Chapter Text
Chapter One: -- CW: Child Abuse, both implied and shown
Harry woke up to aunt Petunia banging on his closet door. When he groaned in acknowledgement the banging stopped, and aunt Petunia instead replied “Get up, boy! You need to make breakfast!” and left. Harry tried to get up, but his back screamed at him to stop, so he shifted to support himself with his right arm.
After finally managing to get up he went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, and as he was starting on the scrambled eggs aunt Petunia came in “It’s Dudders’ special day, so you better get this right, or you won’t even see food tomorrow” she reminded him and left again, as if disgusted by just being in the same room as Harry. Harry rolled his eyes and continued, one handed; His left arm still hurt when he used it, so he preferred not to.
After he was done, he brought the food to the table, which was already loaded with gifts, and set it down in front of aunt Petunia “Good. Now get out of the house, I don’t want poor Dudders to have to see a freak on his birthday” she said, and Harry happily obliged, as he frankly didn’t want to be around the Dursleys either.
He considered going to the library, where he usually spent most of his time, but aunt Petunia had ordered him to go to Mrs. Figg’s yesterday, and now was definitely not the time to ignore her orders. And so he set off towards Mrs. Figg’s, careful not to stress his back all the while.
As Mrs. Figg held the door open for him and he entered, Mrs. Figg seemed to notice the way his left arm was limply hanging by his side. “Oh dear, is your arm alright sweetie?” she asked and Harry just shrugged, except he only shrugged with his right shoulder, and that seemed to only make Mrs. Figg more worried. “Does it hurt?” she asked, and he simply responded “Well yeah, but it’s only bad if I move it. It’s fine, really, don’t worry”, but that too only seemed to make Mrs. Figg more worried. “What happened?” she asked, and Harry flinched, the memory trying to force itself upon him as it had been since last week. He fought the memory down and responded “Not supposed to talk about it”. “Were you at the Hospital already?” asked Mrs. Figg, which confused him. Why would the Dursleys take him to the hospital? He tried to convey his confusion and asked “What? Why would they take me to the hospital?”, and Mrs. Figg, seemingly even more worried now, said “Well, because you’re hurt? Have they never taken you to the hospital?”. Meanwhile Mrs. Figg was guiding him to the couch to sit down, and as she noticed the way Harry was walking to avoid stressing his back too much her look grew even more worried, with a hint of anger too. Harry didn’t notice though, and just replied “No, I’ve never been to a hospital”, now trying his best to stay vague as he didn’t want Mrs. Figg to ask questions he wasn’t allowed to answer.
Thankfully she stopped asking him questions, instead helping him sit down on the couch and getting him a piece of her trademark dry chocolate cake as he adjusted to sit in the least painful way. Once he held the piece of chocolate cake firmly in his right hand, Mrs. Figg excused herself, saying she had to write some letters, but that she would be back soon. He was perfectly alright with that, and focused on the chocolate cake instead, which really was quite dry and not particularly tasty, but still a godsend, as he hadn’t had anything to eat in the last week.
As he was finishing up, one of Mrs. Figg’s cats jumped up on the couch next to him, and he turned his attention to it instead. It was Snowy, big and an off-white colour. Harry began petting it, and it purred and moved to his lap instead.
He kept petting it for a while, until he heard the door to the hallway open, and in came not just Mrs. Figg, but two other women behind her as well, one tall and black-haired with square glasses, a pointy black hat and extravagant emerald green robes, and one just as tall with light brown hair, wide eyes and a normal t-shirt and blue jeans; Both looked incredibly angry, though the brown-haired woman’s expression conveyed some pity, too, which only got more pronounced as she entered fully. Harry, scared he had said too much to Mrs. Figg and was going to be punished for it now, tried to make himself as small as possible, pressing against the arm of the couch. The black-haired woman spoke up “Don’t worry Harry, we’re not here to hurt you, we’re here to help you.” She sounded kind, like she meant it, but it had to be a trap. Who’d want to help him, after all? She continued “I’m Minerva McGonagall, and this is Andromeda Tonks. She’ll tend to your arm. Now, do you want to tell us how this happened, dear?”. The mention of how it happened was too strong a trigger to overcome this time, and the memory flooded over him, as he curled in on himself and began crying silently.
He was in the living room. Aunt Petunia had just given him a haircut, but he’d just grown it back immediately as soon as aunt Petunia had set the scissors down. He had no idea how that had happened, all he knew now was that uncle Vernon was right furious. He saw uncle Vernon come over from the other side of the room, red-faced, and he instinctively curled in on himself, as if it’d help anything. He vaguely heard uncle Vernon scream something about how he was a freak, and how he was going to get punished deservingly. He saw uncle Vernon’s hand come down on him in his peripheral vision, and he flinched, bracing for impact. But the impact didn’t come. Something had stopped uncle Vernon’s hand dead in its tracks. Uncle Vernon was now yelling even louder, and Harry barely made out that he yelled for aunt Petunia to leave the living room, and to shut the doors and keep Dudley away. Then, Harry saw his hand come down again, and this time the impact came, and it came hard. He felt a horrible pain through his upper arm, followed quickly by a stabbing pain in the same spot. He curled in on himself even more, and he felt more of uncle Vernon’s punches hit his back, until uncle Vernon yanked him out of the chair, carrying him to his closet. He threw him inside, slammed the door shut and locked the door. The last thing Harry heard before his vision faded to black was something about “No food for a week”.
Before it could all happen again, he heard a soft voice next to him, and he opened his eyes slightly to find the brown-haired woman next to him, keeping some distance to him, holding out a bar of chocolate. She was saying something to him, he couldn’t process what she was saying, but he really wanted the chocolate. Slowly he reached out for it, and the woman all but pressed it into his hand.
As he nibbled on the chocolate he began regaining his senses, and he heard the woman saying kind affirmations. He also noticed that Mrs. Figg and the black-haired woman had left the room. Once he’d finished the bar of chocolate the woman asked if it was okay if she inspected Harry’s arm, to which he slowly nodded.
She then got out a straight stick and waved it at his arm, and somehow a yellow light flew out of it! As if that were not strange enough, Harry then looked down at his arm, and could both see and feel the yellow light enveloping it, a slight feeling of warmth radiating off it. “Wow! What is that?” he asked, amazed. The woman replied nonchalantly “Oh, it’s a simple scanning spell. It lets me know what’s wrong with your arm, so I can heal it”. “Spell?” he asked, and the woman just sighed. “Of course you wouldn’t know. I’ll have to tell Minerva later”.
That brought back the fear in him, and he retreated back further into the corner. The woman noticed how he’d reacted, and apologetically said “Oh no, I’m sorry, it’s not your fault at all. We’re not gonna tell the Dursleys or something, if you’re scared of that. We’re here to rescue you from them, we hate them as much as you do. Do you want to come with us? I promise you won’t have to ever see the Dursleys again if you do” That sounded good, but at the same time, it sounded too good to be true. “They hate you because you can do magic, Harry. If you stay with them they’ll continue to beat you for it” At that, Harry winced. “But if you come with us, we can teach you how to do magic. In fact, Minerva’s Deputy Headmistress at the Wizarding School, Hogwarts. Doesn’t that sound good?”
That explained how his hair had grown back. And how uncle Vernon’s punch had stopped dead in mid air. Maybe it was true, after all. After thinking about it for some time, Harry nodded. “Great! I’ll just do a spell that’ll make you float for a while so you don’t have to put any weight on your back, okay?”. Harry nodded again, and then felt a funny sensation of becoming completely weightless. The woman seemed to guide where he was floating with her stick, and she gently and slowly floated Harry over to the hallway, and then further to Mrs Figg’s bedroom, where Mrs. Figg and the dark-haired woman were waiting.
Harry felt a great sense of exhaustion as the brown-haired woman floated him over to the tall fireplace and lowered him so he was almost standing on the ground. The brown-haired woman then came to stand next to Harry and turned to him “Alright, now, Harry, we’ll be taking the Floo to my house. It’s magic, we’ll throw some of this powder” She held up a handful of a glittery powder “into the fire, and that’ll allow us to go there. Close your eyes and be careful your arms don’t go everywhere. Ready?” Harry nodded and adjusted his right hand to hold his left arm, and the woman threw some powder into the fire, which turned emerald green, a similar shade to the robes of the black-haired woman. The brown-haired woman grabbed Harry’s hand and dragged him into the fire, all the while saying “The Tonks Home!” Harry felt his body get squeezed and spun, and he blacked out.