn’t talk about them, and I don’t think Uncle Vernon really knew them…”

“She doesn’t talk about them—at all?”

“My dad might have been named James, since that’s my middle name,” he said. “And I probably look like him, since I don’t look like Aunt Petunia at all….”

“You don’t know their—You’ve never even seen them?”

Harry looked down at his book again, echoing the old story dully. “They were drunks. Died in a car crash. Not really worth remembering, anyways.”

Not that he believed that. Maybe they were drunks, but they were his. Or they had been, before they’d been taken away from him.

When he was little, he used to pass hours in his cupboard entertaining the fantasy that they were somehow still alive. Dreaming that one day they’d show up and take him away and that it had all been some awful mistake that he’d ended up with the Dursleys. Or that maybe he had an aunt or an uncle or a grandparent on his dad’s side, and they’d come to rescue him, even if Aunt Petunia insisted they were all dead, too, dead and worthless and didn’t want him, anyways.

Of course, once he’d gotten a bit older, and ‘dead’ began to mean a bit more than just ‘not here’, he’d stopped. There was no point in dreaming. For all his freakishness he couldn’t bring the dead back to life just by wishing it—God knows he’d wasted enough hours doing so. Even if they were somehow still alive—which they weren’t, but even if—they’d be perfect strangers to him. He doubted he would recognize them if he passed them on the street, or them him. It was more painful to waste time and energy on hope for something impossible.

After all, if there was someone else out there who might want him, the Dursleys would have gotten rid of him already. It was easier to accept that he was alone.

“I don’t ever want to have kids,” Sam said suddenly.

“What?”

“I don’t ever want to… mess up someone’s life, as much as they messed up mine.”

Harry opened his mouth, closed it again, took another sip of water. “I don’t think you’re going to,” he said. “To mess up anyone’s life, I mean. And you’re not like either of them, really. Your mum spends all her money drinking, and Will spends all his time working. I think you’re much more… dimensional than that.”

“I don’t spend my time drinking or working because I’m fourteen,” she said, unimpressed. “Not all of us are going for a bootstraps takeover of Tesco, Potter.”

They stared at each other, and then the tension broke, and they started giggling. Weird, thought Harry. He didn’t even try to stifle it. Catherine Pierce was giving them a strange look, and he didn’t care one bit.

“Well, you could apply for a job too, you know,” he said. “We’ll make it a proper coup d'etat. Or we could just wait thirty years, and Mrs Lindsay will retire, and then we’ll be in control.”

Sam shook her head, snickering. “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

Harry frowned. “That’s really not at all—”

“As if you ever pay attention in chapel.”

“Not like you do either. And you always sleep through RE.”

“Yeah, well… speaking of that… can I borrow your homework?”

“Sam!”

-

“Potter,” called Robbie, holding the phone receiver to his chest. “You’ve got someone on the phone.”

Harry turned, frowning. “For me?”

“Yeah, for you, you see any other Potters around here? Get up here, kid, before I hang up.”

When Harry took the phone, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Mrs Lindsay, maybe, wanting him to make sure Robbie wasn’t wearing a knit hat again, or to get some specific task done. He wasn’t expecting to hear Will’s voice crackling down the line.

“Harry—sorry for calling you at work like this—I’m stuck in London, not going to be able to get home until late; big report… But Sam’s stuck at home all alone, and Maxine did another drive-by, and I don’t want her stuck there all alone… I know you don’t get off until eight, but could you go by after, and stay with her? She’s…”

“I’ll go,” said Harry, not even thinking about it. “Should I—is it safe?”

“Thank you—really, Harry, thanks. I don’t think she’ll come back tonight,” Will said. “If she does, call the cops right away, but I don’t think she will. She’s probably off and gotten pissed by now, nothing to worry about, but Sam… you know she doesn’t like being alone…”

“I’ll go,” Harry repeated.

“Thanks, Harry. I—”

A voice called for him in the background, and he heard a rustling—Will’s hand covering the receiver—and a muffled response.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go, Harry—if you want to get take-out on the way over, I’ll cover the cost—thanks again—”

“No problem,” said Harry, but then the call cut off.   

-

“Dad called you?” Sam asked dully.

“Yeah,” said Harry. He held up the bag of food he’d brought. Not take-out, but everything to make pasta. “Can I borrow your kitchen?”

She stepped back from the door, letting him past. She didn’t seem altogether excited to see him. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Will’s paying for it,” Harry said, toeing off his shoes.

“I mean, come here. Babysit me. You’re younger than me, for God’s sake.”

Harry paused in the door of the kitchen, turning around. Everything had been so easy between them, recently. He hadn’t considered—“Do you want me to leave?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

Harry’s frown deepened, trying to figure out what she did want from him. Was the food actually the problem? “If you’re fine with me staying, then I’m going to—”

“I’m not a child, you know?” she snapped.

“You’re older than me, remember?”

“I don’t need someone to come hold my hand every time something happens!”

“That would be weird,” Harry agreed.

He paused, trying to figure out how to calm her down. For all the time he’d spent with Sam over the summer, he hadn’t seen her angry since Niall had left. And he wasn’t going to lie to her: after Will called, he’d spent the rest of his shift worrying about her, and glancing out the windows in search of the tell-tale beat-up red Astra. He’d remembered how scared Sam had gotten, last time, and how since the very first day they’d spoken she’d been afraid of being alone. Now, she was being—well, it didn’t make sense.

“If you don’t want me to go,” Harry said slowly, “Could you at least tell me why you’re angry? Did your mum say something to you? Did she—”

“I locked her out,” Sam said. “And Mr Lindsay came out and threatened to call the cops, and then she left.”

“Okay,” said Harry. “Then…”

She clenched her fist, and brushed past Harry into the kitchen, fetching out juice from the fridge and pouring herself half a glass, which she drained in one angry swig. When she put the pitcher back, she slammed the door shut.

“And then I tried to call Dad, and got the bloody secretary again. And then a few minutes later, the phone rings, and I think it’s going to be him, but no. It’s Gran. Fucking—Gran. Because apparently Mum went and found a phone and called her, making up all sorts of bullshit about me being—and she—she wouldn’t listen to me—she never listens—”

Suddenly she turned and flung the empty glass across the room. It crashed into the wall by the breakfast nook and shattered as it fell to the floor.

Harry had backed out into the hall before he even realized what he was doing. His heart was pounding. He was—he was surprised, that was all; he’d never seen Sam lash out like that. Startled. He swallowed, and dropped the bag to the floor, forcing himself back into the doorway, but he couldn’t bring himself to get any closer.

What good would it do, anyway? She didn’t want him here. He should just—

No. He… it wouldn’t be right, to leave her alone. Will had asked, and Harry wasn’t so much a coward that he was going to run. It was just one glass, anyways. Not like Harry hadn’t seen Dudley put his foot through a television, or throw his tortoise through the greenhouse roof—and that had been worse, because Harry had been put in charge of cleaning up the glass and getting rid of the poor creature so darling Dudders wouldn’t have to see such a sight.

Sam was glaring at the remains of the glass, as though it had offended her by breaking. She was shaking, too, though not in the same way as Harry was. After a long minute of silence, she dropped her head, and went across the kitchen to fetch the broom from the laundry room.

“I wish he hadn’t called you,”  she said as she swept the shards of glass into the tray. Her voice was low, and dull, again. “I wish for once he’d choose me instead of his job. He doesn’t even like it.”

Harry chewed his cheek, willing his heart to slow. This was well outside of his realm of experience. Parents, that was, and trying to calm someone down; if Dudley threw a tantrum, Harry retreated. Even if he’d wanted to, it wasn’t his place to calm his cousin down, and he’d no doubt earn a fist to the face for his efforts. But Sam…

“You know you’re being, um... reductive.”

She snorted, and banged the tray on the side of the bin to get the glass off. Harry winced as the pieces clanked against each other. They were probably going to tear the bag open.

“Well, who’s to say he’s going to show up in court, either,” Sam muttered. “I bet he’ll forget about it entirely. Gran won’t even have to convince them of her bullshit.” She slammed the cupboard door shut. “They’ll just see he can’t be bothered and push me off to her.”

Harry’s mouth was dry.

“I thought it wasn’t a sure thing.”

“Yeah, well trust the bloody government to actually move when that bitch has something to do with it,” Sam spat.

“When?”

“They said they’d wait until the holiday, so I’d be out of school. December the 20th.” She scowled. “Happy bloody Christmas.”

“They have to listen to you,” Harry said, though he could hear his voice quavering with uncertainty. “They—it’s you who has to live with her. They have to…”

“Yeah, well, I’d—I’d have to—”

Sam’s shoulders slumped, and went and sat down in the breakfast nook. After a moment to work up his nerve, to convince his feet that this really was what he wanted to do, Harry grabbed the bag of groceries and went to sit across from her, pulling out, after a moment’s thought, the satsumas he’d gotten them for dessert, rolling one across to Sam and busying his own hands with peeling his own in a long, spiraling strip, the way she’d always roped him into doing as a sort of competition.

After a minute of staring at it glumly, Sam gave in and started peeling hers, too.

“Last time,” she finally said, “When… when mum was… you… You’ve seen how I freeze up,” she said. “When I—I get scared. I can’t do anything. I can’t speak.”

Harry remembered. He’d had to drag her across the street to hide her away, and even later that evening, after she’d calmed down she’d barely been able to string a handful of words together at a time. Much different from her regular talkative nature. Much different from now—but he supposed she was driving off the fear with anger. That, at least, he knew about.

She swallowed. “Last time I… I was supposed to speak about her, in court, but I, I couldn’t,” she said. “I just. I got up there, and they started asking questions and I—my mind went blank. I—I could have—maybe they would have locked her up, if I had just… Gran told them I was shy. If it—if it’s another woman, I won’t… they always think I’d be more comfortable, just because…”

Harry frowned. He could see how that would be a problem, though it didn’t make sense to him. He was never short of words, especially in circumstances where he should keep his mouth shut. Actually…

“What if I went with you?” he said. “I could—maybe they’d let me speak for you. Be a witness. I could tell them—”

“No!” Sam practically shouted. She looked breathless and pale. Harry blinked, his heart beginning to beat a bit faster again, eyes flicking to her hands—but she took a deep, shuddering breath. “No, I… thanks, Harry, really, but… But I don’t… It sounds awful, but I don’t want you there. In that place. With them—with her…” Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, and Harry nodded slowly.

He could understand that, too. The time Petunia had shown up on the Ellis’s doorstep, Harry had just about fainted.

“Maybe you could write something,” he said. “Ahead of time. And have someone else read it.”

But she was shaking her head. “Who? If it was dad, no one would believe I wrote it. If it was someone else… no, they wouldn’t believe it. Besides, no one is going to listen to what I say, anyways. They never do. And what would I say? She’s a homophobic bitch that I hate and who hates me?”

Harry swallowed. “Well, maybe your dad’s arguments will be enough.”

“He’s young. He’s homosexual. I only saw him a few times a year before this. And he’s deadly afraid of losing his job.” Sam grabbed the peel of her satsuma and started tearing it into smaller and smaller pieces. “Adults are ridiculous,” she said. “They always try to tell you that you can rely on them, but when it comes down to it, they never follow through.” Her face twisted, and she threw the scraps of peel down. “Unless it’s someone like Gran, who you don’t want to follow through, who’s just making things worse… if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

Harry wasn’t sure what exactly she meant by that. Sure, he agreed—you couldn’t trust adults not to be short-sighted and self-righteous, but it was adults who ran the world. While they were underage, they couldn’t really do anything. If he could have, he would have quit school and worked full-time to afford to live somewhere—anywhere—besides the Dursleys’, but that was illegal, and he had to be practical and think about life after graduation, anyways. Whatever Sam was thinking of ‘doing herself’, Harry doubted very much it was at all practical.

But he didn’t say that. Instead, he grabbed the bag of groceries again, standing up. “Like dinner,” he said. “They can never get dinner right, but that’s why we can cook for ourselves. Wanna help?”

She smiled tentatively, as if despite herself, though it was gone just as fast. That was fine with Harry; it was a terribly forced and clumsy shift, and not exactly like any of her problems had been resolved, but being angry was tiresome and cooking was easier. And being hungry and angry was worse.

After a moment, she stood up. “Alright, then,” she said, voice quiet. “Cooking. Yeah. Sure. What’s on the menu?”

-

The worst thing about all of this was the thoughts Harry couldn’t shake. They made him cringe the first time, and he tried to dismiss them, because logically, they made no sense. But because he was thinking logically through it, and because the moment you try to forget a thought it becomes nearly impossible to let go of, the plague of them got worse and worse. When Petunia sneered at him for burning breakfast; when Dudley—fatter than ever before—came home for his longer winter holiday and barely looked up from the telly, his vacant drooling punctuated by onerous laughter and shouts for Harry to fetch him this snack or that; when Vernon shoved him out of the way in the hall and he tumbled into the staircase railing, earning a vibrant bruise; when he was ringing up Mrs Figg for cat food at work and she asked if the Dursleys were staying for Christmas or if he’d be coming to stay with her again—they haunted him.

And when the news came back that Sam’s Gran had won custody, and Sam went straight to her room and wouldn’t open the door for anyone, the guilt welled so strongly in Harry’s chest he thought he was going to be sick.

Will, for all he hadn’t been able to argue that his home was a safer environment for Sam than her Gran’s, had at least managed to convince the court that she should stay with him through Christmas. He even took a few extra days off work, telling them his boss couldn’t argue when he hadn’t taken a day since he started, and he had Thursday and Friday off for Christmas anyways. They spent most of that sprawled in the living room, but even Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which Sam and Will could have and had previously acted out every scene from memory alongside the screen, couldn’t get any of them laughing.

And when Sam’s Gran came, early on the twenty-sixth, and she opened her arms to offer ‘Samantha’ a hug—not that Sam would go within three feet of her—it only got worse. Harry could see the way the woman glared over Sam’s head at Will, who was trying and failing miserably to be his usual cheerful self, and the way her eyes swept over Harry and her expression settled on derision, but when she looked at Sam, it was almost like she actually—

Like Sam was actually wanted. By her dad, by her mum, by her Gran—by Harry, even. He wished he could forget that he’d ever thought it, knowing that Sam wasn’t safe where she was going or where she had been before Will, knowing that being wanted in Sam’s case wasn’t a good thing, but even so jealousy had sprouted a green leaf in Harry’s gut.

She left. Without preamble, without more than a muttered ‘bye’ Will and Harry’s way, without so much as looking at any of them as she climbed into the passenger seat of her grandmother’s car and glared out into vacant space.

Harry couldn’t blame her, not when he’d had such thoughts. He wouldn’t have said goodbye to himself, either.

He and Will stood and watched the car disappear around the bend of Magnolia Crescent, and listened until the hum of the old engine had left them in silence. It was an eerily quiet morning; the lawns frosted and the neighbors either sleeping off Christmas dinner or off at early Church service, not standing out on the drive watching the fog of their breath blur out their faces. Harry finally shifted, and caught sight of someone watching from an upstairs window, across the street, an unfamiliar face that might have just appeared or might have been watching the whole thing.

Harry ducked his head and turned away, mind already on sneaking in past Petunia without getting roped into cooking breakfast, but something made him pause and look back. Will was still standing there, pajama bottoms and a t-shirt and a throw blanket wrapped around his shoulders and bare feet red against the frozen grass, looking very small and very lost for an adult man.

Harry swallowed. It felt wrong to leave him like this, but without Sam, there was nothing to tie the two of them together. Without Sam…

He cleared his throat, and raised his voice a bit. “Bye, Will,” he said, and turned and hurried away.

-

Chapter Text

VI.

The first day of school in January 1994, only one year after Sam had approached Harry and somehow become the friend he never expected to have, her absence was like an aching bruise. Her empty seat was always present in the corner of Harry’s eye, and Mr Graham, taking register, paused at her name, and when Harry sat down at their table in the dinner hall alone, he could feel the eyes of the girls who she used to eat with on him, the rustling sounds of their whispers ringing in his ears.

He could hear the gossip, of course; the way they spoke about her when they thought he was out of earshot or didn’t care or wanted to get a rise. The way they badmouthed her because of her mother, now that the story was out. The way they speculated that Will was abusive, too, tossing around the word like they knew what it meant. The way they scoffed at Harry, even if they couldn't remember his name when they tried to poke fun at him for being 'heartsick over his girlfriend'. He made note of who it was, because if Sam came back, he just knew she would be up for some revenge.

On his own, though, Harry was quick to revert to his old habits. Not the rituals—he was too out of practice, after a year, and they were superstitious nonsense, anyways. But he fell back on the tricks he knew worked. Pretending he didn't exist. Avoiding attention. Fading into the background. One year Sam did not negate thirteen years of the Dursleys, after all.

And after school, Sam’s absence was even worse. Harry only worked twelve hours a week, which meant he had three weekday evenings to himself, without the usual drudgery to occupy himself with. He couldn't bring himself to go to the library for the first week, and when he did return, he worked on homework rather than delve into comics. What was the point, when he wasn't sharing them with someone?

Jones, the younger librarian who had introduced him to the comics collection to begin with, asked Harry about Sam the second week in. Harry had given a non-answer. He didn't want to talk about it. Talking about it was acknowledging it. Acknowledging that he'd been so stupid as to let himself believe that he could have a friend without it going wrong. And opening up to Jones wouldn’t have made anything better. At best, it would have earned him pity, or scorn. At worst, it would tempt Harry with thoughts of letting someone else in.

Harry began to time his visits to the checkout desk around Jones, and disregarded the cheerful waves. He didn’t want to lose the library, too.

And when Harry did have work, things were better. He got along well enough with his co-workers—or, at least, despite their initial skepticism about a thirteen-year-old doing the same job as the rest of them, they'd come to accept him and treat him decently—which was to say: to ignore him. As Harry preferred.

There were exceptions, of course. When he worked with Vanessa, she dragged him into conversations, which mostly consisted of her talking about whatever came to mind while he stocked the shelves. When he worked with Robbie, if Mrs Lindsay was in she'd always point to Harry as a positive example of work behavior. Not because it was warranted, really; Harry was prone to making stupid mistakes like filling the shelves with the wrong item or misreading labels as he typed them in. But the arguments between the two of them were years old and Harry was simply the newest weapon for them to wield. He was torn between gritting his teeth in annoyance at being brought in to their never-ending argument and letting his cheeks flush at the glimmer of pride the comments stirred in his gut.

Harry tried his best to dim that glimmer. With Dudley off at Smeltings, Mrs Lindsay didn't have much reason to talk to Petunia. If she had, she probably would have known to nitpick Harry's work as much as much as she did Robbie's. It was only a matter of time before she would turn on him—Robbie would quit or be fired, or maybe she'd talk to one of the other neighborhood parents and remember the old gossip about him, which had just slipped her mind momentarily.

It hadn’t slipped from Harry’s. He would be prepared.

-

The third week into 1994, Harry was leaning on the counter behind the cash register, trying to will someone to come into the store just to break up the monotony of an unusually quiet evening, when the phone rang.

That wasn't what he had wanted. He felt a flutter in his stomach. Not that he had ever had any bad experiences with phone calls, per say, it was just that the only time he ever spoke on the phone was for work, and whenever he did he became acutely aware of how inarticulately he spoke.

But it continued to ring, so he picked it up. It was his job, after all, and he figured it was probably Mrs Lindsay, anyways. She'd be annoyed if she had to call back. He wasn't going to risk his good standing over a bit of nerves.

It wasn't Mrs Lindsay, but the voice on the other end was familiar—achingly familiar.

"Harry? Oh, thank God—this is Will."

Harry blinked and glanced around the store. The others were out of sight, stocking, or pretending to, and the other cashier was on break, and there weren't any customers to ring up. "Hi?"

"Hi—look, have you heard from Sam?"

Harry winced. "Not since she left," he mumbled.

"You're absolutely certain?"

"Why?"

"She's—she's been missing for over a day. Lydia didn't—are you sure, Harry?"

"She's missing?" Harry echoed. Missing. "Did she—her mum didn't—"

"They checked on Maxine first thing," Will replied. “Look, Harry, I've got to go, but—if you hear from her, you have to tell me, alright? She could be—I should have known something like this would happen, when she didn't argue—it's not safe for her to be out there alone. You—you know that, right? I know you two are close, and you're both independent, but—this isn't something you should keep secret for her—"

"I'll tell you," Harry said. "I promise."

He wasn’t completely insensitive. Sure, he’d lie to her Gran, and probably to the cops, if Sam asked him to, but there’d have to be one hell of a good reason for him to lie to Will.

There was a beat of silence. "Alright," Will said. "I'll—I'll keep you posted. I've got—I've got to go."

The call cut before Harry could reply.

-

The next day, Harry was called down to Mrs White’s office. There was all the usual snickering from the other students, but it was accompanied by the whispers about his girlfriend, Sam, and after having spent the night tossing and turning, mind full of vague fears about Sam’s disappearance, he did not want to hear them.

Worse, when he got to the office, waiting inside with Mrs White were two police officers, as well as Mr Graham—Harry’s form tutor, who taught Biology and was looking exceptionally grim compared to how cheerful he had been this morning—and Aunt Petunia. Petunia glared at him, but Mrs White quickly offered Harry the seat next to his Aunt. The other adults were sitting on chairs that must have been brought in from the hallway, squeezed in around the ends of her desk.

“Harry,” Mrs White said, her voice subdued. “We have some… news.”

Harry’s breath caught. “Is this about Sam?”

“You’ve already heard?” Mr Graham asked quickly.

Harry nodded slowly. “Will—Mr Ellis called yesterday, to ask… Has she been found? Is she alright?”

The adults exchanged glances, and Mrs White sighed. “No, Harry,” she said. “Samantha is still missing. These officers are here to ask you some questions. Mr Graham and your aunt are here so you feel… comfortable.”

She sounded about as skeptical of that as Petunia looked. She’d met Petunia before, at least twice, and Harry doubted either of those conferences had given her any indication of Petunia as a comforting individual. But Harry was more interested in the officers: a man and a woman. Unfamiliar faces. Looking at him with something like pity.

“I told Will already,” Harry said, shrinking back into his chair. Sure, he’d had the thought he would lie to the cops if Sam asked him to, but she hadn’t, and he didn’t know anything to lie about, anyways. “I haven’t heard from her.”

“He told us already,” the woman assured him. “We’re just gathering as much information as we can, to help bring Ms Ellis home safe. Alright?”

Harry nodded again and listened as she asked her first question, but he had one of his own that he didn’t dare ask. By home, did they mean here, or her Gran’s? And if they didn’t find her, what then?

-

Will called again a few days later, this time to Privet Drive.

Vernon, who’d been torn away from the nightly news to answer it, stood scowling while he stared down at Harry, tapping his foot.

“You still haven’t heard from her?”

“They haven’t found her yet?”

“No. Harry, are you sure she didn’t mention anything before she left? Any… plans?”

“You think she ran away.”

“It’s… it’s better than the alternative.”

“The alternative?”

“That she was kidnapped, or is—”

He cut off, but Harry filled in the blank for him. Dead. That’s what he was going to say, wasn’t it.

He swallowed. “She’s probably fine,” he said, trying just as much to convince himself as console Will. Now that the idea was there, he couldn’t shake it. “She’ll turn up, Will, she’s—”

“That’s enough,” Vernon suddenly barked, and he snatched the phone out of Harry’s hand, ignoring his protests. “You don’t call our house again, you hear?” he shouted into the receiver before he slammed it back into the phone dock.

“You can’t just—his daughter’s missing! She could be dead!” Harry said, furious.

Vernon jabbed a finger towards Harry’s chest. “Never,” he growled, “Never even think about telling me what to do in my own house.”

Harry glared back at him, but spat out the regular words: “Yes, Uncle Vernon.”

Vernon’s eyes narrowed. “I will not have that—that pervert calling here,” he sneered.

Harry’s anger froze. So Vernon knew about Will. And yet… he had never tried to put a stop to Harry going over to the Ellis’s…. So either he hadn’t known then, and it was a recent development—maybe Petunia had found out from the officers—or he didn’t care what Harry got up to, so long as it didn’t come back to him, or… or he didn’t know, and was referencing something else.

“He’s not a pervert,” said Harry quietly.

Vernon sneered. “That—so-called man—is a bleeding—homosexual,” he spat. “People like that shouldn’t be allowed to be within fifty feet of decent company, let alone children—God knows what sort of perverted thoughts he’s had on you, boy. Freaks attract freaks, after all.”

The pots and pans around them began to rattle, and in the next room the TV began to flicker, but Harry didn’t notice. He was too angry. Calling him a freak was one thing—the label had been thrown in his face for so long it was practically a part of his name—but to call Will a freak? Sam’s dad, the man who had welcomed Harry into his home and treated him like a human being, was not a freak. And—

“He is not a pervert!” Harry shouted. “And he’s more of a man than you’ll ever—”

And then Vernon's fist collided with Harry's face.

Harry was thrown back into the counters, his glasses flying off his head, but the motion was lost on Harry. His vision spotted with glimmering darkness. The chatter from the telly and whatever Vernon was snarling was like a radio losing reception: indecipherable, distant, static noise. The anger and nervous energy had been knocked out of him, too, and for a moment all Harry could do was raise a hand to his cheek. But the moment his fingers brushed the skin the world came rushing back in on him as his face burned—

"—WITH YOUR DISGUSTING, DISRESPECTFUL, FREAKISH ATTITUDE—"

He should run. He should—the kitchen was spotted and blurry but he could still see the dark shadow of Vernon's fist, poised in the air ahead of him—if another blow came, even if Harry wasn't wasting time shouting he wouldn't be able to dodge it—and where were his glasses—

"—WE SHOULD HAVE NEVER TAKEN YOU IN, SHOULD HAVE LEFT YOU ON THE STEP TO FREEZE AND STARVE—"

"Vernon!"

As his Uncle cut off, turning to face Petunia, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, bile rose in Harry's throat, and he had just enough time to turn and brace himself over the sink before it was filled by the contents of his stomach. He hadn't eaten dinner yet, which was for the best, but that meant that as he leaned dizzily over the basin the vibrant red color was even more visible. For a moment he thought he was puking up blood—on top of everything else—but then he realized the inside of his lip had been torn open as Vernon drove it into his teeth. How did you fix a cut inside your mouth? he wondered blearily. You couldn't put a bandaid—

The thought was expelled with the rest of his lunch.

"Your medication, Vernon; the doctors said—"

"I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT THE BLOODY DOCTOR SAID, THAT FREAK IS A MENACE!"

Shouting was good. Shouting wasn't punching, and since it was directed at Petunia, Harry had cover to squint around the kitchen, searching for his glasses. He needed to get out of here, but without being able to see, he'd not get far. He didn't see them. Not that he'd get far anyways, with blood dripping out his mouth like some horror movie nightmare, with the way the world spun when he tried to straighten up. His ear was ringing, too, but that might have been from the shouting, just as likely as it could have been from the punch.

"I knew it, Petunia—ever since he showed up—no, ever since that blasted wedding—"

"Vernon," Petunia said again, this time sharper and less frantic. But she took a steady breath. "Darling. Why don't you go sit down? I'll deal with the boy. You can enjoy the news." She didn't wait for him to reply before she snapped at Harry: "You, clean up that mess. Now."

Harry didn't risk looking in her direction, since that would also mean looking in the direction of Vernon. He managed to pry one of his hands away from the counter and turn the sink on, the noise of the running water drowning out the rest of what his uncle said.

Eventually Vernon went back to the telly, but Harry never got the sink clean. He tried, and he got the worst of the puke out of the way, but his mouth wouldn’t stop bleeding, and then Petunia stomped over and grabbed him by the chin, ignoring Harry’s gasp of pain as she squeezed his cheeks to pry his jaw open.

After a moment, she turned, grabbed an old washcloth out of the drawer, and pushed it into Harry’s hand. “Get in the car,” she hissed.

“What?” Harry tried to ask, and she quickly moved his hand so the cloth got between the dripping blood and her pristine kitchen floors.

“The car. And keep your mouth shut. If you get blood on the seats, you’ll be paying to have them cleaned.”

-

At first, Harry thought he was imagining things again.

“You shouldn’t provoke him.”

It was a strange thing to hear—a strange thing for Petunia to say.

A few weeks before, a girl had gotten into a shouting fight with Mr Khan in class, absolutely certain he had marked a test incorrectly. Mr Khan had refused to look at it, even when other students began to back her up, her growing outrage contagious. For once, the complex network of teenage politics, tensions between this group and that, had fallen away, and they’d all banded together against a common enemy: yet another adult who refused to listen. Petty drama was easy to set aside for the sake of that noble battle.

The next time they had maths, however, Mr Khan had opened by explaining that the girl had been right, and that he had made a mistake and should have given a higher mark than he had. He wasn’t going to change it, however, because she had been disrespectful in how she raised the issue. Most of the students had seen through Mr Khan’s bullshit, of course, because they’d all been there. They’d seen the way he had dismissed her from the start. The way he continued to do so with arrogant self-righteousness, rather than to bend and risk his pride. But a few had nodded along with his explanation, and it only took a few, and besides, the fire of the initial event had already begun to die by the machinations of time.

Just like that, the coalition fell. They would all remember, of course, and retain a new degree of distrust, but it was just another tick on the unending timeline of the war between the young and old.

Aunt Petunia, in Mr Khan’s place, would never have admitted she had made an error. She had her beliefs and she stuck to them, and if she ever got close to acting against them, rather than admit her wrong she’d get a look like she’d just tasted moldy bread before swiftly altering her version of events so that anything conflicting with her vision of the world was made to comply.

So her comment, which in one sentence had not only acknowledged that Vernon had punched Harry (even though she’d told the hospital staff that he’d gotten hit in the face by a football) but also suggested she had some idea that Harry did not deserve to spend his entire life in pain, was unprecedented. But perhaps he had misheard. The doctors had given him pain medications and numbed half his mouth, and maybe the drugs had messed with his hearing. So instead of staying silent (the nurse had warned him to avoid talking, so as not to bite his tongue or disrupt the sutures lining the inside of his lip) he opened his mouth, and questioned—

“Sorry?”

“Vernon,” Petunia clarified. “You shouldn’t provoke him. You know he is not supposed to get worked up. It is bad for his heart.”

Oh.

Harry stared at the blur of her profile, memory filling in the lines of her bony cheeks and sharp jaw, and wondered vaguely if Dudley looked like some sort of goblin too, underneath the layers of fat, or if he got everything from Vernon. The nurse at Smeltings had written that they should try to convince Dudley to take up boxing, both to try and deal with his weight and to work out his ‘excess energy.’ Apparently some kids needed physical exertion to channel their emotions, or something like that.

It figured that Dudley's emotional outlet would be beating up kids. Like father, like son.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes.”

“Then acknowledge it, boy. Your Uncle’s health is at risk.”

“I didn’t—” Harry started, but the thickness of his tongue discouraged him from any longer statements. Probably for the best.

“One would think you want him to get worse, you ungrateful brat.”

Harry leaned his head back against the seat, closing his eyes so that when he rolled them it was hidden behind shut lids. Sure. He wanted his uncle to have a heart attack. Just like he wanted to know what it felt like to get stitches inside his mouth, to be lectured by a nurse as if he’d never had to deal with a concussion before. It was rare that Petunia took him to the doctors—she’d once waited a week, insisting that Harry was just being dramatic, only to be shown on the x-ray that he really did have a broken arm—and when she did, she always made Harry sound like a reckless idiot, and the nurses and doctors always lectured him on his bad behavior.

The only lecture he needed was one on holding his tongue—and not the one Petunia was giving him. The one that he gave himself, whenever something like this happened, and he gave Vernon an excuse to act. Or Petunia, for that matter—she might have taken him to the hospital now, but Harry knew she wasn’t exactly ‘on his side’. She’d once thrown a frying pan at him. He still had the scar.

The car shut off, and Harry opened his eyes again, squinting. Wherever they were, it was not Privet Drive. It was dark out already, but he could see windows filled with lights. A storefront of some sort, but the advertisements in the window were obscured to him. He swiveled his head over towards Petunia, hoping for explanation, but she pushed something into his hands—a sweater? One of her sweaters?—and all

she said was, “Out,” before her door slammed shut behind her.

After a moment, he pulled the sweater over his head and followed her. Running around without his glasses was a generally terrifying and embarrassing experience, and usually quite painful, as he stubbed his toes on every ledge and tripped over every bump. He’d already scraped his hands on the way into the hospital.

But he managed to make it to the door without incident, and Petunia’s claw-like hand dug into his shoulder, steering him forward to the counter. “My nephew,” she announced, “has broken his glasses playing football, and will need a new pair.”

A new pair of glasses! He hadn’t expected that. Of course he needed them, but he had expected it to go the way his first pair had gone: Petunia raising a fuss about the cost and then appearing a few days later and tossing a pair to him.

“Oh dear,” said the man seated behind the counter. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Do you have a prescription—No? Will you be needing an exam, then? We can get you sorted right away.”
Harry could feel Petunia’s grip tighten. “I suppose that will be an extra fee.”

“The exam? Yes, it will be fifteen pounds.”

Petunia sighed. “Very well.”

“Right this way, then.” The man stood, and he must have beckoned for Harry to come with him, because Petunia steered Harry around the counter into another room, and pushed him towards a chair. “What’s your name, son?”

“Harry.”

“Alright, Harry. You can call me Michael, alright? Now, you’ve probably done this before, so go ahead and look this way…”

Harry hadn’t had an eye exam before, not since he entered primary school. It was a rather frustrating experience, as the man kept switching between nearly identical options and asking which was better. By the end of it, his head was beginning to hurt again, and he thought maybe the pain meds were wearing off, because his tongue didn’t feel as thick.

After, when the man directed him to the section of glasses advertised for teenagers, Harry heard him ask Petunia, “Have you considered contact lenses? They’re much safer for playing sports in, far more convenient.”

“And far more expensive in the long run,” she said coolly, and she marched over to the display, snatched what was undoubtedly the cheapest pair, crammed them onto Harry’s face, and said, “Perfect. We’ll take these.”

They were simple rectangles of black plastic. Leaning into the mirror, Harry was surprised to find he didn’t mind them. Different from his old ones, which had been perfectly round, but she could have grabbed one of the chunkier frames, or something horribly nerdy. These were plain.

“Wouldn’t you like to look around a bit?” the man asked. “We have some frames that are designed specifically with sports in mind—”

“These will be fine,” Petunia said shortly, pulling them back off Harry’s face and passing them over. “We’ve wasted enough time here already.”

The man seemed at a loss for words. Harry was just glad there weren’t any other customers in the shop, though perhaps she wouldn’t have been so rude if there were.

“Well, I’ll give you the prescription, if you’d like to come back,” the man said. He took the frames from Petunia and went around the counter again. “We can have them ready for you to pick up on Sunday. Will that be fine?”

Harry quickly opened his mouth to protest—he had work on Saturday; he couldn’t go to work without glasses—but then he realized between the state of his face and the concussion he’d have to call out sick anyways. The nurse had told Petunia not to send him to school tomorrow, after all.

“That’s fine,” Petunia said. “How much will it be?”

-

Harry got more comments about his face than his new glasses, of course, even after the swelling went down and the bruises began to fade, and he responded to them all with a short ‘football to the face’, but the glasses were to him the bigger change. He’d only ever had the one pair, after all, and apparently they’d never been quite the right prescription, because as he saw the world through the new lenses it was almost too sharp. The sheer amount of details he could see were enough to give him headaches, and sometimes when he tried to read signs from a distance even if the letters were clearer they seemed to swim in front of his eyes.

But he was getting used to them, and to him, they were the item of more importance. The bruising was simply painful and inconvenient, easily forgettable if people wouldn’t keep mentioning it. Harry had fed Mr Graham the exact same story Petunia had given to the doctors, and while some of the other kids had snickered that he’d managed to get hit in the face without dodging, Sam had always been vocal enough about her love of football that everyone accepted he must love it too.

Worse than any comments the other students made about Harry, however, were the comments about Sam that they inevitably led to. Word had gotten out that she was missing; her school photo, apparently, had been shown on the evening news. The gossip was disgusting—some people apparently found it funny to think of terrible things that could have happened to her, never mind that she was a real person, and she was missing, and she could very well be in danger.

Harry had spent Saturday trying not to sleep for fear of the dreams where they’d find her dead. He didn’t need to hear any more theories; every resting moment his brain was dreaming up his own.

There was whispering about him, too. About how he had probably killed her because she wouldn’t go out with him, and how his face was really the result of her fighting back.

Harry had stood up and left the room without permission when he heard that one. Mr Graham had let him go.

A few of her old friends, the girls who Sam had eaten lunch with before she started to sit with Harry instead, finally approached him directly. “Do you know what happened to Samantha?” asked Genevieve Green. “No one will tell us anything.”

“That’s because no one knows,” said Harry, not looking up as he arranged his books on his desks.

“You have to know something,” one of the others said.

He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and ran his tongue along the stitches until his eyes watered before looking up. “I know that my best friend is missing, and you all think it’s funny,” he said, letting his voice wobble. “I know that none of you will just leave me well enough alone.”

The bell rang, which was convenient, because half the class and Ms Morris were staring at him. Ms Morris cleared her throat, and Harry dropped his head again, rolling his eyes, biting down on his anger—and wincing as his teeth brushed the stitches. When Ms Morris was distracted, he dug in his bag and found the quarter. He might be out of practice, but whatever good the rituals would do him, he would take it.

Now that Sam was gone—missing, and though Will hadn’t said it, presumed dead—he couldn’t deny the urge to disappear himself.

-

That evening, Tesco was incredibly slow. Worse, Harry and Robbie were stuck working with Gina, a woman in her early fifties who spent every shift looking down her nose and complaining about Harry’s appearance while getting next to nothing done herself. She’d worked in the store for ages, though, normally running opening shifts rather than closing, and so had seniority over both of them, even if she technically had the same position as Robbie did, and eventually she decided it wasn’t worth the money to have three people running the store and ordered Harry home. Harry, who was already limited in hours by law, and had missed his weekend shifts recovering from the incident, tried to protest, hoping that someone else would want off instead, but he was only scheduled until seven, where the older employees worked all the way until nine or eleven, and the bruise still mottling his face had already earned comments from three separate customers, so he was stuck dragging his feet to the back to clock out and checking which foods were the most discounted as he went. He’d saved as much as he could over the holidays, but at this rate, it wasn’t going to be enough.

“Oh,” said Robbie a few minutes later, as he rung Harry up for a day-old cheesy roll, a nearly-expired pack of sliced ham, and a dented six-pack of chocolate pudding cups. “I almost forgot. Some friend of yours called while you were in the back, said to meet her in the usual place once you got off—oy! Potter!”

The usual place—the library, it had to be. Sam had often met him there if Will was working late, since it was open until eight. He dodged across the street, ignoring the honking of a turning car, and ran the whole way, up Magnolia Road and down Park Road across Queensway. He didn’t even realize he’d left his dinner and his change behind until he skidded to a halt in front of the library steps, panting. It didn’t matter. Sam—it had to be Sam, he didn’t have any other friends and certainly none with a ‘usual place’—Sam was more important.

He stared through the glowing windows, glancing over Jones, chatting with a man holding up a cookbook at the counter, scanning what he could see of the shelves. Would she be inside? But no—everyone knew her face, and if she had been found he would have heard of it—Will would have called—wouldn’t he? Will said—So he started to turn, to search the dark car park—

“Harry?”

Harry spun around, but before he could make a sound a hand clamped over his mouth. Sam—it was Sam, whole and familiar and wearing her hood up but at least from what he could see uninjured—Sam held a finger up to her lips, and when Harry nodded and she pulled her hand away, her eyes widened at the sight of his bruise and opening her mouth like she was going to ignore her own warning, but Harry barely noticed the aching pain except as lingering proof that she was here, tangible and by all visible clues whole. After a moment, she seemed to snap out of it, and grabbed his arm, pulling him after her down the street at a run, towards the park on Queensway, which was closed after sunset but easy enough to sneak into from the side where the trees were thicker, to pick their way back towards an area less visible from the road, the only light the glow of the streetlamps filtered through the branches—

Sam hadn’t said anything and Harry’s mind was racing, trying to search her for injury as they ran, nearly tripping over a particularly gnarled bit of root in his distraction, and at last he was done with the chase, whyever she had wanted him to stay quiet surely didn’t apply now—

Before he could speak, Sam spun around. The hood fell off her head, revealing that she’d lobbed off her plaits, shaping her thick brown hair into an uneven bob.

“What the hell happened to your face?” she demanded before he could comment. “And your glasses—you got new ones?”

But Harry wasn’t listening. “Jesus, Sam!” he hissed. “Did you—Will thinks you’re dead, you know that?”

“I couldn’t tell him,” she said. “He can’t know where I am. It’s a legal problem, if he does, and I wasn’t about to call the Dursleys. I know you said not to if it wasn’t a—”

“It was an emergency! You’ve been—where have you been? Did you—did she—?”

Sam scowled. “I told you I wasn’t going to go with her,” she said. “I’ve got a cousin—you can’t tell Dad this, by the way—she’s letting me use their extra room, until I can figure out what to do. It’s only for a year, anyways, until I turn sixteen. Tell Dad not to throw away my stuff, okay?”

“You should tell him,” Harry said. “You—he should hear it from you.”

“He can’t,” she repeated. “I don’t want to get him into legal trouble, Harry. Gran’s fucking court battle was bad enough; he didn’t say anything good enough, but he had to miss a bunch of work, and you know how important that is to him. Besides, I can look after myself.”

“I know.” Harry was beginning to calm down. “This… this cousin of yours. She’s a good person?”

“As good as it gets, coming from mum’s side of the family,” Sam said.

“You’re safe there? She won’t…”

“She hasn’t talked to Gran in years. Her choice. And… well, mum wouldn’t know where to look for her, and Dad… I doubt he remembers her name, to be honest. When I was really little mum left me with my Uncle for a while, so she babysat me, and she’s always sent me birthday cards and things since then, but she doesn’t want anything to do with most of the family. I, well, I’m the same.”

“You’re going back,” Harry said.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re not even going to tell Will where you’re going?”

“He doesn’t care.”

“Doesn’t care?” Harry echoed. For a moment, all that guilt he’d felt before vanished, and he was left only with hot anger. “Doesn’t care? He’s a mess, Sam; he hasn’t—he called me at work, hoping that maybe you’d mentioned something about disappearing. Anything. He called me at the Dursleys.”

“Is that what happened to your face?”

Harry scowled at her. “Don’t change the subject, Sam. You can’t just say something like ‘he doesn’t care’ when it obviously isn’t—”

“But it is true,” Sam said. “I’m not cold enough to say he doesn’t care whether I’m alive or not, but the specifics? He’s not an idiot, Harry; he’s a coward. He knew exactly what mum was—” She cut off abruptly. In the dim light, Harry could just make out her jaw working. “I’ve never told you what happened, have I. How I ended up with him.”

“You said your Gran’s building couldn’t have kids.”

“No, I mean. How I got away from Mum at all.” She took a deep breath. “She was picked up by the cops one night—mum was, because she was pissed and walking around screaming nonsense on the street. They’d picked her up before, so she would have probably just gotten a fee and let off, same as ever, except she was high, too. She didn’t have anything on her, but—well, I don’t know the details of it. I just know that the cops showed up at school the next day—do you remember that? Right before holiday? I was called out of class.”

Harry thought about it, but shook his head. He hadn’t paid any attention to any of the other students until Sam had inserted herself into his life. He hadn’t even known her name.

“Well, I was. They called me out, and called Gran to come get me, since she was my secondary contact even though Dad lives five minutes from the school, so that I didn’t go home with mum. She got a hotel room. And then there were a bunch of meetings with cops, and social workers, and eventually they got ahold of Dad.

“Gran didn’t want me with him, but she couldn’t take me herself, and… Well… They’d seen the bruise. The one on my arm. It had only been a day, and—I think mum was trying to break my arm or something, I dunno, I don’t— I can’t— Gran had seen it, and told the social workers, and they had me go to the hospital because of… they were scared mum might have gotten me into drugs, and they wanted to do an X-ray on my arm. It was just sprained, but… they told me they were going to work on a non-molestation order against mum. And that if I wanted to testify, they could charge her with… abuse. If you want to call it that. Assault. But I couldn’t…”

She paused again, a twig snapping underfoot as she shifted her weight. Harry studied her, the way her shoulders were hunched forward, almost up to her chin, the way she shook her head, trying to get some of the hair that had fallen out from behind her ears away from her face.

“Gran couldn’t take me, so they got ahold of Dad. But he couldn’t be there until Friday, because of work, and I was stuck in a hotel with her, listening to her go on and on about how he was just as bad as mum because he’d dared be more interested in men and never married her daughter, and how obvious it was that I was turning out a disappointment like mum had, since Gran wasn’t around enough to raise me right, that sort of horseshit. She’d act all offended that I wanted to go with him, even though every time it even came up that she might take me instead she’d start going on about how difficult it was for her, because there were all these obstacles preventing her from giving me a proper home…”

She kicked at the dirt. “But you ended up with Will,” Harry said.

“Yeah, well, we saw how that turned out,” she said. “He said of course I was welcome to stay with him, he had a house with space and everything, I’d just have to look after myself a bit in the evenings because of his work schedule. Gran insisted that he couldn’t be dating any men, except of course they didn’t actually bring that up, and he asked me if I minded later, and if I’d keep Niall secret from Gran.”
Harry waited a moment, but that seemed to be the end of her story.

“I don’t get how that had anything to do with him not caring,” he said. “He showed up. He gave you a safe place to go. Welcomed you in. Helped you with… with introducing you to Vanessa, and trying to help when your mum showed up.”

“But he’d never tried, before,” she said. “He knew, Harry, and he always thought it was horrible, of course, but it’s easy enough to say that. He didn’t actually do anything until they called him in and said ‘Is this your kid; do you have an extra room?’ He doesn’t—I mean, I love him, but I guess… most people have a ‘fun uncle’ or something, someone who shows up a few times a year and takes you to a football match and is good to see then and leaves before anything too serious can happen and ruin their image, you know?”

Harry didn’t know. He didn’t have any ‘fun’ uncles, or aunts, for that matter—though he supposed that Aunt Marge would qualify as Dudley’s ‘fun aunt’... but the comparison between Will and Marge was too much for Harry’s brain to try and reconcile.

“That’s not what I’ve seen,” he said.

“Well, you didn’t know him or me, before I moved in with him,” she replied. “Of course you think he does everything right; you only met him right after he made one big grand gesture of a good decision. And besides. Your standards are kind of… off.”

So, Harry thought, were Sam’s, but maybe she was right. He’d only known Will for a year. And having someone know but not do anything… someone who professed to care...

“You should at least tell him you’re alright,” he said.

“I—I was hoping you could. Not—I mean, I have this for him.” She dug in the pocket of her hoodie, drawing out what looked like a crumpled, folded parchment. After a moment’s hesitation, she passed it to Harry. An envelope. He could just make out the pencil marks on the front. Scribbled out: Will. Beside that: Dad.

“Does it tell him where you’ll be?”

“It tells him I am safe,” she said. “And that I don’t want to be found. And that I’m not going back to Gran’s.”

Harry slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll give it to him, but you should call him.”

“Can’t. It’d put everything at risk. And besides, once I’m sixteen…” she hesitated. “Well, maybe when I’m seventeen, just to be safe, if I can find a way to pay my cousin back, I’ll come back.”

There was no way this was going to work, Harry thought, but he didn’t say that. “What are you going to do about school?” he asked instead.

Sam shrugged. “Honestly, it’s the last thing on my mind. I suppose M—my cousin can get me the books from the library to follow the syllabi for the rest of the year, and I can work through the maths textbooks and things that I already have, but… You don’t need to graduate to work in a shop.”

“You can’t, I dunno, register under a different name, or something?”

“I’d need things like a fake birth certificate and fake identification, Harry. I didn’t have time to find where Gran had stashed mine before I left… not that the real ones would be any use. I don’t think it would be something that could actually happen, getting a fake identity.”

Harry had to admit it did sound a bit mystery novel. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the practical reasons for her to drop out, it was just… for Harry, school had become something of a haven. Since he was ahead a year and young anyways he’d be in lower sixth before he could legally leave school, so he’d figured that he had better get as many A-levels as he could handle, in hopes of finding a better job and getting as far away from the Dursleys as he could. Maybe he could even get into a university on scholarship. But Sam… she was pretty much shutting that door on herself. He had to wonder…

“Was living with your Gran that bad?” he asked, and then quickly backtracked. “I mean, I know she’s awful, but she doesn’t… She didn’t hurt you, right?”

“Not physically,” Sam said. “I’m faster than her, now.”

Now. “But… uh… mentally? Emotionally?”

“She treats me like—she treats me like a girl.” Sam scowled again, the shadows cutting sharply into her face. “Samantha, why don’t you come have tea with Mrs Langley. Her daughter takes dance lessons at the Community Center, don’t you think that must be so fun? Samantha, why are you wearing those God-awful trousers again? You’re not a little child anymore, go change into something proper. Samantha, you can’t play football in a skirt, I forbid it.”

Harry frowned. He was beginning to feel like Sam was living in a completely different reality from him. She was a girl, wasn’t she—did he treat her like that? And, not that it didn’t sound demeaning to ask, but was ‘being treated like a girl’ really enough to give up the roof over her head? To give up school? To make Will so worried?

But… he doubted that was really it. There was something more, surely, something Sam did not want to talk about, and that was… well, her choice, really. He would… he would have to try to understand it, or just learn to live without her making sense.

“Is that why you cut your hair?” he asked.

“What? No, that was after I left and they put up my picture on the telly. It’s what they always do in books, don’t they? Change their looks so no one can find them, right?”

"Don't they normally just wear a wig and sunglasses?"

"That's the uncommitted route. Besides, I'd look really strange wearing sunglasses in this weather, and I don't own a wig," she said. "And I like it like this, anyways. Mum was always the one who made me grow out my hair and wear braids, and Gran was just the same. And..." She waved her hand over the hoodie and trousers, which were both loose, like she'd borrowed them from Will's closet. "If I dress right, people think I'm a boy, and don’t look twice. I just have to kinda lower my voice..."

She tried to demonstrate, but Harry just ended up snickering as her pitch jumped everywhere. "I think you need practice before that convinces anyone," he said, but then the rest of the evening caught up to him and his humor was pushed aside.

“Why did you come all the way up here, if you’re not going to stay?” Harry asked."Wasn't it a risk? I mean, if you're willing to go this far... everyone in Surrey knows to look out for you. The cops came in to ask me about you in school."

"Did you tell them anything?"

"Tell them what? You didn't tell me you were planning on running away. They asked if there was a chance and I said yes, of course, you couldn't stand your Gran."

"Oh," she said. She hesitated again. “Your face,” she said, instead of answering. “Your… your uncle?”

“We’re not talking about me,” Harry said. “I’m not the one who ran away.”

“I only meant,” she started. “I meant.” Stopped again.

He waited for her to think. Now that they'd stopped arguing he was feeling exhausted, and hungry, and—and he'd left his dinner at work, hadn't he? He'd have to go back, and make some excuse to Robbie, who hopefully hadn't thrown it away. And then try to sneak into the Dursleys, since it was probably close to seven by now and the library was only open until eight...

"I came back," said Sam at last, taking a deep breath, "because I had to ask if you wanted to come with me."

Harry blinked into the darkness. "Go with you?"

"Get out of Little Whinging—out of Surrey, even. Away from the Dursleys. I asked my cousin, and she said... Well, if you want to come with me, we can find a way to make it work. And you won't have to go back there again, as long as we don't get caught."

Harry swallowed.

Leave the Dursleys? A few years back, he would have jumped at the chance, any chance, really. And you would think, with his face like this, he would still, but... Now he had work. Now he had school, and in sight was a future away from Privet Drive that he never could have imagined before he started at Stonewall. Not that Stonewall itself was responsible, but...

"I can't," he found himself saying.

"But," Sam said. "But... you hate the Dursleys."

"I..." He couldn't say he didn't, but it felt wrong to say he did. It was... too extreme. "I don't. I don't care about them enough to hate them," he decided. "But I've... I can't just leave."

"Your uncle hit you in the face, didn't he?"

Harry flinched before he could stop himself. Logically, yes, that is what had happened, but he'd repeated the story about the football enough that he half believed it, by now. Hearing something acknowledged out loud, by someone other than himself, voicing what very well could have been a stretch of his imagination, since he'd had a concussion...

"He did," she said. "Harry, you can't go back there."

"It's nothing worse than usual," he said. "Besides, I normally stay as far away from Uncle Vernon as I can. It's not going to happen again."

Most of all because Will seemed to have gotten the picture that Vernon didn't want him calling the house, and that the envelope in Harry’s pocket... well, he hoped it would answer his questions better than Harry could. Sam didn't need to know about her or Will's part in it, though.

"But you want to stay in Little Whinging?" she said.

"Want to?" he echoed. "Sam, if it were that easy I'd have left ages ago. But it's not. It's... bad, here, but it's getting better, and I don't have any other family or cousins that I can run off to. I'm saving up every extra pound I earn, so that when I get to be old enough, I can get my own place and never, ever come back here. But... now… I’m not going to make things any more complicated than they already are."

She sighed, shoulders slumping. "I guess I should have expected that. You're always so... cynical."

"I think ‘practical’ is the word you're looking for."

"You're sure you won't...?"

"Aren't you planning to come back, when you're sixteen?" he asked. "If I go with you, it'd be harder. I won't be sixteen for a year and a half and I won't have the money to get my own place, and I'm pretty certain the Dursleys would love the chance to get rid of me for good."

"Well... it might be longer than that," she admitted. "I don't... I'm not coming back until I'm absolutely certain they can't force me to live with Gran. And, well, except for you and Dad, there's not much left for me here, and there's the chance of running into mum..."

Harry frowned. "Those girls were asking about you," he said.

"Those girls?"

"You know. Gwendolin. Um... Claire?"

"Cara?"

“The blonde one?”

“Yeah.”

“They're you're friends too, right?"

"They were. Sort of." She frowned, rubbing her arms. "I'm surprised they asked. They never really cared before, when I was with mum."

Harry squinted at her. "I think maybe you're not good at seeing that people care about you, Sam."

Sam rolled her eyes, looking around. "And I think your idea of what caring about someone means are a bit messed up, after living with your relatives." She sat down on the protruding root of a tree. "Will you tell me what's gone on in school, the last few weeks? I've missed all the good holiday gossip."

Harry sighed. Of course that was what she wanted to know, and Harry hadn't been paying much attention. He moved to settle down next to her. "You sure you don't want to know what Ms Morris has to say about Hemingway?"

"Definitely not. I’ve read my schoolbooks twice this week, just to have something to do."

"Well..."

-

When Harry arrived at Privet Drive just over an hour later, Sam on a bus headed to catch a train back to her cousin’s place, wherever that was, the envelope pushed through the mail slot in Will’s door, Harry’s bag of food retrieved and dangling from his arm, short two cups of pudding (one Robbie’s fee for the trouble, the other to insure he didn’t mention to anyone that Harry had run off to meet a girl) and a slice of ham that Harry had eaten on the way home to quiet his stomach, he found the lights of number four off. He stood out on the front step for a minute, trying to remember if Petunia had mentioned that they were going out for something, since they Dursleys didn’t normally go to sleep until nine and Vernon’s shows were over.

"They're not at home."

Harry jumped and turned around, spotting the neighbor's head protruding from the window that faced the gap between their houses, just visible around the fence.

"Sorry?" he said, stepping back.

The woman's face wrinkled into a grimace. "Oh," she said. "It's you." A pause, and then: "Didn't you hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Vernon went into cardiac arrest."

Harry blinked several times. "Cardiac arrest?"

"Heart attack. He had to be taken in to the hospital."

"Oh," said Harry, not sure what to make of this information. Aunt Petunia had gone on so much about his heart, and there'd been the time she'd had to get Harry from the Ellis's—from Will's place to take Vernon to the doctor's, and the pills, but... he'd never actually processed it as a possibility, that Vernon would actually have to deal with that. When he realized he was gaping, Harry asked: "Is he alright?"

"Of course he's not alright, he's had a heart attack," the neighbor snapped. "Good God, boy; I knew you were thick, but not to this extent."

Harry turned, so that she wouldn't be able to see when he rolled his eyes. He dug in his pocket, fishing for his key, and asked: "Did they say when they'd be back?"

"Whenever the hospital lets them out, I'd imagine," the woman said. "Aren't you going to say thank you?"

The lock clicked. "No," Harry said, and hurried inside before she could add anything else.

-

Chapter Text

VII.

After the attack, a new sort of silence fell over Privet Drive. Harry was not allowed in the kitchen, for Petunia’s fear that his presence would excite Vernon into another state, as she referred to what had happened to her husband.

Despite what the neighbor had told Harry, Vernon had not gone into cardiac arrest until he was away from the house. Harry heard the story through the hushed conversations Petunia had in the hall, the door to the kitchen closed as much as the obstruction of the phone’s cord could allow. Vernon’s heart had stopped beating for two minutes. Had he not already been in the ambulance at that point, speeding towards the hospital at breakneck speed, he would have been dead. The probability that he could have died anyways was too high for Petunia to number.

Instead, Vernon had lived. When he left the hospital and returned to Privet Drive a few days later, he was like a bloated corpse, taking up space and doing little else. He spoke less, shouted less—was less. Even when Petunia accompanied him out on twice daily walks around Little Whinging, there were no comments about the ruddy doctors and their bleedin’ walks! No more than a habitual spot of grumbling, which Petunia silenced with a quiet word.

Harry, who had spent several nights lying awake trying to decide whether he should feel guilty that he couldn’t bring himself to care about his uncle’s suffering, and then feeling guilty anyways as he wondered what things might have been like if Vernon had died, tried to focus on school and work and put it all out of his mind. It wasn’t that simple, of course. If he had just been banned from the kitchen during the day, well, that would have been alright; Harry rarely went downstairs when the Dursleys were awake. But Vernon had taken to falling asleep in the chair in front of the telly, so Harry couldn’t even sneak down to warm up his food. And without access, he lost his right to his shelf in the refrigerator, so when he ate at the house, his meals were room temperature and bland.

Even had he not been banned from the kitchen, however, he would have lost the shelf soon enough. Dudley came home for the summer with a note from the nurse: he was now too big to fit into the largest size knickerbockers made for Smeltings, and so was required to lose at least a stone before the end of summer.

Petunia, in an uncharacteristic show of authority, perhaps finally making the leap of logic past denial towards fear as she looked between her half-dead husband and whale of a son, had finally put her foot down, and now all three of the Dursleys were on a diet that consisted mainly of grapefruit and vegetables. It was about time, too; Dudley had finally reached the dubious achievement of being wider than he was tall, and when he came up the stairs each night Harry listened close, half certain his cousin was going to fall through and become the new resident of the cupboard under the stairs, as it would sure take a building crane to lift him back out again. Harry, who had received a raise and the full twenty-five hours he was allowed once the summer holiday began, had never been so grateful to be paying for his own food. Compared to Dudley, he was feasting like royalty. Even better, every time Dudley tried to raise a stink about it, neither of his parents, fueled by their own dietary discomfort, had the patience to deal with him.

Which was why when Harry came home one day and found his cousin sitting on the hardwood floor in front of his bed surrounded by empty soup cans, Harry had rolled his eyes and gone to fetch Petunia instead of trying to deal with it himself.

“IT’S NOT FAIR!” Dudley had shouted as Vernon dragged him from the room. “WHY DOES HE GET TO EAT WHILE WE HAVE TO STARVE?”

“Gee,” said Harry, only halfway under his breath. “I’ve never had the chance to stave before.”

Petunia, who was still in the doorway, watching Vernon drag Dudley back down the stairs, glared sharply Harry’s way before slamming the door shut. A few minutes later, a list appeared under the door, and Harry spent the rest of the afternoon darkening the sunburn on his back of his neck as he tended the garden.

It could have been worse. It could have been Vernon. Petunia had told him to take out the stitches in his lip himself, and he doubted she would treat him to another trip to the hospital anytime soon.

-

The next morning, while Harry was at work, Vernon had shown what at this point was unusual initiative, walking to the hardware store and returning equipped to replace the knob on Harry’s door with one that locked. Of course he and Aunt Petunia had waffled for hours over whether to allow Harry the key, but between all the opening and closing shifts at Tesco neither Dursley had wanted to keep the same hours to let him in, and he had a key to the house, anyways, so eventually they had relented to give him the key and a lecture on undeserved privileges that Harry had easily tuned out.

Despite the burst of pleasure Harry got when he realized Dudley would never be able to sneak in and steal his food or dump ice on him in the middle of the night, the first thing he did was withdraw some of the cash he kept under his floorboard to make a copy of the key.

“I lost a copy, and my uncle is making me use my allowance to replace it,” he told the man at the counter, who had looked at the shiny new key Harry handed over skeptically but made the copy anyways.

When Harry realized he had money left over, he had a copy of the house key made as well. After that, he waited for a day when Will’s car was in the driveway, and went and knocked on the door.

“Harry?” said Will when he came to the door. He looked awful: there were dark bags under his eyes, and he was holding a takeout box and had apparently splattered the sauce from whatever he was eating on the collar of his shirt. He blinked several times, reaching up to rub his eyes and prodding his forehead with the butt end of his chopsticks in the process. “Are you—is it Sam?”

Harry winced, a full-body exhibition of his guilt. “No, I… sorry, I haven’t heard from her,” he said. He was hopeful that was a good thing.

“Oh,” said Will, the momentary alertness dimming. “Then what… are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just…” He fished in his pocket, pulling out the pair of keys. “I need somewhere to leave a copy of my keys, and I was hoping it could be in your garden?”

“My garden?” Will echoed. “Wouldn’t you—wouldn’t it make more sense to leave them at the—in your garden, Harry?”

“That would kinda defeat the purpose.”

The extra keys were in case the Dursleys ever took his and tried to lock him out. With a back-up, he’d have a way to sneak in while they were asleep or gone, get what he needed, and leave without them knowing.

Will finally seemed to catch up with the situation, his eyes widening. “Did something happen?” he asked. “Harry, I know… I know what you’ve seen of Sam’s experience hasn’t been an, uh, shining example, but if something happened, you should—we can get you help. Your relatives… they aren’t exactly...”

“Nothing happened,” Harry said. Except getting punched in the face when Will had tried to call the house, but Harry wasn’t about to tell Will that. He didn’t need to know that Vernon was a prejudiced asshole. He probably dealt with enough of that from people he already knew—people like Sam’s gran. “I just—it’s a back-up, you know? I thought maybe it would be better here, not in the garden of the house it was meant to open.”

Will stared at him for another long beat. “Well, alright,” he said at last, and he stepped back. “Here, I’ll… It’s better in back. There’s nowhere out front... ”

It was true: unlike the Dursleys, Will’s front yard was pretty much just grass and driveway. There were patches of dirt where flower beds had once been intended, but now they stood barren, poor places for hiding anything. Harry hurried through the door, shutting it behind him, and followed as Will led the way into the dark house.

The kitchen, as they passed through, smelled vaguely of takeaway that had gone off, and there were multiple bags, crinkled white plastic with red writing, balanced precariously over the top of the bin. In the sink, it looked like half of the drinking glasses Will owned had piled up, forks jutting out at odd angles, forming silhouettes like skeleton trees. “Sorry about the mess,” Will said, belatedly, “I…”

But he couldn’t voice an explanation, and he didn’t set down his box of noodles or put on any shoes as he led the way out the back door, down the steps onto the overgrown grass. Will led the way across the yard to the shed, though he waved the hand holding the noodles towards the back gate, which led to a field of sparse weeds and rocks that filled the gap between Magnolia Crescent and the park.

“You can get the latch with a stick through the crack in the door,” Will said. “If I’m not here to let you in, I mean.”

Sam had shown Harry how, once, when they’d tried to use the field to play football, but the terrain had been too uncomfortable and open and Harry hadn’t been able to shake the fear of Gordon Lindsay spotting them out his back window and telling Dudley about it, so after that they’d always taken the longer walk to the park on Queensway instead.

Will propped the box between his elbow and his chest for a moment, then seemed to think better of it and set it down on a dry stone bird bath before opening the shed door and beckoning Harry in after him. The lawnmower was just behind the door, though it by the state of the lawn it clearly hadn’t been used in a few weeks, and the walls were lined with gardening tools and supplies, though Will’s garden had nothing but a few overgrown bushes. Will went directly to the back right corner, underneath a grimy window, where there was an old workbench. On the ground beside it was a bag of dirt squished under a larger bag of fertilizer, and on top of that several tottering stacks of terra cotta flower pots dusted with filigree cobwebs. Three pots in on the second-tallest stack, Will revealed what he had brought Harry back here to find: a key.

“The old man would have been offended if he knew this is all the use his pots were getting,” Will said ruefully. “But I’ve got a black thumb, and it’s a decent spot to keep this.” He glanced Harry’s way, and dropped the key back into the pot before holding it out. “This a good enough spot for you?”

Harry nodded, and deposited his two keys in with Will’s. Will glanced down at them, but whatever questions had crossed his mind, he didn’t ask, busying himself with putting things back in place instead.

“You know, Harry,” he said, voice too tight for it to be entirely conversational. “You’re… if you needed someplace to stay, if it’s not… I know you can’t think much of me, right now, but you’re always welcome to…” He coughed, turning and beckoning Harry out, not looking at him as he latched the shed and made his way back to the house. “I mean. You know how to get in. You’re always welcome.”

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Your noodles.”

Will froze, and turned back, collecting the box off the bird bath, laughing without humor. “God, I’m a mess,” he said, almost too quiet to hear. Then he went by again, letting Harry back into the house.

Harry followed him through, and back to the front door, where the pair of them stood awkwardly, unsure of what to say. Will was an adult, but, well, barely, no matter how absent-minded he could be, and he looked more like he needed comforting than anything else.

Maybe he did. Niall had left him, and now Sam had left too, and maybe Harry wasn’t as important as either of them, but he was itching to hurry back out through that door.

“You know,” he said hesitantly, wondering if he wasn’t just going to make things worse but needing to try—anything to make the man look less pathetic. “She’s going to come back the day she turns sixteen. She said she would. She just didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

Will stared at him for a moment, then stepped forward, wrapping him in a hug, and Harry stiffened. He wasn’t used to being touched, at least not in a good way. At the Dursley’s, touch meant getting punched or grabbed or thrown. Besides, Will kind of stank, and Harry could feel the box of noodles digging into his back.

“You’re a good kid, Harry,” the man said when he finally released him. "Don't let the Dursleys tell you otherwise."

-

It was a Tuesday, the 12th of July, 1994. The afternoon had sweltered up over thirty degrees that day—and yet now the night outside was nearly black, Surrey echoing with thunder and rain drumming heavy on the roof, bursts of wind driving it in melodic thunks against the windows.

Robbie had quit. That was to say: he had simply stopped showing up. There was an active betting pool over how long it would be until he was back, and whether it would be him or Mrs Lindsay who initiated his return, but for the time being, that left Vanessa, freshly graduated and eager to leave for university in the fall, in charge of leading Robbie’s closing shifts, which meant five nights a week even that less than before got done.

Harry didn’t mind working with Vanessa, though; it meant more work for him to get done. When he worked with Robbie, normally he got stuck manning the register, but Vanessa liked to stay up front, so he got to stock shelves, even if he was about a foot shorter than any of the other stockers and had to use a ladder twice as often. It was much better, in his opinion, especially on nights like this, when there were no customers to speak of.

He liked quiet nights, anyways. They might have been boring, but boring was fine with Harry. Boring meant he only had to deal with his coworkers, and simple problems, like how to fit a new brand of canned beans on an already packed shelf. Boring meant safe.

That said, when the bell on the door sounded, everyone perked up, including him. Harry exchanged glances with Keiko, a girl a year ahead of him in school who had just started at Tesco, and leaned back from the shelf to catch sight of the customer.

He had to blink a few times to be sure he wasn’t imagining what he saw. The man was dressed in an odd sort of suit, dark blue with silver pinstripes, the jacket stopping just above the knees and just below the tip of an impressive beard. The beard was twisted in a thick knot at about where his waist might have been—it was difficult to tell, with the odd suit distorting the proportions of his body—and Harry imagined the bottom of it would have been brushing the floor if it were not tied up. Despite that, it was well kept, a clean, gleaming white; wavy, not scraggly, as full as if it were the hair from the top of his head, which was just as long and white, and while the crown of his head was hidden under a hat Harry expected he would find his hairline as forward as a much younger man’s. He was carrying an umbrella, though it hadn’t stopped droplets of water from getting caught in the hair, glistening under the fluorescents like oddly-placed sequins.

In short, he was like no one Harry had ever seen before, and more interesting than anyone he’d ever seen in Little Whinging. Yet the sight of him made Harry’s stomach turn with unease. The moment the man began to look around, Harry looked away, back to Keiko, and saw that the cart she had been filling the shelves from was empty. “Go get another cart from the back,” he told her. “They should have one ready by now.”

She tilted her head—she seemed to have trouble accepting direction from a boy two years younger than her, and half a head shorter, even if Mrs Lindsay had told her to shadow him for the evening—but eventually she shrugged and made her way to the back, the cart rumbling along after her, announcing every bump in the floor. Harry busied himself finishing the shelf he had been straightening.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark blur moving down the aisle.

The strange man was coming his way.

As the footsteps got closer, Harry tried to swallow his nerves. If you want to disappear, you can’t show weakness. You have to act completely natural, to blend so perfectly in with your surroundings that people forget to distinguish you from the walls. Harry was at a disadvantage, looking as young and unlikely as he did, but by now he knew the store well, and he had previously had some success in sinking into it, slipping under the notice of customers that he didn’t want to deal with—

“Excuse me,” said the man.

Failure.

He had a voice that matched his appearance: a quiet, melodic tenor. It might have been a nice voice, a gentle voice, but in Harry, it set his heart drumming against his chest. Harry swallowed his misgivings, and took a half-step back with his right foot, so he was partially facing the man, but he was well-practiced in adjusting his head just so the frames of his glasses formed a wall between their eyes.

“Can I help you?” Harry asked.

“I’m looking for someone,” the man said. “I was told he worked here. A Harry Potter?”

Harry was lucky: his name tag had disappeared from the box where they were kept a few weeks back, and he hadn’t worked up the courage to admit to Mrs Lindsay that he’d lost it. “Sorry,” he said shortly, turning back to the shelf.

The man frowned, reaching up to stroke his beard. “Oh?” he said. “Well, no matter. I’ll just have a look around then, shall I?”

He moved away, back towards the front of the store, and Harry kept his hands busy for a minute, twisting every can of green beans so that they lined up perfectly against the front of the shelf. He heard the man’s voice, indistinct at this distance, as he spoke to Vanessa, and for a moment he was afraid that she was going to give up his lie, but the conversation was brief, and Harry spotted the top of his hat sticking up over the shelves as he moved down the next aisle. He waited a beat, until the footsteps were closer to the gap in the middle of the store, and then went to join Vanessa up front.

It wasn’t that the man looked particularly threatening. But there was something about him that made a voice in the back of Harry’s head scream run, and a sort of… air about him that made Harry’s skin crawl. Maybe it was because he’d been outside in the thunderstorm, and he’d brought some of the electricity in the air out there with him. More likely, it was the irrational part of his brain, and his damn imagination getting away from him again.

“That man,” Vanessa hissed the moment Harry was close enough, “is looking for you.”

“Shh!” Harry urged, hurrying around the counter.

“Get rid of him. He’s giving me the creeps!”

“What am I supposed to do?” Harry asked, not moving his mouth, feeling like somehow the man was watching him out of the corner of his eye, even though he’d taken out a pair of glasses and perched them on his nose to read the back of a box of mechanical pencils.

“He’s looking for you!”

“ He doesn’t seem to know that, and I’d like to keep it that way! I don’t even know who he is!”

“Get rid of him,” Vanessa repeated, “Or I’ll call mum and tell her one of your strange friends showed up and is scaring away all the customers. I’ve heard what Petunia Dursley says about you. She’ll believe it.”

Harry looked at her strangely, not least of all because he knew full well Vanessa didn’t care one bit what Petunia said about him. “He’s not my friend, and we don’t have any customers.”

“Exactly. Who would come in when someone like… that is in here?”

“We don’t have any customers, because there’s a bloody thunderstorm on outside!”

“Just deal with it, Potter,” she snapped.

“You know,” Harry said. “For someone who was so understanding when Sam needed to get away from her mum, you sure seem inclined to put me in danger.”

“Yeah, well, your crazy mother isn’t chasing after you, is she?”

“No, she isn’t,” Harry agreed. “Because my mother’s dead.”

“Oh, take your pity party elsewhere. Over to that weirdo, preferably.”

“So it’s fine if it’s some creepy old man, as long as it’s not my mother!”

“I didn’t say you had to tell him who you were, just to get rid of him.”

“He’s shopping,” said Harry. “We can’t just kick out someone who is shopping. Unless you want to call the cops.”

“He’s not shopping, he’s loitering, because he knows you’re here,” she said. “He’s just an old man, Potter. He looks like he’d fall over if you breathed too hard his way. Why are you so nervous?”

“Why are you?”

“He’s not my problem. He’s yours.”

“I don’t have a clue who he is,” Harry repeated, a bit more forcefully. “As a rule, it’s best not to approach creepy strangers who show up asking for you. Didn’t they teach you that in primary school?”

Vanessa scowled at him. “Potter, deal with him or so help me, I will tell my mum…”

Harry glanced back over his shoulder, finding the man still inspecting the writing supplies. For a moment, the urge to run nearly overwhelmed him, followed by a burst of anger unlike anything he’d felt before—but then it was gone, so suddenly and abruptly that he was left blinking, almost like he had forgotten where he was—

And then he stumbled as Vanessa pushed him out from behind the counter. “Go deal with him,” she repeated.

Harry glared at her, but it lacked vigor. He had—hadn’t he just been worried about the man? Ready to run? Where had—where did—

But before he could figure out what was going on, his feet had carried him to the aisle where the man was standing, examining now a pack of multi-colored highlighters, reading the text on the box with as much focus as when Petunia read the labels on food packaging, though she would only be satisfied when the food contained no ingredients at all and this man seemed intrigued rather than critical.

Now that he was here, anxiety began to bubble in Harry’s gut again, and now it was a familiar type of anxiety, the same type as when one of the teachers asked him a question when Harry hadn’t realized that they knew he was there, or when he was too loud coming in to Number 4 or he caught sight of Vernon or Dudley in their rare outings from the front of the telly. It was uncomfortable, but it was familiar, at least, and not as all-consuming, and something that he could set aside and worry about later, while he dealt with the present situation.

And it was good to be suspicious of strange old men who came in and asked for you by name, anyways. Healthy. Normal.

“Can I help you find anything?” Harry asked, in his most detached customer service voice, squashing his anxiety behind a smile too fake to really contain it.

“Muggles do come up with the most interesting things,” the man said.

Muggles? “I’m sorry?” said Harry.

The man put the box back on the shelf, smiling at Harry—a more genuine smile than the one that had already fallen off Harry’s face, though he looked, for whatever reason, disarmingly sad.

“Your aunt told me I could find you here, Mr Potter,” he said, and Harry stiffened, taking a step back. “And though I can appreciate the desire for anonymity, I’m afraid you look just like your father did at your age.”

“My father?” Harry echoed, despite himself.

“James Potter,” the man clarified, turning to face him. “You really are the spitting image, especially the hair. But the eyes—you have your mother’s eyes.”

Harry stared.

No one ever spoke about his parents.

“Who are you?” Harry asked, but then he caught himself. “Actually, don’t answer that. As you can see, I am busy, so if you are not here to shop, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I have something for you,” the man said. “And I think we may need to have a conversation.”

“About my… about James Potter?”

“About your parents, yes, among other things.” He peered down his nose at Harry, through his half-moon glasses. “I can, of course, wait until you are finished with your work. Or I could meet you at Privet Drive, another day, if you are too tired, though I dare say Petunia will not be overly pleased to see me again. She is rather, ah…”

Harry stared at him. “You know my aunt.”

It seemed unlikely—that he would know the Dursleys. This man was in appearance alone the antithesis of everything the Dursleys valued, which was to say, normalcy. But he had referred to her by name…

“I have known Petunia since she was just a few years older than you are,” the man said, “though I confess I have not known her terribly well, as you might imagine. But we can speak on that later… Or shall I return another day?”

Harry’s first impulse was to snap that he shouldn’t assume they would be having any conversations at all, but of course, he was terribly tempted. A man who had known his parents… a man who Petunia apparently did not care for. Of course, he wasn’t an idiot: he wouldn’t be going anywhere alone with this weirdo, no matter what information he had. But… well, as long as he remained somewhere public… somewhere familiar...

“I get off at seven,” he said at last. “You can meet me out front. But unless you are planning on buying something, you can’t stay here.”

“Seven o’clock,” the man said brightly, and he brought out a pocket watch. Harry glanced at it in bemusement—of course a man like this would be carrying a pocket watch—and then glanced at it again: it was unlike any watch he had ever seen, with planets circling around a star, only, Harry had studied the basic astronomy in school and it certainly wasn’t a model of their solar system on display. And it definitely was not displaying the time. “Very well. I shall just have a little stroll around Little Whinging, then. A lovely night for a walk, don’t you think?”

He didn’t wait for Harry’s reply, but glided leisurely through the doors, pausing only to open his umbrella before stepping into the downpour.

-

Harry was dawdling. Now that he had had a few hours for the memory of the short conversation to fester in the back of his mind, he was regretting that he had told the man when he got off. That was private information. Of course, he had known who Harry was, but the thought of going out there and meeting him…

He had better just get it over with. They’d be right outside the store. If he tried something, Harry could run back in and slip out the back exit. No way an old man like that was as fast as he was.

He slung his bag over his shoulder, zipping up his hoodie—the West Ham one Will had given Sam, which she’d insisted Harry take since she was never in a million years going to wear it—and forced his feet to move from the back room. He took his time gathering his dinner, splurging a bit on a pasta salad from the deli, with a cluster of bananas to tie him over until he came in tomorrow. It was certainly more appetizing than uncooked cans of soup, which had since Sam’s departure become more and more a part of his diet. And, after a bit of debate, he took a marked-down salad bag as well. Everything else he’d seen on sale required cooking to eat.

“That creep is back,” Vanessa hissed as he came up to the register, digging in his pocket for the change he was already working out in his head. Harry glanced through the window, and sure enough, there was the man, standing beside the trolley return on the other side of the car park, apparently unbothered by the fact that he had been out in a thunderstorm for the last—Harry glanced at the clock—two hours.

“I told him I’d hear him out.”

“ Why?”

“Because you told me to get rid of him!” Harry snapped.

“I didn’t mean you should go running off with some old pervert!” She was beginning to look panicked. “Harry, I—I didn’t mean—I shouldn’t have made you… I forget you’re still a kid, but… Don’t you know that’s not safe!”

Harry rolled his eyes, shoving his purchases into his bag. “I’m not going running off with anyone. And I am going to be right outside. If it looks like something strange is going on… call the cops.”

Vanessa’s eyes widened even more. “If you think I’m going to have to call the cops, you shouldn’t go out there,” she said. “You can leave without him knowing. If he comes back here again, well, that would be stalking, so we’d have grounds to call without you actually interacting with him.”

“Couldn’t you have thought of this before you put me in charge of getting rid of him?” Harry asked. “Besides, he knows my aunt. He said—look, I’m just going to get this over with, okay? I’ve wasted enough time worrying about this already.”

“It’s your funeral,” she said reluctantly, passing him his change.

Harry snorted, and used his irritation to propel himself out of the store. Sure, she was worried now, but it was a little late for that.

Once he was past the automatic doors, however, and being pelted with rain, it took more strength to pick his way across the car park, trying to avoid the currents of water rushing into the whirlpool forming around the drain. He made a wide arc around the man, leaving at least ten feet between them, turning so he was facing the man with the street on his left, Tesco on his right, Vanessa peering out through the window to them.

“Well,” Harry said, crossing his arms over his chest to tuck his hands into his armpits, trying to keep them warm. “I’m here. Say want you wanted to say.”

“Would you like to go somewhere else to discuss this?” the man suggested. “It is quite the downpour…”

“Here is fine,” Harry said coolly. There was no way he was going off somewhere with this stranger. Maybe he did have information about his parents—Lord knows why Harry even cared, drunks that they were—but that didn’t override his sense of self-preservation.

“Or perhaps—” The old man held out his umbrella a bit, and stepped forward. Harry mirrored him in an immediate step back.

“Hey!” he said sharply. “You just… stay over there. I don’t know who you are or what you want from me, but I will go back in there and call the cops if you get anywhere near me.”

The man frowned—or Harry thought he did; it was dark, even with the light streaming out the windows of the store, and that ridiculous beard obscured the man’s face—but he pulled his umbrella back, resting it against his shoulder.

That’s when Harry saw it. The underside of the man’s umbrella, that was. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like the sky. Not pouring down buckets of rain, but Harry imagined standing under it and looking up the underside would be indistinguishable on a clear night, a night full of stars, a few wisps of clouds drifting past a crescent moon.

Drifting. Actually drifting. And the stars were glimmering, and the moon—

No.

He tore his eyes away, glaring at the stranger. He was imagining things. The umbrella had probably been painted with glow-in-the-dark paint, creating the illusion of an illuminated sky.

“Do you like my umbrella?” the man asked, glancing up. There were glimmering lights on his half-moon glasses, reflections of the decoration. “I do enjoy the stars, don’t you? Several of my colleagues have noticed my weakness for them, and so I have quite a collection of objects gifted to me over the years.”

“...Like teacups?”

“I have a number of those, yes.”

Harry stared hard at him. “You’re the one who scared Aunt Petunia, that day. Three years ago.”

The man’s face fell, and he sought out Harry’s eyes. “Scared her? It wasn’t my intention to scare her. I had hoped that she would broach some topics that are, regrettably, still uncomfortable to her...”

But Harry didn’t care about that. “Who the hell are you?”

“Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,” he replied. “And there are several equally tedious titles to go along with that, though mostly people tend to refer to me as Professor Dumbledore.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Perhaps not… I am the headmaster of Hogwarts, if that assists you.”

“Cut the crap, or I swear…”

Dumbledore sighed, twirling the umbrella about. “It seems Petunia told you even less than I had feared,” he said. “Hogwarts, my boy, is a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, at which your parents both studied magic and where, of course, we hope you will attend.”

There was a long stretch of silence after that, broken only by a car that came speeding down the street, splashing them both with water—not that it mattered, as Harry was by now soaked to the bone. He opened his mouth, trying to find the words to respond to that sort of—that sort of absolute nonsense, but what came out was— “Are you insane?”  

“I’m sure there are many who believe so, but no,” said Dumbledore. “I am not any more insane than the next person off the street.” He paused, peering at Harry through the dark. “Are you quite certain your aunt hasn’t spoken to you about magic?”

Harry flinched. “There’s no such thing as magic,” he said automatically, echoing the words Vernon had drilled into his head since the first time the word had been mentioned in his house.

“Isn’t there?” Dumbledore asked. “Surely, Harry, you can remember a time when something inexplicable happened? When you knew that you were the one doing it, but couldn’t say how it happened? Perhaps when you were frightened, or angry, or wished for something very hard?”

He wanted to protest, to turn from this conversation and run before word of it could reach Vernon’s ears, but at the same time—

For a moment, Harry dared remember. Remember all the things he had tried to put out of his mind, the things that would get him killed if Vernon knew he thought about them. About when Dudley turned eleven, and Harry had conversation with a snake before the glass in its exhibit had vanished just long enough for the snake to escape. About the time his teacher’s wig had turned blue, and Vernon had locked him in the cupboard for a week. Or any of the times he had been so eager to escape, and the next thing he’d known ended up somewhere else—on the roof of his primary school, in the most notable incident, but also in the bathroom at the other end of the hall, when the boys had tried to stuff his head into a toilet, back when he was eleven.

But, well, those hadn’t been him. He hadn’t really disappeared and reappeared, he had just been so frightened he’d forgotten running away. And the wig? Well, it must have been a prank by the teacher. The snake… he had to have been imagining the conversation, seeing what he wanted to see. It had probably just been sizing him up, the apparent nodding and gesturing nothing more than a coincidence. And the glass—well, the glass...

“Prove it,” he said firmly. “If you expect me to believe anything you say, then you should be able to prove it. Otherwise, this conversation is over.”

“This is hardly the place to demonstrate,” said Dumbledore. “There is a reason you haven’t heard of magic, beyond what I had hoped your aunt would tell you. Our society is kept secret from muggles. Doing magic where they might notice is illegal.”

“Well, I’m not going anywhere with you,” Harry repeated. “So if you can’t prove it, I’m going home, and if you try to follow me I’m calling the cops.”

The man sighed, and reached into his pocket, glancing up and down the street. “Perhaps a subtle demonstration, then.”

For a moment, Harry thought the man was pulling a knife on him—he took a quick step back, ready to run, never mind the improbability of getting mugged by an old man in a suit—but what emerged from the pocket was too narrow to be an effective weapon. It appeared to be a... stick of some sort. Dumbledore noticed Harry’s confusion and angled his body away from the Tesco windows, bringing it up a bit.

“My wand,” he said by way of explanation. “You’ll be getting yours soon enough. Now…”

He gave it a little flick Harry’s way, and there was a shift, a sudden energy in the air—the same sort Harry had noticed Dumbledore brought in with him earlier, as though he had been struck by lightning—and for a split second Harry thought he was going to be electrocuted—

But then it settled into his skin, and he felt warmth blossom in his chest, spreading through his body to the tips of his fingers and toes. Even his ears felt cozy, like he was sitting wrapped in a blanket in front of a fire, rather than standing in a storm with his clothes hanging off of him like wet cement plastered to his skin.

“I imagine that’s a bit better,” Dumbledore said, tucking his wand away again. “Though a little warming charm won’t prevent you from catching a cold.”

“That was—” Harry began.

“Magic.”

“But that’s…”

“Not impossible, despite what you may have been raised to believe.”

“And…” Harry’s voice seemed to give out on him. “And I can—I can do that?”

“With a bit of training, you will be able to do a  good deal more.” Dumbledore’s hand reemerged from his pocket, and he brought out something else with it. An envelope, Harry thought. “Hogwarts is the finest school of magic in the United Kingdom, if I may say so myself, and your name has been on our list since the day you were born.”

He held out the envelope, not seeming to care that it was getting soaked, and after a moment Harry took a few steps forward, snatched it, and skittered back. He found that his hands were shaking. Not from fear, anymore, or cold. It was as though Dumbledore’s… ‘little warming charm’ had sent a spark through him, jump-starting his systems, and he was bursting now not with anxiety but anticipation.

Harry turned it over in his hands, and found the address, written in emerald green ink that was somehow not bleeding even as the rain struck it. Harry Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, No. 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. He frowned at the level of detail: the smallest bedroom? How had they known to address that—but, wait; if Dumbledore had been the one to have tea with Aunt Petunia that day… Either way, he slipped his fingers under the fold, breaking the wax seal holding the envelope shut, and withdrew the two folded sheets of… it must have been parchment; it was a completely different texture from anything Harry had ever used. He leaned over it, trying to shield the text inside from the rain, and squinted to read the first lines:

Dear Mr Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Harry swallowed again, scanning the rest of the letter. At the very top, above the body, was the school’s crest, with a latin motto: draco dormiens nunquam titillandus. Beneath that, a byline: Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards).

He almost let himself believe this was true. If it was someone’s idea of a joke… they had gone to an awful lot of effort, and to what end? And who would care enough about Harry to prank him? Maybe… maybe it was real, this school of his. That charm, he hadn’t been imagining that, had he?

The second page contained a supply list. A uniform, with robes, cloaks… even a pointy hat. A whole list of books, with authors with peculiar names, like Arsenius Jigger and Newt Scamander, and titles like A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration, whatever that meant. Other equipment followed that—including a telescope set—and there was a note about students not being allowed their own broomsticks, which Harry found particularly bizarre.

He swallowed. If this was a prank, it was an exceptionally cruel one. Not only dangling an impossible school teaching impossible subjects but to hide it behind a wall of a supply list that was probably worth more than he earned at Tesco in a year? He shuddered to think of the tuition. Not to mention…

“Where is this school?” he asked. “And how do you get there? Flying carpet?”

“Goodness, no,” said Dumbledore. “Flying carpets have been out of fashion for the last few decades, I am afraid, though every now and then someone tries to get the ban lifted… No. Hogwarts is in Scotland, and it is reached by train. Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King’s Cross will be the closest for you.”

Scotland? Then, that meant...

“Sorry, sir, but… you want me to go to some boarding school? It’s not going to happen. I’ve got less than a hundred pounds in my bank account, and I’ve barely touched that, just enough to get a school jumper that actually fits, and trousers that cover my ankles so I don’t get fired. I don’t have the money to pay for school, and my aunt and uncle sure as hell won’t send me off to learn…”

“Magic,” the old man repeated when Harry trailed off. There was a glimmer in his eyes, as though two of the stars from the decorations on his umbrella had fallen loose and landed perfectly in each iris. It kept drawing Harry’s gaze up, which gave him all the more purpose in staring pointedly past the man’s umbrella.

“Yeah,” said Harry. “That.”

“But money is, of course, no object.” The man said it easily, which was something that only someone who had never been troubled by money could have done. Harry supposed, being a wizard, Dumbledore wouldn’t have ever been; he could just wave his hand and utter some mumbo-jumbo and voila ! a thousand pounds. For some reason, that thought made Harry angry, though not as angry as what the man said next: “After all, your parents left you a sizable amount. More than enough to pay for your schooling five times over, I would think, had they not already set aside a separate fund for tuition and expenses.”

Actually, the anger took a minute to come. It was preempted by a gape, a snort, and then a burst of laughter he couldn’t contain. “My parents?” he echoed, between laughs. “You think—my parents left me money? What, did they have life insurance they didn’t tell Aunt Petunia about?”

He shook his head, trying to get his laughter under control. His parents, with money. Vernon would have never shut up about it.

“Life insurance…? How quaintly muggle. I suppose Lily might have, being muggleborn? But that would have gone to her sister, I imagine. No, I refer to the Potter family fortune and Gringotts account, of course, which was in James’ sole control by nineteen eighty-one and which was left entirely to you.”

The rain, bouncing off the old man’s umbrella and the top of a nearby car and the pavement all around them, seemed suddenly entirely too loud. Harry had stopped laughing.

“You think my parents… left me a fortune.”

“As the executor of their estate, I don’t only think, I know.”

Why would the headmaster of a school be the executor of—no, he didn’t want to know. None of this made sense. “ If they had any money, shouldn’t it have gone to Aunt Petunia? Or… James Potter’s relatives?”

“I’m afraid James was the last of the Potters, barring yourself,” Dumbledore said gently. “As for your Aunt, it is very rare that wizarding fortunes are transferred into the muggle world. Gringotts, our bank, will make exchanges, of course, but we use different currencies, and there are high fees in place to avoid the corruption of either economy. It is, I am afraid, a rather dry political topic, but if you are interested, I could point you to some—”

“My parents left me money, and no one told me about it?” Harry interrupted, louder, this time. “I have been working since the day I turned thirteen, in order to eat, and I had money the whole time?”

Dumbledore paused. “The Dursleys do not feed you adequately?”

His voice was just as quiet as before, but it was not gentle anymore. Harry, meanwhile, let out a sound like a goose, holding back the laugh that threatened to burst out. “What do you think? You said you know my Aunt; it’s pretty damn obvious they don’t want me there.”

“That’s no reason not to…”

“Food costs money,” Harry said. “For my thirteenth birthday, my Uncle gave me my application to work here, and demanded I start paying rent. I bargained down so I could pay for my own food, and I’ve been eating better ever since.” Seeing the shadows that were darkening Dumbledore’s face, he couldn’t help but add: “But they still made me cook for the rest of them, if I didn’t get out of the house fast enough. Have you met Uncle Vernon or Dudley? I could never eat half as much as either of them, even if I had been allowed more than the leftovers.”

“My dear boy,” Dumbledore said. “Had I known…”

“Didn’t you?” Harry snapped. “You did come to Privet Drive, that day three years ago, didn’t you? And left behind that teacup?”

“I did,” Dumbledore said. “But while I was dismayed to find your aunt had not treated you like the second son I had hoped she would, there was no sign…”

“You had hoped she would…” Harry echoed, and he felt his eyes widening. Dumbledore had said he had been the executor of—did that mean—“Were you the one that left me here?”

“It was a task that fell on me to carry out, yes.”

“You’re the one that left me on a doorstep in the middle of the night? A baby? And they let you run a school?”

“You were, of course, wrapped in warming and protective charms,” Dumbledore said, frowning. “I forget, you looking so much like your father, that you are not familiar with our customs…”

Lightning flared across the sky, but neither seemed to notice.

“And leaving babies on doorsteps is a custom in the…”

“In the magical world? In certain instances, when their families would rather not have any other contact with our world, yes,” said Dumbledore. “It is a matter of respect, you see.”

“But why would you even do that?’ Harry asked. “Leave a baby that, according to you, belongs in your world … why would you leave me someplace like—here?” He waved his hand vaguely around the car park. The sky boomed with thunder in reply, and Harry flinched, but kept his focus on Dumbledore.

“Ah, well. It was everyone’s wish to keep you safe, and Little Whinging is the safest place for you I can imagine. It is about as un-magical as a place can get.” Dumbledore gestured across the street, to the side lined with trees. “Rowan trees,” he said. “Fabled to ward of witches, and ash, to protect against evil. There’s not much truth to those, in the technical sense but the important part is that people would plant them believing they would. Even a muggle without an ounce of magical talent can shape belief into a spell, without realizing it. A few hundred years of muggles that have a fraction of your aunt’s conviction and  the belief that anything magical does not belong begins to... set in.”

Harry stared at him, trying to wrap his mind around Dumbledore’s tenacious logic. “People without magic can still use magic… to keep out magic,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore.

“And you think that I have magic,” he said. “And... you think that a place where people think magic does not belong at all was the safest place for me.”

There was a long pause.

“Well,” said Dumbledore.

Harry inhaled sharply through his nose. “I don’t understand you at all. Anyone who thinks that the Dursleys are qualified to raise children, even normal children, is…”

He couldn’t think of an insult to express the extent of his vexation. ‘Insane’ did not seem strong enough, and while ‘a fucked up son of a bitch’ was certainly in the realm of what Harry would like to say, he was still within spitting distance of Tesco.

“And why,” he said instead, biting out the words, “was it so important to keep me safe that you would leave me with people who hate anything not normal?”

Dumbledore looked like he wanted to protest the phrasing, but apparently Harry’s glare was powerful enough to keep him on track. “There are a number of reasons, and this is neither the time nor place to discuss most of them,” he said. Harry’s eyes narrowed, and Dumbledore quickly added: “But there is a simple piece of the situation that I can explain. In our society, children are valued above all else. It is of the utmost importance that you stay safe with your family, Harry, and Little Whinging has kept you safe from those who would, thinking they were doing you some good, want to raise you as their own.”

Lightning.

There were so many things wrong with that statement Harry hardly knew where to begin, but chief among them was clearly—

“Yeah, right,” he said, laughing. “My Aunt and Uncle would probably commit murder if they could get rid of me, so long as it didn’t cost them any money or make them lose face, and my parents were drunks who would have gotten me killed if I hadn’t been so lucky. If my own family doesn’t want me, why should—”

“Lily and James were not drunks,” Dumbledore interrupted.

Thunder. Harry licked his lips.

“What?”

“You just said they were drunks.” Even in the dark Harry could see the man’s face had gone completely blank, but his voice was quiet in that terrifying way again. “I don’t know what your relatives have told you, but Lily and James Potter were not drunks. They were two of the bravest people I have ever had the fortune to meet. They would have—they died to protect you, Harry. Anger at their absence is understandable. Disrespect is not.”

“Protect me from what ?” Harry said incredulously. “Oncoming traffic?”

“As  I said, this is neither the time nor the place to discuss it,” Dumbledore repeated, and this time, his voice brooked no argument, no room for stubbornness on Harry’s part to coax a bending of the supposed rules. “Suffice to say they met a very bad man and defied him with all their formidable magic, in order to keep you safe.” He paused. “And now that you are older, of age to learn magic yourself, to control it and to wield it in your own defense, it is your time to attend Hogwarts, as your parents did.”

He paused, waiting, as though any of the words he had said this evening would inspire Harry to trust in him or his bloody school. But Harry had nothing to say. At least nothing appropriate, though he was losing conviction that he shouldn’t just channel Uncle Vernon and scream at the man. The silence dragged on, until, in a puzzled tone, tilting his head at Harry like he was some sort of problem to be solved, Dumbledore asked: “Are you not excited to meet other children like you, Harry?”

Harry didn’t answer.

Why would he? He now understood the wave of violent anger that had passed through him earlier: a premonition of things to come. He did not owe this man anything. Certainly not his respect. Certainly not his kindness.

But there was a matter of practicality, of course. If his parents really had left behind money for him, in some sort of… magical bank, then to retrieve it he would need to locate their hidden world. For that, he would need a guide, and unless he wanted to ask Aunt Petunia if she really knew about magic, that meant Dumbledore was the ticket to his access. He would get his money, move it to his own bank account, and then—

Lightning.

“Harry?”

And then, what? His aunt’s name was still tied to his account until he became an adult, and if there was a fraction of truth to what Dumbledore had said, and his parents hadn’t been reckless drunks but murder victims, then there was not a chance in the world he was letting any of that fall into Vernon Dursley’s hands. It was nothing more than a temptation, a shiny, expensive lure to hook him in, to bribe him to forget all this.

“Harry, I… It was vital that you stay with your family, but… I would have done something more, had I known how bad it was for you here.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re not the type,” he muttered.

“Excuse me?”

Thunder.

This wasn’t wise. But there was something about this man that urged him to speak anyways. Sometimes Harry had felt that way around Sam and let things slip, things he normally would have kept to himself, but that was because he liked Sam. Trusted her. Dumbledore… not so much.

“To do something,” he clarified. “You’re the type who sits back and waits for someone else to act. You’ll act against someone, but you’d never make the first move.”

He did manage to hold back the last bit of that thought— you’d make a terrible parent— because he didn’t know Dumbledore’s family situation, really, and what did Harry know about parenting, anyway, and because Harry finally understood what Sam had meant, when she had said that Will didn’t care. Here was a man professing that he wanted to keep Harry safe, that he was horrified at how the Dursleys had treated him, but he wasn’t offering to take Harry away this very night. To keep him safe from the people that really put him in danger. It was all just words. Less useful than money he couldn’t reach. More ephemeral than paper and ink in the rain.

He looked down at the letter, defying its logical enmity with the rain by remaining perfect and whole, and let it fall from his hands.

“You’re mad if you think I’d go with you, after all this,” he said. “Absolutely out of your mind.” He looked up to find Dumbledore’s mouth agape, his eyes wide. “I don’t like people who try to dictate my life for me,” he decided, turning away.

“Harry—you can leave Privet Drive. Get away from here—”

“Was that your plan in leaving me here, then? To make me desperate for escape?”

“Plan? No, no, Harry—of course not. I only ever wanted to—” He cut off. Harry began to walk. There was a sigh as another car went past. “This is not how I hoped this conversation would go.”

That made Harry pause, anger—fresh anger—urging him to turn back. “What, did you think I would be excited to learn that everything I’ve been told all my life has been a lie? Did you think showing up without warning would make me less likely to connect the dots, between the absolute shit show my life has been and your apparent role in it? Did you think that just because you’re someone important I would respect you?”

“It is refreshing, actually,” said Dumbledore, managing to look almost as unimpressed with himself as Harry felt. “I value those who speak their minds. It makes me question what I think I know.”

“Yeah?” said Harry. By now, he found absolutely no humor in the irony. “Well, sorry for inconveniencing you, now leave me the fuck alone. This conversation is over.”

“Wait—”

Harry would have screamed had he the Tesco sign not been glowing in the corner of his eye.  Instead he turned back around. He’d loop over to the library, and if the bastard was still following him Harry would go inside to call the cops, he would—

“Harry, my boy, I promise I will leave you be for tonight, but please—take the letter. Think about it, and I will come back in a few days, when all of this isn’t so new, and…”

“Do you not understand the meaning of the word ‘over’?!”

“There is so much more to tell you. If you still do not want to return to the magical world, I cannot force you, but…”

As he carried on, the urge to whip around and silence the man physically nearly overcame Harry. He had never been a violent person, but this, this man, this infuriating, awful—he wanted him gone, he wanted him—

But Dumbledore’s voice was lost under a clap of thunder, and Harry looked sharply up. He hadn’t seen the last flash of lightning. Perhaps it had been far away, but…

Petunia had locked Harry outside in a storm, once, telling him to finish his chores in the garden. He was six. He’d gotten sick, a cough that made his bones rattle and his chest burn, and he’d had to stay in the cupboard for weeks, lest Dudley get ill, and the light in the cupboard had gone out, and every time he heard thunder—

He shuddered. The magic from before had worn off, and his skin felt clammy.

Where was his sense of practicality gone? He didn’t have to like Dumbledore, in order to wait, to hear him out, to gather the complete range of data and analyze it. He couldn’t just rule out a chance to escape from that horrible place, even if it meant—He turned around, opening his mouth—

Dumbledore was gone.

Harry gaped into the dark, his eyes straining to look up the street into the pools of light around each lamp, scanning the carpark and the illuminated front of Tesco. There was no sign of him, no sign that the man had been there at all.

Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe—

Something bumped against his shoe. He glanced down.

The letter. Two pages and an envelope, carried this way by the current forming on the sidewalk, and yet as crisp and perfect as before, the ink forming the damning words on the page: We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Slowly, aware that he was shaking, Harry reached down and picked it up. Stuffed it into his pocket. Turned around. Ran.

-

There is a hole in the roof of the Ellis’s shed.

Someone—he doubts it was Will—had put an empty flower pot in precisely the spot the rain dripped through. They must have sealed off the bottom, as every few seconds, through the patter drumming the metal roof, a drop falls and lands in the pot with the distinct plunk of water hitting water.

Harry had read about water torture in a book, once, where they drip water on your head one drop at a time until you go insane. Plunk. But tonight, he finds the sound comforting. Plunk. The repetition a welcome interruption. Plunk. Distracting his brain from other thoughts, the ones he’d rather not have.

Plunk.

He’s been sitting here too long. A few of the pots on the workbench have shattered, as though the lightning had somehow landed there, and they filled the air with dust and cobwebs when they broke, only that was when he’d first come in, panting and shaking and unsure of anywhere else to hide. By now, the air has settled.

Plunk.

He should leave.

He turns the key over in his hand again before replacing it, three pots down in the second-tallest stack. It jangles against the other two keys as he replaces the pots, and he stands slowly, trying to lift himself up from where he’s been sitting at the corner of the bag of fertilizer without knocking the teetering flower pots over. There’s dirt and cobwebs on his hands and clothes, mixing together with the rain soaking him through, no doubt staining the hoodie, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s got to go back out in the rain anyways.

When he was little, if he got himself dirty trying to get the dusting done, Petunia would stick him outside instead of letting him take a proper shower, since he would mess it up from how pristine he’d scrubbed it earlier. And if she left him out there for too long, well, it was surely Harry’s fault that he hadn’t started on dinner, wasn’t it?

He heard Will’s car pull into the driveway some time ago, so it doesn’t surprise him to see the lights from the kitchen windows pooling out onto the wet grass as he slips out of the shed. He moves slowly, sticking to the shadows with an eye on the house, hoping to avoid being spotted, but Will seems to be in another room. Before that can change he hurries out the back gate, pulling it softly shut behind him.

He hadn’t had anywhere else to go. The library is closed, and he hadn’t been in any frame of mind to face the Dursleys—to risk letting his temper carry him into the path of Dudley’ or Uncle Vernon’s fists—and with the rain, most of his usual places to lurk had to be counted out. But it hadn’t seemed right to go inside, either, even if Will had shown him where the key was, and when the car had arrived…

Harry stares out into the dark field, watching as lightning strikes in the direction of London, illuminating every detail of the landscape in white light for a moment, and without even meaning to he starts counting: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—

He swallows as the thunder rumbles through him, shaking his chest, and turns his eyes back to the ground, picking his way along the fence line towards where Magnolia Crescent meets Privet Drive, where there is a gap between the houses as they change orientation. Once he is on Privet Drive, there is no hiding, but he keeps his head ducked and wonders what the neighbors will say, if they look up from the television long enough to spot him trudging through the dark. There he goes again, that awful boy Petunia so charitably keeps. His parents were drunks, I hear; no wonder he’s turned out so badly… People like that don’t belong someplace like here…

The key slips out of his hands twice as he tries to unlock the door, the metallic clank masked by the rain and Dudley’s laughter, audible even through the rain still pounding against the houses and the thick walls between them. When he finally makes it inside, the lights in the hall are off, and he doesn’t bother turning them on as he leans against the wall to untie his shoes and peel the socks from his feet by the light from the open door to the kitchen, a chill going through his body as he exposes his toes to the air. He can hear the laugh track on the program, now, and the intermittent sound of Vernon’s snores, no doubt asleep in his seat again, and Petunia’s saccharine voice asking, Would you like another head of broccoli, Dudders? And the sound of the sink before it turns off, the clanking of dishes a moment later the sure indication that Petunia has been cleaning up from dinner. It is rather late, but then again Dudley is never full on his diet of fruits and vegetables, and so the meals stretch out longer and longer as he forces his way through the unfamiliar taste of nutrients.

Whatever Dudley’s response is, Harry doesn’t catch it, but his head jerks up in surprise as a shadow blocks the light from the kitchen. His eyes widen as the second sodden sock slips from his foot and between his fingers, landing on the floor with an audible squelch.

Petunia stands in the doorway, a hand on the knob, caught in the motion of pulling the kitchen door shut.

The silence stretches between them as they stare at one another, until in the other room the telly switches and an awful jingle blares out, and then she starts, and her eyes sweep down over Harry, taking in his soaked clothes, the way he is dripping water on the hallway floor, and he braces himself for the incoming lecture, dulling his mind so her words will roll right off him—

It doesn’t come. She sneers, but shuts the door, leaving Harry standing in the dark hall, alone.

Harry slowly lowers his foot back to the floor, wincing as he realizes he’d held himself still in a less than optimal pose and his frozen legs are aching in protest. He ignores the stabs of pain and quickly moves to the bathroom, finding towels in the linen closet, one for the floor and one for himself, before working his way down the hall backwards, cleaning the trail of footprints he’s left behind, until he is upstairs and the hall exactly as Aunt Petunia prefers it: like he had never been there at all.

He’s secure behind his locked door before he dares let out the frustrated sigh. He folds up the towel he’d been wiping the floor with so he can set his backpack on it, and when he peels his hoodie off, it takes his uniform shirt with it. Well, that is fine—he checks that the blinds are closed before pulling the rest of his clothes off, too, and changes into a new, dry outfit. He won’t have time to do laundry before work tomorrow, but he hangs everything up on the clothesline he has strung across the front wall, dangling them over the radiator.

His clothes are in place before he remembers the letter still crumpled in the pocket of his hoodie. His first urge is to hide it under the loose floorboard—but the door is locked. He tosses it on the bed instead, and tries to direct his focus to his backpack and the half-forgotten food he’s left inside. The bananas have gotten squished. The peels haven’t split, so they are still fine to eat, but… unappetizing. He supposes he won’t care when he is hungry in the morning.

He leaves them on the desk, and takes his fork out of the drawer, mixing the bag of salad together as he sits cross-legged on his bed, his comforter draped over his shoulders to try and chase away the shakes, the container of pasta salad perched on his knee. The letter sits a few inches away, and he can’t stop staring at it, even as he chews.

It isn’t wet. His hoodie was soaked through, but the parchment is dry, and the lettering still crisp and unblurred.

Magic, he dares think, slowly chewing a mouthful of limp lettuce bathed in an unidentifiable, slightly chemical-tasting dressing, magic is real, and that letter has some sort of spell on it to protect it from the rain.

He listens hard, but doesn’t hear Vernon charging up the stairs to scream at him for thinking such awful thoughts, nor Petunia’s shrill voice carrying through his door to lecture him for his ungrateful behavior. Well, of course not. They aren’t magical, after all. Little Whinging is about as un-magical as you can get, and the Dursleys are the quintessential residents—at least according to Dumbledore. If mind-reading is possible, no matter how good Vernon is at catching Harry thinking about anything slightly off-grain, he would never really be able to do it.

Magic is real, he thinks again. Vindication. He has something that the Dursleys can never take away from him. There’s a whole world of people like him out there, and Harry isn’t a freak. At least not for that.

But the moment fades, and he pulls the comforter a bit closer around his shoulders, and tries to calm his cold hands from shaking the salad right off his fork. He’s still angry—and he’d thought about it for a long time, sitting out there in Will’s shed, listening to the thunder and the rain, and concluded that his anger was fully warranted—but once he’d gotten past that and given himself a chance to think for a minute, it wasn’t just the thunder making his heart pound with fear.

Dumbledore told him someone had murdered his parents. That it had been safer to hide Harry here, in the least magical spot he could imagine, which means that there is something still out there to hide Harry from. Here, Harry is in danger, but at least he knows what he is dealing with. To be certain: he is terrified of what Vernon might do to him if Harry isn’t careful and loses control of his tongue. One day Harry isn’t going to be so lucky and the injuries dealt to him are going to be permanent, and he already has one scar where people can see it. He doesn’t need any more. But Harry knows how to deal with the Dursleys. He knows how to read the signs, and when he isn’t so caught up in the moment he’s lost track of his common sense, he knows when to run. But Dumbledore’s ‘very bad man’… the vague danger…

That, above all the bullshit with the Dursleys that Dumbledore has been convinced was nothing, is what really gets to him. Sure, the magical world is a chance to leave the Dursleys, but… will it be worth it?

Before he can follow that debate, there are footsteps on the stairs—heavy footsteps; the type that make the floorboards groan. Vernon or Dudley, then—he listens closely as they reach the tops of the stairs; it is easy to tell them apart by their rhythm—

But the steps stop too soon to tell. Too soon for comfort. Right outside Harry's door.

There is a knock.

A knock? But... Only Petunia ever knocks. If Vernon wants in, he shouts and pounds and goes for his copy of the key before Harry has time to get up, except... he's been following Petunia's orders of steering clear from the obvious stress that interacting with Harry causes him.

So… Dudley? But why would he…?

The knock repeats, a bit louder, and for a moment Harry’s mind jumps back. Dumbledore had said he would return later, said that he knew where Harry lived… For a brief moment Harry imagines him sitting at the kitchen table with another cup of tea, Vernon fuming over him—

“Yes?” he calls tentatively.

“It’s me.”

‘Me’ being Dudley. “...and?”

“And, let me in.”

Now Harry is really confused. Dudley has barely said a word to Harry all summer (besides Get out of the bathroom, Freak, or I’ll bash your face in one morning that he’d woken up before Harry was gone, and when he’d screamed at Harry for telling his parents about the soup incident) so it isn’t like Harry has any reason to expect this.

“Why?”

“Because I said so!” A pause. “I want to make a deal.”

A deal. A deal with Dudley. Selling his soul to the devil would give Harry a better return.

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

The door handle jangles. “Just open the damn door, Potter.”

Harry rolls his eyes. The rain is still constant against the window, and the sky gives another roll of thunder, as if to remind him it is out there, but if he needs he can still get out. He’s tested it before: the roofing that goes over the garage and the front door can hold his weight fine, and he is strong enough to hang himself off the edge of the roof, and the front lawn will be an even softer landing with all the rain. It would be loud, and right outside the front window, but if it is between annoying his aunt and uncle and facing Dudley’s fists, he’ll choose the former.

But Dudley seems to realize that he isn’t getting through the locked door, and isn’t so desperate yet to try and punch his way through. There is a shifting outside, and then—something slips through the crack under the door.

Harry frowns, and, against his better judgement, stands up to see what it is.

A twenty pound note. How had Dudley even gotten it down there without falling over?

“What’s that for?”

“Food,” says Dudley. “You work at the store. I want you to get me something to eat.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot? Your parents would kill me.”

“Well, don’t tell them, then. You lie to them all the time. Why would this be any different?”

“I do not.” He is almost offended. He doesn’t lie to the Dursleys, he just… omits some of the truth. The majority of the truth. If he had his way, he wouldn’t have to say anything to them at all, but that isn’t lying. Lying is telling the hospital staff that he’d gotten his face ruined by a football rather than Vernon’s fist. Lying is screaming at Harry that there is no such thing as magic as he is shoved into a cupboard. Lying is—maybe—telling him that his parents were drunks who’d gotten themselves killed in a car crash—maybe.

“Yeah, you do,” says Dudley. “All your… freakishness. You tell them it’s not your fault. It is. They say so.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Dudley is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but, then again, everyone but Petunia knows that already. “Go away, Dudley.”

“It’s not fair. You’re eating real food, why do we have to eat this… this…”

“You could go to the store yourself,” Harry suggests. “By the time you get there, you might even have earned it, assuming that you actually walk.”

“Why should I have to? I’ve never had to before. And…”

And?

“...it’s not like I can go out like this.”

Harry stares at the door. That almost sounded like Dudley is admitting he has a problem, which means Harry must have misheard. Surely. “You’re going to have to leave the house sometime,” he says slowly. “In September, at least.”

Encouraging does not seem to be the way to go. The door shakes again. “Shut up, Potter. Are you going to get me something to eat? Otherwise I’ll break down your door and take it, you tosser.”

Dudley’s diplomatic skills are, frankly, astonishing. Harry has had better luck making deals with Vernon, and that’s saying something, but he supposes that he has a significant advantage on Dudley, who has never had to think about what someone else might want before. And while Dudley is the fourth most awful person in the world (trailing Vernon, Petunia, and ‘Aunt’ Marge, if only because he’s gone to Smelting’s for the majority of the year), Harry can muster some pity for his cousin. It isn’t entirely his fault he’s ended up this way, just like it isn’t entirely Harry’s fault that the Dursleys hated him. And unlike Harry, Dudley has never known what it is like to be consistently hungry before. Harry, who has, doesn’t envy him in the slightest.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t going to be vindictive about the situation. He moves back to his desk, hiding the remainder of the pasta in the drawer. “If I give you my breakfast for tomorrow, will you leave me alone about this?”

A pause. Harry grabs the bunch of bananas and, after a moment’s consideration, breaks off the least squished and tucks it under his pillow—along with the letter. Can’t have Dudley spotting that, though Harry doubts Dudley would care about anything he would have to read to know what it was.

“Fine.”

Bait taken. Harry steels himself, accepting that he is probably setting himself up for a fist in his face (though if Dudley does try anything, Harry suspects he’d only have to shout for Aunt Petunia that Dudley is trying to break his diet again and for once she’ll come to his rescue) and opens the door, thrusting the bananas towards Dudley’s face.

Dudley takes them, gaping. “What’s that, then?”

“What does it look like?” Harry asks. “Bananas. I know they’re a fruit, but surely you’ve at least heard of them.”

“I don’t mean—I know what they are! But that’s not breakfast, and I’ve already got those downstairs, and these are all…”

“They’re more than I ever got, when your parents were supposed to be feeding me,” Harry says lowly. “But, hey, you don’t have to eat them if you don’t want to. You don’t have to worry about when your next meal is, because you have that whole big refrigerator stuffed full downstairs. All the food you could think about eating, even if it is vegetables and all.”

“But are you going to eat, then?” Dudley asks, peering over Harry’s shoulder like the room is secretly stashed full of the bacon and eggs he somehow expects Harry to be able to produce. “You promised your breakfast! I don’t want this!”

“That is breakfast, Dudley,” Harry says. “It’d make two breakfasts, if I needed it to.”

“But that’s fine for you. You’re tiny. You don’t need as much as I do. You never did.”

Harry stares at him. “Don’t they teach you basic nutrition at Smeltings?”

Dudley scoffs. “That’s for girls. And nancy boys.”

“Jesus, Dudley,” Harry says. “Okay, look. Food contains energy, which we call calories—”

“I know that!”

“—and if you eat more calories than you use, your body stores it as fat. If you eat less, it burns fat. That’s why you’re on a diet, you great dolt. I’m not on the diet because I spent all my childhood half-starved, so I never put on any weight at all. It’s not that I didn’t need it, it’s that your parents never bloody gave me enough to eat!”

With that, he slams the door in Dudley’s face, snapping the lock back into place.

A moment later, he hears Dudley shuffle down the hall to his room. The door clicks shut, and he can hear his cousin shifting about, until the loading music for one of his games comes on. Only then does Harry let out another exasperated sigh.

What had he been thinking? This is just like when he’d let Vernon bait him into talking back. He’s lucky he’s still on his feet, and that Dudley had gone away with just his bananas—and he’s just lost two-thirds of his breakfast, hasn’t he? For what, a reality check? Dudley doesn’t care about morality. He cares about food and video games and bad television played for cheap laughs. He wouldn’t know how to recognize a complex emotion if it hit him in the face. And he certainly will never give a damn about the pains in the life of Harry bloody Potter.

Scowling, Harry takes a step back—and nearly slips as he steps on the twenty pound note, which had been brushed aside when Harry had opened the door. For a moment Harry imagines grabbing it and storming out into the hall, tearing it up and throwing it at Dudley’s fat feet—but no, Dudley has already forgotten about it, no doubt, same as he’s forgotten the one that is probably still folded up in the Lego bin. What is twenty pounds to a boy who’s never had to work a minute of his life? To Harry, it was five hours of work, before taxes, and four-fifths of a week’s rent, for this shitty room in this shitty house in shitty Privet Drive—

The light begins to flicker dangerously, and in the next room over, Dudley lets out a startled cry as the game’s music cuts off. Harry’s eyes go wide. He takes a deep breath— It’s just the storm, he wills the Dursleys to believe— It’s just the storm knocking out the—

There is a great boom of thunder, and suddenly the lights go out entirely. For a moment, the house is deafeningly quiet, Harry’s heart pounding against his chest and the murmur of Vernon and Petunia downstairs, and between the hanging laundry and the slats of his window blinds, Harry can see that the houses across the street have lost power as well, and—

There is a sound like a purr. The lights flicker on again, in Harry’s room and across the street, and the radiator whistles back into action, and Harry stares in confusion.

Had that been him? His… magic? He thought—Dumbledore had said…  

But surely, Harry, you can remember a time when something inexplicable happened? When you knew that you were the one doing it, but couldn’t say how it happened? Perhaps when you were frightened, or angry, or wished for something very hard?

Making the lights go out is one thing, but calling thunder? No—no, he can’t have done that. Unconsciously or not, Harry doesn’t like thunder. And there’s a storm going on. It had been natural, coincidental, and very much not magic.

The moments before that, however…

Dumbledore had said that at Hogwarts, he can learn to control it. To… wield it, he had said. He—

But why is Harry listening to anything Dumbledore had said?

He picks his foot up off the twenty pound note and hurries back over to his bed, wrapping the comforter back around his shoulders—only to jump as it brushes his skin, cold and wet. His hair must have dripped on it. He’d brought up a towel, but that was still hanging off the back of his desk chair, unused. He leans over to snag it, but then…

What about magic? What about the time his bed had started to float while he was daydreaming about Star Wars? Is magic like the Force, and he could…

He sits back, considering the towel, dinner forgotten. The Force can’t be real, because Dumbledore had said it was illegal to tell people about magic and they’d made films about it. But he’s made glass disappear before, and moved himself from one end of a hallway to the other, from the ground up onto the roof, and if that’s real, then surely he can move a towel.

It’s just… he doesn’t know how. He’s never done it intentionally, and, well, he doesn’t have a wand, like Dumbledore did, and even if he did he wouldn’t know how to use it. He doesn’t have a ritual worked out, either, the way he does with the teachers and other kids at school, and this doesn’t seem the type of magic where a ritual would work. Not that he’d know about types of magic—

Were there magic words? Enchanted objects? He’d watched Fantasia in school, for music class, and all Mickey had to do was put on a magic hat and he’d been able to command broomsticks around. That scene had given Harry nightmares, and he doesn’t have a magic hat, anyway, or any sort of hat at all. He can wave his hands about, but—

Thunder crashes again outside, and Harry starts up, his heart beating rapidly against his chest again. That hadn’t been him. He hadn’t even moved—it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t.

After a minute, he manages a deep breath and leans over again, grabbing the towel and burying his face in it, scrubbing it against his hair. His shivering doesn’t subside, though, and he lets it settle on his shoulders, bringing the comforter to rest on top of it.

Magic. He doesn’t understand it, clearly, or know how much it can do. Its potential, or his. There has to be rules to how it works, anyways, if it is real. There are laws, according to Dumbledore, about keeping it secret, but there’s always going to be people who can’t care less about what is and is not legal, so there has to be rules to magic that prevents people from doing anything too obvious. If there wasn’t rules and limits, well, they wouldn’t need laws, because they could just make it so that no one without magic found out—they could make it so that everyone would have magic, even.

Not that people like the Dursleys deserved magic, Harry thinks coolly.

But there are some people with magic who can’t possibly deserve magic either, but have it. Or at least one person—whoever had killed his parents. And if there is one person, there are probably others, and if there’s a whole world of people with magic, like Dumbledore had said, there’s probably a whole world’s worth of awful people with magic. So maybe it isn’t about deserving it. And Harry doesn’t want to go down the road of trying to figure out whether he deserves magic or not, because he’s fairly certain he wouldn’t like the answer he found at the other end.

And who is he to judge, anyways? Dumbledore had said his parents were brave, but Dumbledore, obviously, had been a coward, too scared to face the situation he had left Harry in until Harry had shouted it in his face. And ‘brave’ didn’t mean ‘good’, and while the Dursleys are rarely right about anything, they’ve always insisted that Harry’s parents had been no good… So, what if they had been bad? What if they’d been killed because they were the sort of people who didn’t deserve magic, and—

He picks up his fork again, and stabs it into the remaining salad. This is pointless. He needs more information, if he wants to understand what had happened to his parents. Screw listening to Dumbledore, there has to be… Are there magical police? Magical newspapers? There has to be something—some archive he can get to, some way to get information about the story beyond listening to a barmy old wizard who thought it was just fine to leave Harry with the Dursleys for this long.

But to access that sort of information, he would have to go to the magical world. And if there is someone out there who wants to hurt him… someone with magic…

But he brushes off that concern. First, why would anyone care enough to try to hurt him, some unknown kid from what according to Dumbledore is the least magical place around, and second, what can magic do to him that the Dursleys haven’t already? They’ve starved him, neglected him, broken his bones and bruised his face, locked him up in the cupboard under the stairs for days on end. They’ve kept him from having friends, demanded that he work to pay for his space, lied to him about his parents and who he is— What more can magic do? Kill him? Harry had spent many long nights in the cupboard, aching from untreated illness or injury, half-certain he was going to die. He is used to the idea of death. Not that he wants to die, but—he can’t imagine a wizard with a wand is any more dangerous than someone with a gun, and staying in Little Whinging isn’t a guarantee against being killed, anyways, and that isn’t what he’s worried about. They can threaten him, hurt him, starve him, but unless there is a spell to control his mind, there is nothing they could do to break him.

Unless there is a spell to control his mind.

He shudders. The very possibility… But no, if there is such horrible magic out there, then he will learn how to fight it. There has to be a way, and if there isn’t, he will make one. Only…

At last he retrieves the letter from under his pillow, along with the banana he’s already half forgotten. He glances at the door to be sure the lock is in place and sets the banana aside before smoothing out the weird papers again, reading the somehow still crisp list of books. There’s The Standard Book of Spells and Magical Theory , which are such general titles they might have something on the matter, though the last title on the list— The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection — seems the most likely.

Either way, Harry decides, the moment he gets ahold of those books he is going to read them cover to cover, and if there is a magical library he can borrow from, he’ll spend as many hours there as he possibly can. He doesn’t think there is anything new magic can do to him, but what does he know about magic? Nothing. He’s been stuck here his whole life, away from it, and the moment he gets to Hogwarts—

Wait… Hold on a second, Harry.

He hadn't actually decided he is going to Hogwarts. After everything Dumbledore has done to mess up his life so far, after all that vagueness about evil murderers who Dumbledore thinks Harry needs to be kept safe from, is he really willing to go? It’s like that song by The Clash, so easy to get stuck in his head— Should I Stay or Should I Go? —only—

Only there is really no question about it. He should go. Assuming what Dumbledore has told him is true, this isn’t like the offer Sam gave him at all. He will be leaving without running off, without ruining his life—though he wonders if he will be able to complete his A-levels at a place like Hogwarts, with a booklist like that… But maybe he can study for them on his own? And if his parents really did leave him money, there’s no reason to keep his job at Tesco, either, and if he doesn’t have to worry about any of that, well…

Why on earth would he stay? Why would he stay in Little bloody Whinging for a second longer than he had to?

The answer comes, unbidden.

Sam.

He hasn’t even thought about what she’s going to think.

He gives up on the salad, setting it on his desk, and rolls down onto his bed, looking at the letter sideways. Sam isn’t magical. He’s certain of that—if magic always happens when you are angry or scared, then he wouldn’t have had to pull her across the street when she saw her mum, and she wouldn’t have had to throw her glass when she was angry. She isn’t magical, and… she isn’t here.

He thinks he’s supposed to be angry about that. That Sam, his first and only friend, isn’t here for the biggest upheaval in his life that he has a part in shaping, that even if he wanted to discuss this with her, to turn to her for advice, to ask her to agree with him that his perhaps hasty and rash treatment of Dumbledore had been warranted by the circumstances, he can’t, because she’s gone and run away and left him no way to get ahold of her. He’s supposed to be angry that she had left him behind to face this, his most desperate hour, alone, but he isn’t. He’s relieved.

She’d left him easily enough. She’d let him think she was dead for a week, and then she reappeared only long enough to walk right out of his life. After that, he shouldn’t really feel the need to consider her in his decision. Even if she does come back in a year, which isn’t a guarantee—Harry doesn’t owe it to her to stick around. And she’d tried to help him get away from the Dursleys, anyways, so he’ll be doing what she wanted him to, by leaving.

And so what if he leaves without telling her? People leave all the time. Sam had left. Niall had left Will before that. Twelve years ago, whether recklessly driving a car while under the spell of alcohol or defiant in the face of someone who wanted them dead, Harry’s parents had left him. Working in a supermarket, Harry probably walks in and out of the lives of ten different people every day. And he’s done so much to make sure that no one notices him, he doubts anyone will realize when he disappears, anyways, so the idea that he owes it to anyone else to stay present in their lives is simply a lie. Not the Dursleys, who don’t want him, in any case; not Dumbledore, who he is certain he will be better off staying as far away from as he can, even if he does go to Hogwarts; and not even the shaky promise that in a few years Sam might come back. No—there is nothing that can hold him back from getting out of Privet Drive, nothing but himself.

He wants to go—he won’t even try to pretend he isn’t bursting with questions waiting to be answered; questions about magic, about his past, about the life he can live out from under the Dursley’s thumb—and according to Dumbledore, he has the means. And while Dumbledore is a problem, well. Harry has plenty of practice in dealing with people he cannot stand. More practice than most. And Dumbledore wants him there, which means Harry has the upper hand.

Yes. Harry is going to go to Hogwarts, and it is going to be on his terms.

If Dumbledore hasn’t been lying or mistaken, when he left, Harry will have money and magic at his disposal. People always try to tell kids that money can’t buy happiness, but Harry isn’t an idiot: he doesn’t need happiness. Besides, it’s always people who aren’t hurting for money who say that. And they’re generally deluded about a good number of things in life, so Harry tends not to listen to them.

With money, he can support himself. With magic, he can no doubt do better at what he’s been working on for years: slipping under people’s notice, disappearing from sight. Without fear that the Dursleys will hear about it, he can make new friends, and surely there will be parents out there like Will, who would be willing to house him without alerting anyone. And if not? Well, if he has the money to rent a room, he will. Hell, if worst comes to worst, he will take Will up on his offer. Or he’ll find a way to find Sam—he’ll have magic at his disposal, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep himself safe.

And if magic doesn’t have the answers? He’s smart enough. He’ll find a way.

So he makes up his mind right then. An ultimatum: he is going to go to Hogwarts, and he will never come back. If anyone tries to make him—well. You can’t force a boy into hell if you don’t know he’s there.

And if there is one thing he’s good at, it’s making people think he does not exist.

And besides, who would ever care about Harry Potter?