Chapter Text
Today was the third time in the past week Harry woke up extremely uncomfortable. To the point that he was restless with fatigue as well as so tired he had fallen over trying to get out of bed.
He has spent hours of the days since his return from Hogwarts in the Dursleys' garden, the unreasonably hot sun bearing down on him, Vernon and Dudley growling down on him, dehydrated, dizzy and nauseous and wondering what he had done to deserve this. Weights pressed against his eyelids, skin burning, eyes stinging painfully as they watered.
'It has to be the heat,' he thought, laying there, in his aunt’s pristine lawn at No.4 Privet Drive.
It's been two weeks since the end of the Triwizard Tournament. Two weeks since the Graveyard. Two weeks since Cedric Diggory was killed and left Harry drowning in the wake of his death and the Daily Prophet seemed to be too busy slandering Dumbledore and questioning Harry's sanity to be reporting about Cedric's murder and Voldemort's return.
He wanted to leave. He could hardly breathe without feeling the weight of an entire hippogriff at his chest. He ached to feel freedom for even a moment, to grab his Firebolt, strap his trunk to it and fly away but a stunt like that would prove him just the attention seeker the Prophet was making him out to be.
He had tried to console himself. There was nothing much he could do, as so far, the editor or whoever was in-charge of incoming owls at the Daily Prophet has been entirely ignoring Harry's account of that day. Seemingly content in continuing to mud sling his name – and make heavy handed comments about his mental stability.
The heat remained unbearable even as the afternoon sun set. Every inch of Harry's body was coated in sweat. His head hurting something awful. The neighbours besides them in Number-who-cares turn their sprinklers on and Harry wrenches his eyes open and watched the sunlight reflect off of the gleaming water droplets. The water pools and then flows into rivulets towards the flowerbeds in Mr. and Mrs. Whoever's garden – looking like a cascade of shimmering pieces of a shattered mirror, reflecting a sky so blue and just as broken as it's observer.
Harry sighed, launching into another violent coughing fit and cringed at the drops of blood that ended up on his baggy and faded T-shirt. Finally, it was Aunt Petunia's pinched face and harsh glare peering down on him from the drawing room window that sent Harry scrambling up to Dudley's second bedroom (never his, even after all these years) ignoring her mutterings about how freak-like it was of Harry to be getting a cold in summer and how she would be damned if she let any of them catch it.
He scoured the Daily Prophet for the third time that day – hoping he had missed the part announcing the Dark Lord's return.
Harry was quickly beginning to fear that the Ministry will not acknowledge Voldemort's return until the Dark Mark starts hanging over the houses of muggle-borns and blood traitors alike and even then, they might still blame Death Eaters instead. He can –when thought with a clear head– acknowledge that Fudge and his lackeys were terrified at the possibility of a second war that will inevitably follow the Dark Wizard's return. Harry himself spent the days in fear for his life and the Dursleys' no matter how much he despised them. It's not like there was anyone here to protect them.
He sighed and decided he could do something else than drown in misery. Ron's letter had arrived.
But his head still felt heavy, eyelids dropping. He does not want to sleep. Does not want to watch Cedric's body become Ron's or Hermione's as it often does before waking up, shaking from the memory of Voldemort's Crucio. Hedwig hooted in concern, flying from her perch to look over at him but his vision became nothing but white spots before he could reassure her.
Harry woke almost a day and half later, on the floor Dudley had dragged him to by a fistful of hair before Aunt Petunia had dumped a pitcher of water over his head.
Harry hated his relatives more than he hated anyone
He hates being ill even more.
Time passes, he replies to his friends, to Sirius. Nearly screams, drowning in anger and frustration. Ron and Hermione were together, most probably at the Burrow, withholding whatever it is they know. He could understand the concern with owls but they could have used muggle means. Could have used the telephone, could have come to visit just once. He certainly would have been by their side if they had been the ones to get kidnapped, forced to participate in a dark ritual, tortured and then made to fight their parents’ murderer.
At some point, he writes begging to know when he could see them. He asks Sirius.
He'd already known the answer.
He knew what was being insinuated. A lifetime spent with the Dursleys meant Harry was rather well-versed in recognizing punishment for what it was in its rawest form. Everybody knew how deeply his relatives despised him and how deeply he loathed them for it in return and yet here he was. But can he blame them? Surely they expect Harry to understand that it was his fault that Voldemort was back. His blood that helped resurrect the Dark Wizard back into a corporeal form. It was Harry who had made Cedric touch that portkey. This punishment was no less than what he deserved for-
''Kill the spare.''
A flash. Green light.
Cedric Diggory, a beloved boy.
Lifeless body, vacant eyes.
An accusing glare.
''CEDRIC!....Cedric! No... Please! Don't kill Cedric...Ced-''
He wakes up screaming.
Harry's mysterious illness haunted him. His 'family' remained unconcerned. What was there to be concerned about? If the situation was that dire indeed, then his kind should have already taken the boy off their backs.
Rolling over to his side, he grumpily keeps scanning the Prophet word to word, front to back and lamenting over how much they screwed him over and wondering if cynics from the Daily Prophet were correct in saying that he'd made it all up. That it wasn't real. The stacks of the newspaper in his room taunted him, showing him a reality that wasn't his but apparent to everybody else.
Ron and Hermione continued to torment him as well. With tantalizing hints that he has now taken to overlook, which just meant he was avoiding answering their owls.
Sirius wrote of nothing much except telling him to heed caution and Harry had stopped pestering him too. He did wonder whether the wizard who illegally became an animagus at fifteen, served twelve years in Azkaban for a murder he did not commit, escaped in an attempt to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place and then went on the run with a stolen hippogriff with the help of two time-travelling teenagers retained the right to tell him to not do anything rash, to keep his nose clean. It was galling and particularly irrelevant given he had done nothing to warrant such a strict warning from once again Sirius of all people.
Nevertheless, Harry had done so far, as Sirius advised.
''I had a family, y'know,'' Cedric says to him once, cold and accusing, donned in his tournament attire, covered in graveyard dirt and the stench of death.
''How did you do it, Potter? I could've never just stood and watch someone be killed.'' he took a step forward. ''How could you have done nothing? How could you just let me die? I was good, I was kind and I was loved. How could you do this to my family?''
His face contorted into an expression Harry could not remember ever seeing on him before. “I was NOT a spare! It was you who was meant to die, not me! I had a mother, a father, girlfriend and friends.... who do you have? What do you have? Why do you get to live?”
''I never meant for you to die!'' Harry pleaded. ''I swear! If I had known the cup was a portkey -I would have never offered it to you- Please... I'm sorry.'' An anguished cry left Cedric as his body went slack.
''No!...no..no..no-''
''Crucio',' said Voldemort stepping on Cedric's body.
The impact of it hit him full force, the pain so terrible that he prefered death.
Upon his lumpy mattress, he remained unmoving in pain, form twitching, watching the moonlight cast a soft glow across the room. Sweat poured down his forehead and he groaned at the ache that spread across his chest at every small intake of air, as if his lungs were on fire and doused in ice at the same time. He drapes his arm over his waist, absentmindedly pressing against the skin of his protruding ribs and chest, hoping to relieve some sort of pressure.
Slowly, he tried to push himself up using his arms, clenching his teeth as the tiniest bit of shifting caused stabbing pains through his body. The flat pillow he had shoved beneath his back for the ache falling to the floor as he painfully pulled himself up and fumbled in the dark for his glasses, desperately trying to smother a hacking caugh as his useless lungs contracted horribly deep within his chest.
He gasped as another fit came upon him, scratching his incredibly dry throat raw.
Listening carefully, he placed a hand over his mouth in an attemt to control his erratic breathing while making sure his aunt or uncle would not be banging down the door any second. Harry got to his feet shakily and padded slowly out of his room to the bathroom having no desire to wake the sleeping occupants of the house.
He had to hold himself steady against the doorframe for five minutes to prevent himself collapsing.
The trouble was, that whatever illness bothered him, it had gotten progressively worse as the days passed, creeping up on his consciousness and Harry was not entirely sure how long he could go on like this. He can count on one hand the number of times he had received medical assistance around the Dursleys' as a child and even that was generous and far much less than the number of times he had actually required medical treatment. He had always done better dealing with these things alone. Neglectful as they were- his aunt and uncle had never been much help even when they acknowledged he needed it. Even the glasses he wore had been dug up by Aunt Petunia for free from the bin at the clinic
He straightened up and dragged himself into the bathroom. Sighing, he splashed his burning and clammy skin with cold water, eyes rising to the reflection in the mirror.
He was met with a sight that made his breath hitch and he stepped back from the mirror in repulsion.
The face staring back at him was almost unrecognizable. Emaciated, drawn, cheeks hollowed and drained of all signs of health. Dark circles beneath his eyes. His skin looked like it was pulsing from the inside, as if it was going to shed. A greenish tint about it. His hair, matted and sweaty, clung to his forehead, slightly parted in the middle making that damned lightning bolt scar visible.To top all that, whispery strands of pale, greying hair curled right above it, making the whole look of him just slightly unhinged.
Harry reached up and plucked them straight out.
He sneezed and watched as sparks flew out of his nose.
His blood ran cold.