Silence

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?