Chapter 4: Like we didn't have enough to deal with

Disclaimer: Is the Dursleys' behaviour consistent with someone prevailing on them to tell Harry nothing about magic just as Arabella Figg was ordered to by Dumbledore? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter 4

"So, are you okay with me telling you the story a bit at a time like that? With not getting everything all at once? I want it to be good for you, you see."

The "yes" I get is tiny and quiet and comes with big, shiny eyes. You really don't have to show this kid much of any kind of concern to be the best grown-up he's ever met.

"Well, a long time ago, before you were born, James Potter and Lily Evans got on a train to go to a special school, all the way up north in Scotland. Your Aunt Petunia couldn't go to the same school, because she didn't pass the test to get in like your mum Lily did, and so she has been jealous and angry ever since. Now, on the train, they met and at first they didn't get on..."

-oOo-

Telling Harry the story - editing heavily to keep magic out of the picture and imparting important lessons about being polite, thinking before you speak, and paying attention and working hard at school - takes us up until the kiddies' programmes come on, whereupon we take a break. Fortunately Petunia seems to be unable to multitask when it comes to being an absolute failure as a mother: with Dudley at home all day she does her own housework and spends her free time feeding the little bugger into an early grave. Harry is let out every hour or so to use the loo, with no other interaction permitted other than the standard bread-and-marge feeding at lunchtime. I can only guess at the motivation: not wanting precious Diddydums to see Mummy letting her inner bitch out to play? Doesn't want her darling Duddikins to catch magic off The Freak? I really don't care. Harry and I are left undisturbed and that's the important thing.

Even with the entire morning and half the afternoon, I don't get much past the middle of his parents' time at school, digressing a lot as Harry has questions about everything and likes that I never tell him off for asking and - I really have got nothing better to do on account of being dead and all - actually enjoy answering.

Sometimes I give him the choice between the serious answer and the silly answer: he always asks for the silly answer first and then the sensible answer second. As we go on he gets adventurous and asks for silly sensible answers and sensible silly answers, which I tell him is brilliant because it is. Taking a new concept and playing with it like that? There are adults that don't have that kind of mental dexterity. The Dursleys won't be stamping that out without a fight from me. I'd say over my dead body, but that ship, what with the time travel, won't be sailing for another thirty-odd years.

I just straight up tell Harry we're taking a break to listen to the telly, and that after dinner I'll be telling a story just for fun to take us through to bedtime. I mean to wait for him to ask for more before I talk about his parents again; it's going to have to be rationed out carefully because I straight up don't know that much. Harry is okay with that. I hope it's because he doesn't want to risk me saying no, but it could just be because he's had obedience bullied into him.

The Friday afternoon children's television schedule is very different from when I was Harry's age, which was ten years ago from where we are in history. Not only has Crackerjack apparently gone off the air, I remember almost none of these programmes. The exceptions are Play School, Jackanory and Newsround, but the first two are older than I am and Newsround was still going in 2019. I'm fairly sure that Live from the Broom Cupboard and Neighbours start about this time, but clearly not yet. Assuming they're not lost as differences from my home universe, because apparently this one has a TV personality called The Great Humberto and who the fuck he is, well, I haven't a bull's notion. If I remember rightly Dudley's a fan in six years' time, so he might not be on yet and when he is he'll probably be bloody dire and unfunny into the bargain. If you funded a five year study on raising a child to be completely fucking awful you'd maybe do half as well as the Dursleys are managing on raw natural talent: anything he likes is probably not fit entertainment for decent people with intelligence to insult.

Whatever. The unfamiliar programming gives me more things to talk to Harry about, as I cheerfully admit I don't remember these shows from when I was a little boy and get him to tell me everything he knows about them. Harry blithely accepts that there was telly when I was a little boy without deducing there must be time travel involved. Either he can't work with numbers that big yet or nobody's told him that telly's quite a recent invention that was barely out of prototype fifty years back from the 80s. It isn't important. Also: five-year-old explaining the plot of the godawful teen drama of the week based on hearing it through a cupboard door? Hilarious. If I'm around long enough, I shall be reminding Harry of this when he's all grown up.

Dinnertime rolls around and with it the quiet realisation that I've come back far enough in time that Neighbours isn't on yet. Again, definitely around this time, before original-me finishes secondary school at any rate, but apparently not yet. Harry's bowl of leftovers and scrapings is actually rather better than yesterday's, but then Dudley has spent all day pestering his mum for snacks and she's let him spoil his dinner. Because heaven forfend she only ruin one child's life.

Harry gets meat scraps, the fat that Dudley won't eat because it's yucky, plenty of vegetables and the whole thing topped with jelly and custard. Nutritional balance not too bad, flavour and presentation you wouldn't feed a dog 'cause the dog'd refuse. Harry gets it down his neck with every appearance of gusto. Dinner is to Vernon's schedule - he's knocked off early because it's Friday - so we're kept from hearing Coronation Street, which I'm a bit annoyed about. I can't recall if they've started doing the omnibus repeat at the weekend yet either, and I can't remember far back enough to know how things turned out for Bet Lynch.

Dudley goes to his room after dinner, doubtless to break a few toys before he falls into a prediabetic coma from the massive helping of trifle he half-finished. Harry, properly fed for once, seems to be content to curl up and listen to the story I've decided on as much for my own nostalgia as its suitability for a neglected little kid. It's one of my own children's favourites, the tale of Boudicca of the Iceni, all jazzed up. Less of the rape and the flogging and the slaughter of entire towns down to the babes in arms (Boudicca was more than slightly angry, with very good reason) and more Fabulous Julius Caesar in his Chariot of Ostriches (so called because your Os would Strich if you laid eggs that big) with his Regimented Romans in Rank on Rank, conquering all before them and Building Roads vs. Angry Old Lady Boudicca swinging her Handbag of Doom, knocking roman legionaries' heads clean off with every swing, accompanied by Disco-Dancing Druids in Flared Trousers.

It started when we lived in London and we were on our way to the London Aquarium and my eldest asked who the statue of the chariot lady on Westminster Bridge was. From there the tale grew in the nightly re-telling, as it were, getting sillier and sillier every time. I don't include the bits with the dinosaurs for Harry, because I've no idea if he even knows what they are yet.

Between the story itself and the stops to explain what things are, storytime lasts nearly two hours and Harry, well ballasted with his unusually large bowl of slops, is asleep by eight. This means that, for a change, I actually get to go spy on the Dursleys before they've wound down for the evening.

Vernon is in the dining room at an escritoire thingy - I'm not brilliant at furniture identification, okay? - going over the bills and what-not, so I look over his shoulder. Obviously there's no such thing as useless information when it comes to helping Harry, but I shan't deny there's a big helping of nosiness in the mix. Mortgage statement, current account statement, rates bills, stuff from the local primary school, all of the usual impedimenta of household accounting. There's also a stack of PAYE slips, which tell me that if he was a company director in '81, which I remember from the books, he's not any more, because the tax treatment wouldn't look like that if he still was.

Which makes sense, because by Chamber of Secrets he was having to entertain prospects in his own home to make sales, which he wouldn't be doing if he was on the board of the company. (Or at all, since client entertaining is done in the fanciest restaurant your expenses limit will stand. Engineering tools and supplies can't be sold that differently from legal services, can they? Or does Vernon get caught padding his expenses and put on a short rein?)

A bit of mental arithmetic with those payslips and Vernon's bank statements suggest that he's getting a bit over forty grand a year - if he has investment income on top of his salary he doesn't the paperwork out, wrong time of year for that - against a mortgage that's only four hundred quid a month. I can't see any suggestion that they're getting any kind of allowance from anywhere for Harry's subsistence, which irritates me somewhat. Dumbledore's got Harry's vault key and at least one willing minion who could deliver an envelope of cash every month or so, if Gringotts can't do standing orders to the non-magical banking system. It's not that the Dursleys need the money - I've fed a family on much tighter finances than Vernon's, at late 90s London prices to boot - but that the gesture would maybe lead the buggers to dial back the abuse a bit. Or, at least, remove the obvious excuse they're lying to themselves with, that the kid's a burden.

What really makes my ectoplasm boil (yeah, I know, but I definitely don't have any blood or piss in the here-and-now) is the Child Benefit statement that shows they're claiming for Harry. He's in the non-magical system although I can't tell who's responsible for that: the Dursleys could have done it, but Lily, at least, would know the benefits of having a documented presence on this side of things even if you don't want to live here. The Dursleys are getting a fortnightly direct deposit that is more than enough for a five-year-old's grocery bill, clothes and shoes of his own and maybe the occasional small treat. Even after ten years of cuts and inflation - my first-born is a bit over ten years away from the present date - you could get a fair slice of the weekly family grocery shop out of the payment for one child. The hypocrisy of him damning James Potter for a dole-scrounger when he's claiming what despite being comfortably off without it we can ignore for the moment.

I start insulting Vernon direct to his face just to let off steam. It's not like he can hear me, after all. I've got all the way down to 'monkey-cum-gargling whore-begotten bastard child of a bucket of donkey puke' when he finishes up, closes the escritoire - incidentally cutting me off from having a more detailed nosy through his paperwork - and waddles off to join Petunia in the sitting room.

He disturbs her dubious enjoyment of the Jilly Cooper doorstopper she's still not finished with. "Pet, the boy has to go to school in September. You'll have to get him a uniform and what-have-you over the next few weeks, the school have sent a list."

Petunia looks up and sniffs. "The freak can have things that don't fit Dudley any more. My dear departed Sister didn't think to leave anything to provide for her whelp, we shan't be spending a penny more than we have to, Vernon. We should be thankful that the little bastard doesn't thrive like our son does, or we'd not even be able to do that. We have to keep him fed and sheltered, that doesn't mean we have to put ourselves out in any way whatsoever."

Vernon nods. Pettiness and selfishness clearly speak to him on some basic level. "As you say, Pet. Will we have to pay for alterations? Shoes of his own?"

Petunia rolls her eyes. "Safety pins are cheap. I'll put a stitch or two in if that doesn't do the job."

And, I don't doubt, take the opportunity to stick some pins in where they'll hurt, eh, Petunia? I notice she doesn't mention the shoes for good or ill, which is I suppose tediously inevitable.

"Anyway," Petunia goes on, "I've made sure the school knows he's a problem child that needs a firm hand. I told them we only got him recently so they won't blame us if he turns out like my sister and her freak."

It is at this moment, hearing these words, that I understand why the Cruciatus Curse was invented. Neither of them have even slightly alluded to the fact that the child - as far as they know - doesn't even know his own name.

Vernon grunts his amused assent and drops his fat arse into his armchair, where I notice that Petunia has set out his whisky, a glass, and an ice-bucket. Petunia seems to want to make sure he's properly anaesthetised rather than expecting his conjugals and frankly, looking at the disgusting slob, I can relate. For her part she's subtly shifting on the sofa, leading me to suspect she's got to one of the racier passages in her book. I'm glad I left my stomach thirty years in the future on a rain-washed motorway, it would only be a liability to me in this house.

The Dursleys are like a pileup traffic accident involving a convoy of livestock transports, a coach-party of touring clowns and a vanload of fireworks. You know you shouldn't be gawking, but you can't look away. They're a couple held together by mutual abuse and pettiness. I dread to think what they'd be like without Harry as a lightning-rod for their ghastliness. Were they like this the day they married? Or have they each taken the events since as a cue to live their worst possible lives and just circle each other down a drain of low-grade banal evil into a fat-clogged sewer of awful?

You can't blame either one of them alone for the crap Harry's getting: some of it, sure, is Petunia appeasing Vernon, who seems inclined to be petty about raising another man's child or at least diverting any effort or resources away from his son and heir. Some of it might be Petunia's frustration about not being able to give Dudley the discipline she knows he sorely needs, using Harry as a sort of whipping-boy gone wrong. Petunia does her best to keep Harry out of Vernon's sight and uses him an excuse to praise Dudley to his father. Meanwhile Vernon appears to be suggesting some basically decent treatment for Harry - his own school uniform bought new - and Petunia shot the idea down.

A conclusion I was helped to in therapy - while my parents weren't in the same league as the Dursleys, they were definitely playing the same sodding sport - was that trying to make sense of your abusers' behaviour from what you perceived as a child is a fool's errand. Coming at the matter with the clarity of a disembodied spirit, I have to say it doesn't make any more sense even with the near-perfect vantage point I'm getting. They think the boys are asleep and don't know I'm here so they've no motive to dissemble: this is them as they are. Unmitigated bellends the both of them.

I go back to look in on Harry - sleeping contentedly, the heating's still on and he's well fed - and waft out of the house for my nightly wander. They've exhausted even the patience of the dead and I want out of their presence.

I'm stuck for inspiration as to anything else I can reconnoitre in the service of Operation Help Harry Potter, so I spend some time trying to figure out how to move faster, how to pop from place to place like the spooks in Rentaghost, and practising my poltergeisting in the same occupants-on-holiday house I used the night before last. I get some improvement in my speed and strength - I think, but I'm aware there might be wishful thinking in the matter - but popping from place to place eludes me. If it's possible at all, which I have no particular reason to believe or disbelieve.

After that and a visit to ask the church-grim who the good boy is - rhetorically, of course, since we both know, as I tell him emphatically, that he is a good boy, yes he is - I go back to Number Four out of a lack of anything better to do. It's the wee small hours and the house is silent until I get into the cupboard under the stairs.

It's definitely accidental magic: Harry has silenced the space he's in so that nobody can hear that he's wailing, gasping and occasionally screaming his way through what's clearly an absolute shitter of a nightmare. I don't know what it is they did to teach him not to disturb their sleep, but it's bad enough to provoke this reaction. If I was keeping a running account of things the Dursleys need to pay for, this would be another couple of yards of red in their ledger. The only thing stopping me moving them to the top of my personal shit list is the fact that they're already there.

"Harry, I'm here now. It's Mal. You're having a bad dream, Harry." I'm not hopeful of this working. A kid in the grip of a nightmare needs picking up and cuddling, not words of reassurance that he probably can't hear.

Per expectation, Harry just whimpers and cries, eyes screwed shut and sweating horribly. As he thrashes in his distress his hair falls away from where it covers his scar and I can see it's inflamed, angry-looking. Whether or not it's a horcrux, I get an impression from it of malignity. Literally so: I've not had a sense of smell since I died, but I get a whiff of fresh-spilt blood, the rot of spoiled meat and the ugly stench of an angry mob. If you'd asked me a minute ago for my opinion of Tom Riddle it was that he would improve the world considerably by departing it permanently and I'd be happy to help that fortunate leave-taking along. Seeing what his fragment, copy, shade, whatever, is doing to poor little Harry I can honestly say I want him to suffer on the way out. This is not some malign influence from the dark magic that's going on right in front of me, either: he's hurting a child and so the better angels of my nature have sloped off to establish alibis elsewhere for the duration.

"Harry, I hope you can hear me. I want to help you, Harry, you're having a bad dream. I'm here to help all I can, Harry." I blather on like this for I don't know how long. I try and just touch him, but whatever it is that lets me do the poltergeisty thing doesn't extent to letting a hurting little boy know I'm here. I've mentioned the calm that comes with being dead - the anger I've expressed at the Dursleys has been a thing of the mind, not the emotions - but now I'm absolutely going to pieces at being powerless to help, the drive to try and get through is burning through me like fire through summer bracken.

Harry rolls on to his back, mouth wide open in a silent scream, eyes screwed tight shut. His arms lock straight at his sides and his back arches, lifting him up supported only on his heels and head. Oh no please don't be fitting, please, not that. Has my presence made him more susceptible somehow? Was he having seizures like this before I arrived? There's magic at play here, there has to be, why isn't the wizard responsible here and dealing with this mess? Fuck you, Dumbledore. Scars can be useful my incorporeal arse.

Harry stays like that for a few moments - far too long - and then collapses back on his matress with a dark stain spreading down one leg of his pyjamas because that's just what he fucking needs, Petunia walloping him for wetting the bed, right after whatever this hellish experience is. The possibility that Petunia will do anything else is too remote to consider, of course.

How am I seeing this? It's dark in here. Obviously I'm getting better at the ghost thing, or there's some magical thing going on that lets me perceive Harry's distress even with the lights off. While I've got that irrelevant thought running through my mind I let myself hope that whatever it was Harry was suffering, it's over now. And squash the thought that this is a nightly thing and I've just missed it because I've been out roaming. Not productive, not helpful, it's not like you can do anything but watch anyw - No. No. No no no.

Harry seizes up again, this time his eyes wide open and staring sightlessly as he shudders and jerks. There's a thin, heartbreaking whine coming from the back of his throat and I can see there's blood in his mouth. Not a lot, just like he might have bitten his tongue or cheek a bit, or loosened a tooth that was already wobbly and for fuck's sake. I need to get a grip and try and help.

I get right in close. He can tell when I've left the cupboard, so maybe this will make the sense of my presence stronger. "Harry, it's Mal. I'm right here. Listen to me Harry, it's going to be all right, just be brave and get through this, I'm right here for you…"

I don't get chance to keep up the blather for long. Harry's head snaps round and he looks right at me. Wide, panicked little-boy eyes that see and don't see, the light in them confused and searching and I.

Fall.

Right.

In.

-oOo-

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Because of course I'm in a nightmare of Harry's worst memory. No idea whether Harry pulled me in or my desire to help drove me in and it doesn't matter. It's fractured and crackling, we're in the cupboard and in a baby's cot at the same time and there's a green light in all of it.

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

High-pitched, shrieking laughter. Laughter that's almost, but not quite, the laughter of a human.

"Not Harry! Not Harry! Please — I'll do anything —"

A baby, crying.

"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"

"Run! I'll hold him off!"

A flash of green.

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl . . . stand aside, now. . . ."

Whatever Harry's feeling about this - and thank fuck he doesn't seem to remember this while he's awake, or I hope so based on how ignorant of his name he is - I'm much more able to feel now I'm in here with him. I think he must have been picking up a lot of what was going on that night. Anger. Terror. The gnawing jagged teeth of panic and despair.

Your reavers, your berzerkers, your homicidal nutcases, they can be fought. The nightmare is when they catch you flat-footed with your guard down and no way out. When something goes wrong with your plan to have an escape route. When the dirty little scrote you thought was a good friend sells you out to the arch-criminal himself right where you thought you were safe. I can hear it in the voices of James and Lily Potter, repeating their last words over and over and over in Harry's nightmare. Hollow voices, wavering with the knowledge they've got to do something, and that the thought of doing that something scares them silly, and that they've got nothing left to offer their son other than dying as his last line of defence.

All of this breaks over me like an angry sea, cold and battering, trying to suck me down into the dim green depths of oblivion. Somewhere in the roar of the terror and determination and the white-knuckle grip the Potters have on the very last courage they'll ever have, I hear the snapping jaws of the void, the inhuman chatter that insinuates it'd be easier to just let go and float away, nobody will care...

Hold the line, and die standing. Stupid cheesy line from the lore of a stupid cheesy game and I happened to read it at an emotionally pivotal moment and it's become something I whisper to myself at bad moments. Hold the fucking line, and fucking die standing. As I repeat the words I can feel myself straightening up, becoming more the man with duty to do than the cringing ape that wants to flee into the treetops. Hold the line, you that's calling yourself Mal now.

It's apropos, here in the shuddering vortex of a child's nightmare: I know what those two did. Here where they're still real I will not dishonour their sacrifice by freezing up and doing nothing in the teeth of the horror and pain and terror and regret and madness that's eddying around and through me. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and they put their very lives and souls down as payment for one last desperate magic to save their little boy and I'm not crying you're crying -

"HARRY! It's me, Mal!" It actually takes me a couple of tries to get the shout out of my mouth. I have a mouth? Of course I do, this is a dream. I have to sharpen my will and focus on the need to get to Harry. I remember my own kids: three pairs of eyes opening for the first time in the delivery suites of three different hospitals. Memories burned into my mind by the sheer electric clarity of those defining moments. I can bear much, but not their disappointment in Daddy, and that's the whip that goads me on in times like this. "HARRY! I'm coming!" Much louder. Stronger. More fuckin' like it.

The storm - as good a word as any for it - abates, but I can still hear crying. Direction, distance, all snarled up. Adult dreams are messy things, but they're a tidy stack of neat little boxes next to a child's nightmare.

But, I need to go to Harry, so to Harry I go between one thought and the next; location's not really a thing in a dream. You can either go somewhere or you can't and time and distance arrange themselves accordingly. A child's bedroom, a cot with a toddler in it, a discarded black robe and Oh fuckin' 'ell no a dead mother. And a dead mother's shade. I pick Harry up out of the cot - he's five-year-old-Harry now and I have a body here in the dream and don't think about whether you're wearing pants this is NOT going to be a no-pants dream - and hold and cuddle him close on my left shoulder where he clings like a limpet while I make eye contact with the fading shade of Lily Potter.

I don't know how I know this, but it's as certain to me as the seasons and the tides: somehow here in Harry's dream I can see across the years to look that poor, brave, doomed girl right in the eye. Could I have done what she did? I hope I could have, but it's in that difference between hope and know where our admiration for heroes grows.

"I'll take it from here. You rest, okay?" Stupid, empty words, cold comfort for the dying. Sorry, love, but it's all I've got.

She gives me the smallest of small smiles.

I touch the rune on Harry's forehead. "Your work?"

The merest hint of a nod. Thought so.

Nothing but a stolen moment left. I stand up straight, Harry's clinging tight to me now. As Lily vanishes I render her a salute, probably looks horribly amateurish since I only learned how from seeing it done on the telly and at Remembrance Day parades. She's muggleborn, she'll know what the gesture means even if I'm not picture-perfect with it. "Godspeed," I whisper to the space where she was. I might have lost my religion over the years - from altar boy to atheist in one simple series of harsh reality checks - but the ritual words still have the power they were given when I learned them in school at Harry's age. "Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord…" and I can't say the rest. This is not the time and place to fall to bits.

I can't see him, but my friend from the churchyard is here. I can feel his presence. Good boy!

Enough for the dead. Harry's alive and needs me. "Told you I was coming to help, Harry," I say, rubbing his back.

"You're not a ghost," he murmurs, sleep in every syllable.

"This is a dream, Harry," I tell him, "Ghosts are real in dreams."

"Am I a ghost in dreams?" Harry asks.

"It's your dream, Harry. When you wake up you'll be all real again and I'll still be a ghost. The rules are different in dreams." I'm not entirely sure what's going on myself, so I've no hope of explaining it properly to Harry. I'm uncomfortably aware that it'd be easy to give the kid the impression that being dead is preferable to being alive, and he's already at serious risk of learning that from people he doesn't like and has learned not to trust.

There's the sound of a motorbike and rushing wind, we're sat in a sidecar but we can't see who's driving it. I mean, I know it's Rubeus Hagrid because Sirius Black is off being a complete and utter pillock about his vengeance - far better to let the little shit think he was safe and then wake up one day tied to a chair while you grin at him over a pair of pliers and a blowtorch - but Harry's perceptions rule here and he never saw what was going on.

"Are you going to be my daddy now?" Harry asks, which punches me right in the gut. For more than the obvious reasons. When it got really bad at home and it looked like there was going to be an acrimonious divorce - which with hindsight was actually the best option available for all concerned - I heard exactly the same words out of my little sister's mouth. That particular episode came up a lot in therapy. But right now it's an honest question from a tired and hurting little boy.

"Here in the dream, where I'm real, I'll do what your daddy can't any more. So yes, sort of. As close as I can get, Harry. When we wake up, I'm your ghost friend and while I can't do what your daddy did, I can say the things daddies say, is that all right?"

"Yes." The cling gets a little tighter for the moment, by way of hug. I hug back. So long as Harry's got realistic expectations of what I can do for him, we'll be fine.

Silence. And we're back in the cupboard under the stairs at Number Four. Except not awake, and it's huge in here. Still dreaming, then. Something is scratching at the door. Still a nightmare, then. Don't know what, it's not my nightmare. In my nightmares, I'm the monster. "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"We're still dreaming, Harry. Do you want me to fight the bad dream with you?"

"Fight?"

"Yep. The bad dreams come, but you've got me here with you. Does that make you feel braver?"

A long pause. He has to think about that one, and thinking while you're dreaming is hard. "Yes." He says, eventually. He sounds … confident. Proud of you, kid.

"All for one and one for all!" I sing out.

"Muskehounds are always ready!" Harry sings back, and giggles.

I set him down and think real hard about how he needs to be dressed. I'm as surprised as anyone when he's suddenly in a tunic and hose and a big wide-brimmed hat. He's got a sword in a baldric over his shoulder, and fencing gloves on his hands. "Proper little Dogtanian, you are, Harry." I grin at him.

He giggles and looks at me. "You're all shiny," he says.

I look down, and so I am. Sort of man-shaped blob of glow. "You're right," I say, "I'm still all ghosty, aren't I? Let's see if I can fix that." I think for a moment, because I have to get this right: that scratching at the door is getting louder. Harry needs a guard, a protector, a friend, and someone who is Clearly A Grown Up In Charge. A Musketeer might do, and he'd get the reference, but it's not really me. I've read the book and Dumas wrote interestingly flawed characters. I'm a long way from figuring out the rules of dreamland, but I'm pretty sure ideas count here, so becoming a drunk, a dandy or a womaniser might well backfire. Knight in shining armour? My class consciousness is definitely going to get in the way of that one. Sure, a D&D Paladin might work, but Harry won't get the reference. Harry needs calm, strong, not necessarily perfect but definitely in the business of doing the right thing and - yeah. Only one real option. I stand up and assume my full height next to harry. I concentrate on the right sort of clothes - homespun-looking robes. And try and remember what the bloody hell I look like so I get the face right.

"Are you a muskehound too?" Harry asks. "Where's your hat?"

"I'm too big and grown up to be a muskehound, Harry," I tell him, thankful that I can actually smile where he can see it. "I am a Jedi Knight, guardian of peace and justice throughout the galaxy."

"Will I be a Jedi when I grow up?" Harry's heard both of the Star Wars films that are out on Betamax: he gets the reference.

"Work hard at school, do all your homework, and learn all the lessons I teach you, Harry, and you can be a Jedi if you still want to. You might want to be something else when you're grown up, though." I kneel down to look him right in the eye. "Whatever you choose, I'll be with you all the way, Harry."

"Brilliant! Cor, you've got a scar too, just like me." He points to the spot above my left eye.

"I have, haven't I? Except mine's a straight line where yours is all jaggy. I got it by being silly and bumping my head really, really hard." No need to tell him that the silliness in question was a poorly-thought-out suicide attempt. And it looks a lot more impressive than it is because the doctor who stitched it up offered to stitch it so it made a bigger scar to impress girls with. I was fifteen at the time, and an easy sell for a pitch like that. From that day to this I've not heard a girl express any opinion one way or another on the matter. With hindsight, I think he was just making excuses for piss-poor suturing skills.

"Can I -" I don't get to know what the next question is, because whatever was scratching at the door has finally scratched through.

It's a man, but it's a gangrel and shambling thing of a man with red eyes and a corpse-pallor countenance. He has a hungry air about him, unfed and predatory. If I had a Wrong 'Un Detector to hand this fucker would be burying the needle. He pulls himself through the crack in the door - lightning-bolt shaped, not that I needed any more clues as to who this is - and unfolds like a demon-haunted scarecrow to stand before us.

Harry steps in close on my left side and grabs my hand for reassurance. Which is, of course, all I need to summon up the blood and stiffen the sinew. Immortal Dark Wizard or not, he's not getting to Harry without me making him pay a bitter price in pain. One step closer, pal, and you are getting a shoeing. Worst he can do is kill me, which: nah. Been there, done that, don't see what the fuss is about any more. After that, Harry's got a sword and I will have maimed the fucker to the point where Harry will be able to finish the job.

I've no idea where this absolute certainty is coming from unless - Oh. Yes. This is Harry's dream and he's decided he has faith in me. Little kids work on the assumption that Daddy can do anything he puts his mind to, and that was a dangling pointer in Harry's psyche until, well, tonight. I came and got him from the bad dream, didn't I? That's practically the qualifying exam for being a Daddy and he's awarded me a passing mark.

That faith doesn't come with an adult's doubts and quibbles, either. Tom, the blithering arrogant hubristic idiot, has willingly come in to the one place where I definitely, absolutely have a power he knows not. And probably would have rejected if it was offered him, because - damn you, Dumbledore, you're half right about this at least - where it comes from is love. Acknowledging it fills me up and makes me feel like I could deadlift a largish planet. The force is my ally, all right. Is he going to be fool enough to kick off at me? Please say he is, oh please. I don't want to start anything because there is such a thing as pushing your luck, but Tom's timing in trying a break-in right when Harry's belief in me is at its freshest and most uncompromised is a stroke of ridiculous good fortune.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, I presume" I say, doing my best effort at a Mona Lisa smile. Not my usual mode of provocation, but I need this to be subtle and obviously Tom's fault to avoid setting a bad example for Harry. (Absent that, he'd already have three foot of lightsaber up the jacksie and his face making the repeated and forceful acquaintance of my size elevens.)

"Do not ssspeak that name," he hisses, drawing himself up in what he imagines is a regal pose. Whatever splitting off from his primary self did to him, it's nothing good. I don't know if it's the power of Harry's faith in me or just degradation from the battering Lily and James gave him, but he seems weak.

"You prefer your little anagram, Tom? I grew out of indulging the whims of insecure teenagers a long time ago. If you'd just let yourself grow up a little, you know, you'd be a lot happier." Not least because world domination, on the historical record, doesn't so much have failure modes as consist of them. Like trying to nail diarrhoea to the ceiling. Just ask any of the Axis powers.

He doesn't answer, just gives me a look of loathing that tells me he'd not been expecting me and is now revising whatever plan he had. I find bearing his ill-regard no great burden.

"Who is he, Mal?" Harry's question is quiet, but clear. And steady of voice, too. Kid's a little trooper, and whatever the paperwork might say, I'm adopting him and fuck what anyone else has to say on the matter. To answer your earlier question, Harry, yes, I'll be your daddy.

"Tom, here, is a ghost. A ghost of the bad man who hurt your mummy and daddy. Don't be afraid of him, he can't hurt you in a dream, not with me here."

Harry doesn't answer. That's kind of a big deal to drop on a five-year-old, and he squeezes my hand a little tighter while he tries to get his head around it.

"I am no mere ghost," Tom hisses, "I -"

"Psst!" I cut him off. "Harry is five. Ghost is what he understands. We both know what you are, and what folly trapped you where you are even if you're lying to yourself about the wrong you've done. Burdening a child with that knowledge is an evil I will not permit."

A sneer. "There is no good or evil, only power."

It's a long-standing complaint of mine that the whole Nietzsche schtick only ever gets trotted out by people who either never read him or only read the edition his complete fuckwitted racist of a sister mangled with her 'editing.' "Fuck's sake, Tom, you really didn't grow out of being a teenage twat, did you? Power is the capacity to do useful work, no more, no less. Romanticising power like that is just plain stupid."

"Stupid, you say?" Tom purrs, and takes a step forward, "Surely stupid is coming to the child, spirit, and seeking to come within the protection his mother left him. She surprised me with the old magic, spirit, but do not think I am ignorant of it. When it opened to let you in there was a momentary chink in the armour. And now I am here to claim the boy."

"You and what army?" I scoff. "Harry, draw your sword like a proper Muskehound!"

Harry's hand disappears from mine, and I hear the swish of a rapier out of its scabbard. "All for one and one for all!" he pipes up. "En garde!" Harry's brave, but not stupid, and stays well in back of me. I daren't look around because collapsing in helpless joyful laughter and stopping to hug the stuffing out of him would be counterproductive at this time.

I grin at Tom instead. "See? You're outnumbered."

The look on his face is fuckin' priceless. Either he can't believe I think Harry counts in a fight or he can't believe I'm willing to look Evil Most Orgulous right in the eye and flat-out take the piss out of him. He has the face of a man who's not even considering the possibility that I know something he doesn't. "Even were he not a child, numbers mean nothing. I. Am. Lord. VOLDEMORT!"

"You're a looney," I tell him, and Harry giggles. That's the way, kid. The Devil, proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked. Jeer and flout him.

It's in this moment that I realise something rather important: I'm smarter than Tom is. (Or this instance of him, at any rate: there are five, possibly six others and this one might just be the duff one of the batch.) I spotted early on that we're in a dream, where ideas and belief and feelings have power. He still hasn't got it. Or has, and is too proud to admit his mistake in coming here.

I'm a bit surprised he's not trying Legilimency on me but he's got me pegged as a spirit so maybe it doesn't work on my kind. Or maybe he has, without me noticing, and thinks I'm deluded into overconfidence and he can take me. Not here, pillock. In here, the Force is my ally, and a small gesture lets me shape the flow of it to repair the crack he came in by. We're not locked up in here with you, Tom, you're locked up in here with us.

Tom sneers. "Your insolence will not stand. You are nothing."

"That's where you're wrong, Tom. Here, with Harry at my back? I am everything Daddy can be in the mind of a child." I shrug off the outer robe of my Jedi habit, letting it fall to the ground behind me. "Harry, stay behind me, and stay close."

"Muskehound!" Harry yells.

"Pathetic," Tom drawls, a wand coalescing from dream-stuff in his hand. "Mawkish sentiment is no match for the true power of the Dark Arts."

I'm not even going to try and resist a straight line like that. "Do not be too proud of this magical terror you wield, Tom. The ability to kill a man with a single incantation is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

"Force? What nonsense are you spouting?"

A simple thought makes the lightsaber on my belt leap to my hand, like an eager hound who sees his master getting ready to go hunting. "I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me," I tell him. Snap-hiss. "I need have no fear of a man like you." The lightsaber is a pure brilliant white and its radiance burgeons with the joy I'm feeling. This is right. So very, very right.

Tom, clearly growing weary of what he considers nonsense, brings his wand up to a guard in sixte. "There are no men like me."

Yeah. Quotes from movies that won't be out for years: the smart-arse's shortcut to devastating wit. I smile at him; he couldn't have set this up better if I'd given him a script. "Oh, Tom. There are always men like you."

"AVADA KEDAVRA," is his only response, a slash of his wand sending a hissing green spit of glowing hatred at us. The world slows and I feel like I have all the time in the world to react.

Idiot. Trying a killing move in the dream of a child not old enough to really understand mortality? Even if I thought it'd work I don't need the Force for this one. I don't even need the paltry few fencing lessons I took. Hundreds of hours at the crease with a bat in my hand and he thinks he's going to achieve anything by bowling me a beamer? It's a piece of unsportsmanlike conduct I was laughing to scorn before I was ten. Clearly cricket is also a Power He Knows Not. Pivot, step, high line, hook-and-pull and the Killing Curse is off to somewhere around Square Leg. No batting partner to judge how many runs its good for, more's the pity - here in dreamland I'm not hampered by the trick shoulder or the dodgy knee or being literal decades out of practise. Even that sourpuss Boycott would have called it a good stroke.

Three more nasty-looking things come spitting out of Tom's wand in quick succession. It's like net practise: an off cut and a leg glance deal with the first two - playing them up because there aren't any fielders to catch me out and Harry's short - and I go for a square drive for the last and make the fucker flinch as his curse goes right back to him faster than he sent it. Missed him by a gnat's todger, if that. Each stroke is a step further down the wicket - we're on the cricket ground near where I grew up now. Home advantage on top of everything else. There's a train thundering over the West Coast Main Line railway bridge at my back and I can hear Harry swishing his sword in time with my own bladework.

"CRUCIO!" Okay, that's Unforgivable number two, Tom. And it's actually a better choice: he should have led with it because Harry understands pain. Here in the dream world it manifests as Force Lighting; my expectations shape Harry's expectations which shape what we all experience. It surprises the hell out of Tom when the normally-invisible curse sparks and arcs across the space between us, but not half so much as when I repeat Yoda's move from Revenge of the Sith and catch it in my hand. It takes concentration, because I can't break the movie rules as I understand them, and there's some bleed-over of his desire to hurt me, but it's well within my tolerance for pain. I try to gather up the malevolence he's hurling at me to throw it back, but he has the sense to cut off the curse before I can turn it on him.

I take another pace forward, my lightsaber low because that's how I take guard with a cricket bat. My actual sabre teacher would be laughing his conkers off at what I'm doing.

"IMPERIO!" There's a panicked note to the yelled incantation as Tom makes it three out of three with the Unforgivables. I have no idea whether I'm immune or not, and don't find out now. I'm pretty sure it'd work if it connected, because again Harry understands being made to do as you're told against your will, just as all little kids do when it comes to bedtime and no more sweeties and other grievous injustices that parents inflict. But, well, Tom's visibly shaken and as Bellatrix said: when casting unforgivables you have to mean it. In all the spells whose casting is described in the books there's an element of self-belief: you have to want and intend and believe it'll work or it'll fizzle. He's just watched me no-sell everything he threw at me and I suspect that from his point of view I'm moving so fast I blur. After a lifetime of steamrolling nearly all the opposition he faced, he's getting his first ever case of performance anxiety. I'd be honestly surprised if he could get a shower of sparks off, the state he's in. His spell dissipates in the air between us like a bad smell.

He starts backing up. "If so powerful you are, why leave?" I ask, nicking Yoda's line to go with the move I borrowed, picking up the pace to start outright prowling toward him.

"You're silly!" Harry tells him, brandishing his sword and stepping up next to me. "You're just a bad dream!"

"Go on, Tom," I say, "Offer us power."

A faint flicker of hope in his eyes. He thinks I can be bargained with. I'd say he shouldn't have neglected muggle cinema, but this one won't be out for a couple of years yet. "Yes, yes," he says, "I can teach you much. All of magic and the Dark Arts, I -"

"Offer us riches too." I'm still moving in on him.

"The very world! It could be ours for the taking! When Lord Voldemort rules -"

"Offer us everything we could possibly want."

"Of course - Lord Voldemort is gener - urk!"

His final promise is cut short by me running my lightsaber into his guts. "Harry wants his mummy back, you son of a bitch."

Harry, for his own part, surprises me by giving Tom a good whack with his sword. "You. Are. A. Baddy!" he yells, punctuating each word with another whack. "You. Hurt. My. Mummy. And. Now. I. Have. To. Live. With. Rotten. Aunt. Petunia!"

When Harry's done, I turn off the lightsaber and let Tom fall, his wand clattering to the floor from nerveless fingers. I take a knee so I can look right in his face. "The real you, out there in the real world, will never know," I tell him, "But one day we will come for him, and Harry won't be a little child. He'll be the most fell and fatal enemy you could imagine in your worst nightmares, and neither of us mean to fight fair. You chose, all those years ago, to live your life on the road to failure, and Harry and I will be there to see you when you get there."

Tom gives a sort of choking croak, like he's trying to say something, but he's starting to unravel. And suddenly smells delicious, like beautifully cooked rare steak with the bearnaise sauce just so and I can't help myself. I lean in and swallow.

Harry looks at me wide-eyed. "You gobbled him all up!"

"I did," I say, surprised too. Where the FUCK did that come from?

"Are you going to gobble me up too?" Harry asks with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

"Of course not," I say, "I only gobble up the baddies. And only when they're ghosts." It's reassurance for myself as much as anyone - this is the first time I've ever eaten anyone, and I don't want to repeat it at all, never mind with anyone I actually like and care about.

"Oh, that's all right then," Harry says, with the blithe acceptance only little kids can muster.

"Hug?" I ask him, opening my arms out wide.

He dives in for a proper hug. The Dursleys haven't quite beaten this out of him yet, thank goodness.

Where am I? What is this place?

It's Tom's voice, and it's coming from inside me.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

-oOo-

AUTHOR NOTES:

Announcer: It's Friday, It's Five to Five, it's time for … CRACKERJACK!

Entire Audience: CRACKERJAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

I was dismayed to learn that there was a Dark Time in children's television where there was no Crackerjack AND no Gordon The Gopher and Harry's fifth birthday falls right in the middle of it. Truly, the Fates have shat on the Boy-Who-Lived.

Child Benefit is not means-tested, and consists of a basic payment for the first child in a family and a supplement for every subsequent one. It's paid to whoever the child lives with and, at the time, ran from birth to the kid's 18th birthday (it may have changed since, looking it up is left as an exercise etc.)

PAYE: Pay as You Earn, the scheme whereby almost nobody in the UK has to fill out and file an annual income tax return. If you know what you're looking for you can tell a lot about someone's employment from their payslips as a result, including if they're a company director (who get slightly different treatment to regular employees.)

JKR's portrayal of Vernon Dursley, Cartoon Child Abuser is all over the place, from 'company director with a free pass from HR about shouting at the staff' in chapter 1 of Philosopher's Stone to 'trying to close a sale with no client entertainment budget and a definite air of desperation' by the beginning of Chamber of Secrets. Over ten years separates those two events, one implying a man at the top of the company and the other a man desperately trying to justify his place in it while unable to draw fully on its resources. I've come up with a plausible way he could have had that career trajectory and it will appear in future chapters.

And finally: you surely didn't think the Muskehounds theme tune was gone for good from this story? Sharing everything with fun, that's the way to be! This chapter ran on a lot longer than I expected, hence the cliffhanger. I'd apologise, but I'm not a bit sorry.

Fanfic Recommendation: Echoes, by BlackDeviousRose. Available on FFN, and updated again after a break while I was editing this chapter. An SI story with a sensible protagonist who resolves to have nothing to do with the Plot.