Chapter Text
Harry closed his eyes and waited.
Seconds seemed to stretch out sluggishly, as though his entire world had been trapped in an Arresto Momentum spell.
He heard Voldemort's spine-chilling scream. The unmistakable whoosh of a spell traveling towards him.
Green light exploded everywhere — blinding, even through his closed eyelids. There was an impact, for a split second. And then—
Absence of pain. Unnatural silence engulfed him whole. Peace. Light. There were no emotions, no thoughts. Harry would find himself floating in that foreign space for a great deal of time.
The journey was long. He didn't know where he was going, but there had to be something. A fated destination, maybe. Some great struggle awaited him, a trial to pass, like always. But there was nothing.
Until it appeared before him — a tiny, dark fracture in reality — and he reached out, fast, before it vanished, and he would be trapped in nothingness again.
An odd, unfamiliar charged energy coursed through his being.
CRACK. Gone was the light. Darkness swallowed all — and it stirred something awake. In him, a place he left behind a lifetime ago. A vision of it swam in his unconsciousness and brought back the feelings of hunger and pain with it.
Fear.
Out. He wanted out.
OUT!!! OU—
"Pipe down there, ya brat!" a loud voice pierced his ears and woke him up.
He shot upwards, took a greedy breath in, as if emerging from the abyss. His eyes flew open only to behold darkness again. Scrambling to his knees, quick and unsteady, Harry took hold of the small door handle and pushed at it with all his strength and desperation.
Light, LIGHT!
"What is the meaning of this?" Aunt Petunia. Displeasure permanently etched into her stern face. Thin lips upturned into a grimace that accompanied him his whole childhood. He didn't understand. Why was he here? Was he dreaming?
"BOY!" Maybe it was hell. He looked up at the man, who seemed small the last time he had a chance to see him. Now, once again, he covered Harry's whole world. When he was small, he had to remind himself often that there was life for him beyond this horrid house — he just needed to wait a little to get back to it. It was a different story, when it came to his current circumstances.
What life? It was death, always. Everybody died out there; for him, because of him.
"I'm sorry." He really was. Just not for what Vernon was accusing him of.
"SORRY? What USE are your words? Because of you, our life was flooded with all this nonsense and tomfoolery!"
It was hell.
He was eleven all over again.