Save One Thing (1)

Save One Thing

Part one

The letters come out of eggs and down the chimney. They slither in through the mail slot and pile up in the drawers of your dad’s desk until the wood begins to creak and swell. Outside, they fall from the sky like snow, and Harry closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the window, and you wonder if he’ll be able to make glass disappear again so he can run out and catch them as they drift through the air. But the glass stays where it is, and so does Harry, and so do you.

You feel a smile tugging at your lips, because your dad is walking up behind him, and he doesn’t even notice. One of his hands is pressed flat against the window pane, and his breath fogs over the glass. He still hasn’t opened his eyes.

“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” your dad shouts, but Harry doesn’t turn around. It’s only when your dad pulls the shade down, nearly slamming his head with it that he moves at all. “You’re to stop this nonsense, understand?”

Harry looks up at him, as if he’s just woken from a strange dream or as if he thinks this might be a dream and he’s waiting for it to end. Normally, the sound of your dad’s voice makes him jump nearly out of his skin, but this time it’s different. This time a lot of things are different.

You flop down onto the sofa and try to watch the television, but you can’t concentrate. The voices are full of static. They fade and blend together, and the pictures are dull and blurry so that you have to squint to see anything properly. You think you might want to know what the letters to Harry say. You think you might want that more than you ever wanted anything before.

It’s getting hot by the time you sit down for breakfast, and everything feels itchy and uncomfortable. The eggs Harry cooks are rubbery and tasteless. There’s sweat collecting in back of you knees, and whole house smells like owls. You eat fast, and your mum makes Harry put down his toast to clear your place when you’ve finished.

In the hallway, the letters are spread out on end tables and overflowing from the waste bin as even more begin to sprout up like weeds in the cracks between floorboards. You grab a few and shove them into your pockets before running up the stairs and shutting yourself in your room.

Your hands are damp and shaking as they hold paper thicker than any you’ve ever seen before. It’s crumpled and smudged with your fingerprints, which shouldn’t matter to you, because you were never good at keeping things from breaking or tearing or falling apart completely.

There are six altogether that you managed to take— only six but six more than Harry has, and you lay them carefully out on your bed in a neat row before flopping down yourself, causing a loud snap as one of the support boards beneath you breaks.

The letters, Harry’s letters, seem to straighten themselves before your eyes. The wrinkles become smooth, and the grease stains fade back into sharp white. This is when you first look at the address. Mr. H. Potter, they say,

Mr. H. Potter
Second Floor
Smallest bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

And then you touch the first letter. You can feel your heart beating faster as the name melts away and reshapes itself, and then it’s not Mr. H. Potter anymore. It’s Dudley Dursley— your name right beneath your fingers in cool green ink. You open it, ripping the paper rather than breaking the seal, and it’s your name again—

Dudley Dursley,
This letter is not for you.

Your stomach drops. It’s not signed, at least not where you can see it. You touch the second letter.

Dudley Dursley
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

And you look inside.

You should not be opening other people’s mail.

And the third.

Dudley Dursley
Second floor
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

You would do well to mind your own business.

And the forth.

Dudley Dursley
Second floor
Largest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

This is your last warning.

And then the fifth, without pause to think or even catch your breath.

Dudley Dursley
Second floor
Largest Bedroom
Broken bed
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

This letter is for your cousin, Mr. Potter. It was meant to be seen by him alone, and the truths it contains are not for the eyes of fat, spoiled, muggle children. You see, Dudley, Your cousin is rather extraordinary. Gifted, I believe, is the word your schools use for it, and while he far surpasses your abilities in reading and maths, it is not those subjects where his true talents lie. You see, Mr. Potter is a wizard, and he will soon be the greatest wizard of the age.

No matter how your parents try to stop him, he will come to Hogwarts School to learn magic. He will do things and see things a boy like you could never dream of, and when he finishes, Dudley, he will be able to destroy you with a word, though, I expect we’ll find some use for you yet. It would be wise to mind yourself around him.

~Albus Dumbledore,
Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

You put the sixth letter in a shoebox, and you put the shoebox in the bottom drawer of your dresser. You promise yourself you won’t open it or look at it or even think about it. Then you sit carefully back down on your bed, and your mind fights to stop your hands from shaking.

The television is on, and the computer is on, making little bleep-bleep noises, and the mobile phone you keep in your room starts ringing. You turn the volume on your play-station up, and you try for a few rounds of Mega Mutilation, but you’re too dizzy and hot to stay still and too weak to move, and you drop the handset to the floor and stand up and close your eyes, and the electronic roar of the game gets louder, but all you can hear are the hundreds of wing-beats that fill the outside sky.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Voldemort stands in a fairy circle in a clearing just past the center of the forbidden forest. He’s chanting something in Parseltongue, something to make use of the power bound in mushrooms and dead grass. Harry crouches behind a tree with Ron hunched up next to him and Hermione a few feet away weaving complicated shielding charms. She finishes her murmuring, and the air around them shimmers golden.

“You okay?” Ron asks. “That should have taken longer.”

“The magic,” she whispers. “It’s getting stronger. It’s like the spells are doing themselves. I hardly have to concentrate at all.”

“Works for me,” Neville mumbles from the branches above them. “I need all the help I can get.” There’s a sharp rustling of leaves as Ginny maneuvers herself to give the back of his head a light slap.

“Stop it, Neville!”

Ron cranes his neck to look up at them. “Stop it, both of you.” He rubs his hands over the scars on his arms. “I don’t like this. If it’s easier for us, it has to be easier for them too.”

Harry can’t say anything. He can scarcely let himself think anything. He’s by no means proficient at Occlumency, and what he can manage takes all of his concentration. He presses his back flat against the base of the tree and tries to sharpen his focus as the forest floor around him starts to shake. Seconds later, Luna Lovegood appears in sight, followed by Grawp and a disgruntled looking Zacharias Smith.

“Hermy?” Grawp asks, and Harry shuts his eyes briefly to center his thoughts and points to Hermione.

He hears Ginny’s voice above him saying, “What on earth is that?” followed by Neville’s stammered answer of, “I-I think it’s a giant.”

Luna looks up at Grawp and then back to the rest of them. “Oh yes,” she says. “He wanted to come along.”

“Well I didn’t,” says Smith. “I was just looking for a lost quaffle, and Loony here dragged me into the forest.”

“Grawp help,” Grawp announces proudly.

Smith sneers, and his eyes shift over to the giant. “Not much, you don’t.”

Luna smiles dreamily. “He’s really quite brilliant, you know. We were just discussing whether the decline of the nargle population in Scotland is what’s making it so exceedingly warm. We also think it may have something to do with changing magical patterns, don’t we, Grawp?”

Grawp grunts.

“Oh, Merlin,” Ron mutters, and Harry has to close his eyes and bite his lip to keep from laughing.

Hermione silently moves closer to the main crowd. “Quiet, all of you!”

“You okay there, Harry?” Ron asks, but Harry isn’t okay anymore. His concentration is slipping away, and Voldemort is at once in his head laughing, and outside continuing to hiss his spells.

“He knows,” Harry says. “It’s all my fault. He knows.”

“What?” Hermione and Ron say at the same time.

“He knows I’m here.” Harry takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. “He knows all of us are here.”

“Close your mind, Harry!” Ron nearly screams.

“Weren’t you listening? It won’t do any good. He knows. We have to—”

“Close it,” Ron says, eyes shining strangely, and Harry struggles to comply, but the doorway in is damaged and the battering ram of Voldemort’s thoughts continues to attack at its weakest points. He manages to shut his mind again, and when he hears Ron’s voice it sounds like it’s coming from very far away. “Harry’s right, everyone, we have to attack, but V-Vold-he doesn’t have to know which way we’re coming from.”

Harry clenches his teeth, and he feels the muscles in his neck straining. “Hurry up, Ron.”

“Right, right,” Ron nods and quickly turns to Luna and Smith. “You . . .” He hesitates briefly, looking up at Grawp. “You three circle around we don’t want any stray Death Eaters getting us in the back.” They all nod and head off along the outer perimeter of the clearing. Then Ron knocks a fist on the trunk of the tree, and there’s an answering of snapping twigs from above. “Ginny,” he says. “We both know mum’s going to kill me for this, but I want you and Neville up on your brooms cursing anything wearing a mask.”

“B-brooms?” Harry hears Neville whisper, and whatever Ginny says to calm him, he can’t make out, but seconds later he can see two small silhouettes rising above the treetops. Then Ron turns to him.

“Harry, you know there’s something he won’t . . .”

“Expect.”

“Plan for. . .”

And because talking is too difficult, the rest of the conversation is held without words.

'No hiding.'

'No deceptions.'

'A straight on attack.'

“Yeah,” Harry whispers. “Yeah, I know.”

Hermione puts one hand on his shoulder and awkwardly pats Ron’s back with the other. “We’re with you.”

“But the shields—”

She shakes her head, and her cloud of hair brushes his face. “The shields don’t matter now.”

Blood is welling up in Harry’s scar, but the tears that blur his vision have little to do with the pain it causes. “He’s trying to get in again. I can feel him.”

“It’s worse now?” Hermione asks.

“Stronger,” he says. “Like you said before, everything’s stronger.”

Ron stands up and nods his head once. “So are we.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


It started with you saving Harry’s letter, and you wouldn’t have kept it if you’d known better, but back then, you thought saving one thing couldn’t hurt, even if it was a freak thing. You didn’t think about it often. It just stayed where you put it and slowly became a permanent mark on the hidden landscape of your room along with the failed history exams under your bed and the dirty magazines Dennis gave you in your closet and the cigarettes hidden practically everywhere.

The next year it was a feather you ripped from the wing of Harry’s owl that joined the letter in the shoebox in the bottom drawer of your dresser. Then it was twigs from the broom he said could fly and a jar labeled armadillo bile and a page of magical newspaper with moving pictures of a band called the Weird Sisters on it. And you thought, maybe it was the letter that made you do it all. Maybe you save one thing, and you have to save another and another until saving things becomes a habit you can’t break

It’s only natural that after saving so much for yourself you should have to give something in return, but you never thought like that before, and you never thought that the fifth letter really meant everything it said. And it’s not the chill of the air that hurts— it’s knowing nothing will be warm again— ever. And you start to repeat you own name over and over, because at any moment, you could forget what it is and who you are and why you’re on the ground in the alley by Magnolia Crescent freezing and unable to move.

You see yourself running from a huge snake and cowering at the feet of a giant. You watch your face turn purple as you choke on your own tongue, and you watch you arms flailing as you drown in a sea of letters, and you watch as everything gets dull and dark, and there’s nothing left to see. And then suddenly, there’s light and sound and Harry standing over you, and the first thing you remember, when your awareness comes back all in a rush, is that you hate him. You hate more than you ever hated anything before in your life.

You wondered, later, if it was because you made fun of Harry’s nightmares that he made you see those things that would make you never want to sleep again, and you wondered if it had to do with the warning in the fifth letter, because your mum got a freak letter that same night, and it yelled at her in a horrible, screeching voice, but your head was too foggy to make out the words.

She seemed to understand it more than you did. There were some freak things called Dementors that only freak people like Harry could see, but you could feel them, somehow, even though you didn’t think you were supposed to, and somehow, you couldn’t stop feeling them even when they were gone.

Magic began to follow you around like an invisible cloud of fine mist, and it never did anything more than flash in the corners of your eyes just to remind you what it was capable of— power and control and all the things you could never stand against, and even so, you refused to concede, refused to admit that being normal made you weak. And if that was all you could hope for, then you would make it a victory.

So you stopped smoking and hoped things would start tasting right again, but they never did, so you ate more to make up for it. And they kicked you off the boxing team when your marks went down, but it wasn’t your fault that test paper seemed too thin, and the sky was always full of owls. And now you’re scared of shadows and the cold. And you slide the palms of your hands over walls when you walk to make sure there’s always something solid nearby to grab onto. And you hope you’re heavy enough to stay in place when the world starts slipping away.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Harry’s lucky.

Hermione and Ron were with him the entire way, ahead of him even, but by some incredible chance, his foot was the first to touch down onto the dried grass of the circle, and Voldemort had turned the very ground into a portkey. It shouldn’t have been possible, but magic is getting stronger.

There are huge rips and tears along the sides of Harry’s jumper from where his friends tried to grab on and go with him. He has marks from Hermione’s fingernails lining his right forearm, and he’s pretty sure Ron’s left with the clump of hair he grabbed trying to hold him in place, but the dull ache in the back of his head is nothing compared to the dizziness that always comes with portkey travel and the overwhelming nausea that always comes with standing face to face with Voldemort and having Voldemort’s laughter ringing in his ears.

They’re in a graveyard— the same one they were in fourth year, standing in a circle of grey rocks, probably chipped from the crumbling headstones. Harry thinks he may have broken his ankle on the landing. He falls to the ground and fumbles through his pockets for his wand, and he’s lucky. He’s about to die, but he can’t keep himself from smiling, because wherever they are, and for however long will last, his friends are safe. He’s keeping them safe. And he couldn’t be more lucky.

There are Death Eaters all around, but Harry sets up a shield, and he doesn’t even have to think to maintain it. Voldemort’s curses are powerful, but they seem to come at him in slow motion. Everything is more vivid, and Harry can tell just from the bend of his wand what he’ll need to do to block them.

Harry keeps himself so busy with defense that it takes a while for him to realize he can actually win. The knowledge makes his heart beat faster still, and warms him from the inside like hot butterbeer. In his head, the laughter stops.And something else changes then. He stops thinking about his friends back in the forest, and he doesn’t pay any mind to the Death Eaters who have started to inch closer towards him. The world becomes smaller— all that’s in it are him and Voldemort, and all that matters to him is that Voldemort be destroyed.

The curses come faster after that, but Harry fires back with equal speed, and his ankle is still strong enough for him to run on when he needs to dodge the hexes his shields miss.

In the end, all it takes is expelliarmus. The spell sends Voldemort soaring ten feet backwards and delivers his wand directly to Harry’s outstretched hand. Voldemort’s eyes burn a brighter red for a second then flicker out and fade to dark blue, as if realizing he can die has made him almost human.

He puts his own wand safely in his pocket and holds Voldemort’s with both hands. This is how it has to be, Harry thinks to himself. Then he closes his eyes and snaps the wand in two and whispers, “I’m sorry,” even though he’s not sure who he’s saying it to or if he really means it at all.

As the two halves of the broken wand fall to the ground, he’s struck by the sudden, horrible knowledge that the only true power is in sacrifice, and things like this always come at a price that no one should have to pay.

The magic that kept Voldemort alive for decades fizzles in the air for a few seconds before dissipating. As it goes, the colors of the world around him become duller, and his shields fall away, and he stumbles over his ankle, which can no longer support his weight. He looks up to the masked faces of the Death Eaters from the center of the stone circle, and he smiles as they draw their wands.

He never finds out what spells they were planning to use on him. Before he has the chance, he feels a sharp tug right beneath his navel and lands back in the dry grass of the clearing just past the center of the forbidden forest with his friends standing all around him. They all look slightly singed. Ginny’s arm is bent in a way that shouldn’t be possible and Luna’s sporting a very impressive black eye, but she doesn’t seem at all bothered by it.

“I did it,” he whispers. “He’s gone.”

“Of course he is,” Hermione says. “We wouldn’t have been able to call you back unless you somehow managed to break the connection.”

“We also wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t taken some of your hair,” Ron adds, and Hermione rolls her eyes.

“Well, that was hardly planned, and you certainly didn’t have to grab so much of it.”

“Sorry if I was the one who wasn’t thinking clearly when I was running right at bloody Vol—Volde— bloody you know who.”

“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione says with a sigh. “He’s dead now, and it was only ever a name.”

Harry watches Ron’s face hardening and quickly decides to change the subject. “You’re all okay?” he asks without getting up.

Hermione nods. “Quite good, considering, Neville had a bit of a time taking down Bellatrix Lestrange, and Smith got a little too enthusiastic with his Incendios and almost burned his own foot off.”

“There were Death Eaters here too?” Harry asks, looking over at Neville, who blushes bright red.

“Loads,” Ron says. “You should have seen what Ginny did to Macnair. It was brutal.”

There’s a loud clearing of a throat, and a deep voice from behind him says, “Grawp help.”

“Indeed,” Hermione says, and Harry watches as she fights to keep a straight face. “Grawp here stepped on Pettigrew.”

Ron gives a nasty smile and holds up what looks like a tiny, silver claw. “It was brilliant.”

Luna looks down at Harry and then back in the direction of Hogwarts. “Your foot’s broken, you know. You’re not going to be able to walk.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I kind of figured that.”

She nods at him, then grabs the broom from Neville’s hand and flies up so she can whisper something in Grawp’s ear. Harry lets his head fall back on the ground and smiles.

As it turned out, being carried by a giant wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as he would have expected, and though she had a bit of trouble with the spell, Madame Pomfrey was able to fully mend his broken bone, leaving only a thin, barley noticeable scar running the length of his ankle.

Back in the common room, Ron prods the bare patch on the back of Harry’s head with a long finger. “I thought you said you could re-grow your hair when you were younger.”

“I could.”

Ron laughs and flops down on the sofa beside him. “Can’t anymore, mate. I thought I would be the one to go bald, what with my dad and Bill.”

Hermione’s head snaps up her from her book. “Not Bill,” she gasps, blushing slightly.

“Yeah,” Ron says, looking mildly offended, “He’s hideous now, and he’s keeping the ponytail, which just makes it worse. No offence to you, Harry.”

“It’s your fault,” Harry mutters.

Ron throws a pillow at him. “It’s your fault for being so bloody short that your hair was all I could reach.”

“Don’t worry,” Hermione says. “I’ll ask Dobby to give you one of his hats. He has dozens, you know.”

He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “Aren’t I lucky?”

“Yes,” Hermione and Ron answer together, and Harry knows better than to argue.

Two days later, Hermione nervously flicks the end of her quill against her wrist and swears she can no longer see the runes in her books.

Five days later, Ron passes out after performing a simple starching spell on the dress robes his parents sent him for the leaving ball.

One week later, Harry can barely summon sparks.

It’s a muggle train, not the Hogwarts Express that takes them back to King’s Cross Station. The ride seems much longer. It’s too quiet, and Harry doesn’t know what to think. Halfway through, Neville, Ginny, Luna and Zacharias Smith manage to squeeze themselves into the compartment he shares with Ron and Hermione, but no one talks. When he thinks about it, he begins to realize that there’s nothing left to say.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


It’s the last day of your last term at Smeltings. Exams are behind you, and you have no idea what’s ahead, how you’ll squeeze yourself down to fit in and be normal, how you’ll make everyone believe there’s really nothing different about you, how you’ll make yourself believe it too.

Your dorm is empty, and you’re still out of breath from walking up the stairs. The other boys are down in the cellar with a few bottles of rum they swiped from the history professor. You’re not with them, because drinking makes you dizzy and sick, and it reminds you of another time you felt dizzy and sick— a time you don’t want to think about ever again.

You fall into your bed, and your arm brushes the paper of an envelope on your pillow— a stiff envelope surrounded by a few clumps of pale grey feathers, and the first thing you recognize isn’t your mum’s handwriting or her lawn of the month postage stamp, it’s the way the paper feels thick under your fingers and the purple wax seal and the address.

Dudley Dursley
Second floor
Largest seventh year dorm
Broken bed
Smeltings


You hands are too clumsy to break the seal, so you rip the paper across the top, and the handwriting you see inside isn’t your mum’s, but you definitely remember it.

This letter is for you, Dudley Dursley, and I expect you to pay careful attention to what it has to say, though, it is unlikely one such as yourself could ever grasp the true importance of the events imparted herein. You will likely be bothered only by the small nuisance they may cause you personally. You see, your cousin, Mr. Potter, recently brought an end to Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard, who sought to take all the world under his power. As Voldemort’s threat grew, we placed many muggles who may have been particularly targeted by him and whose capture may have posed a danger to Mr. Potter into spell secured houses, so they would be protected. It may not surprise you to learn that with their knowledge of the magical world and their relation to Mr. Potter, your parents were among those muggles, and if Lord Voldemort were alive now, you would have joined them.

Naturally, for witches and wizards, this is a time of much rejoicing, and even you should consider it good fortune that the darkest wizard of the age is now gone forever, though not without some complications. Things like this always come at a price. Understand that the magical energy it took to destroy Voldemort has drained our reserves, and none are currently able to take down the spells put in place to hide your parents or use the magical compasses we possess to find their shielded location.

I assure you, this situation is not permanent. Your mother and father are perfectly safe, and they will be returned to you as soon as we have the means to do so.

We offer our official apologies for the inconvenience this will undoubtedly cause.

~Albus Dumbledore,
Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Your hands are shaking, and you don’t bother to try and stop them as you read the letter over and over again and search the envelope for anything else. You find only a short note from your mum, obviously written before she knew she would be trapped.

Everything’s okay, Diddykins. We’re fine, and you mustn’t be afraid to come along. They say we’ll only be here a few days.

But they won’t only be there a few days, and things haven’t been okay for a very long time. You swallow hard, wondering where you’ll go and what you’ll do and how anyone will think you’re normal now that your parents have mysteriously disappeared.

Summer’s just beginning, and your dorm is closed off and stifling, but you have to suppress a shiver. You can feel the magic stronger than before as it runs off the paper and snaps against you skin, and you can see it in faint, shimmering outlines when you let your eyes slide out of focus.

Too dizzy to stand and with nothing to distract you, you lay down with the letter clutched tight in your fist. You try to plan out the remainder of your summer, the remainder of your life— a proper house and a normal job and a schedule ruled by paychecks and bills and nightly television shows.

You ignore the sinking feeling that comes when you think about looking for work at Grundings until it slips away and changes to a vision or yourself alone and lost, wandering through cold alleyways at night. You fall asleep exhausted and angry with your eyes shut tight so you don’t have to look at anymore sparks or bright flashes.

You wake up with Gordon poking you in the stomach and Malcolm behind him snickering. They say you were thrashing about and screaming like a girl, but you tell yourself that can’t be true. Only freaks like Harry scream in their sleep.

The ride home seems faster than it ever has before, and that could be because you don’t want to go home to an empty house, except when you get there, the house isn’t quite as empty as you thought it would be.

You find Harry at the kitchen table with newspapers spread all around him, furiously reading and scribbling fast notes in the margins with a feather like the one you have in your shoebox. He looks up at you and smirks as if he’s a second from laughing, and then he turns back to the papers and starts writing again.

“Shove off,” you say, grabbing the table and shaking it so his feather slips and draws an ugly jagged line across the paper. “I need to get something to eat.”

“No,” he says, looking at you in a way that makes your skin crawl. “No, you really don’t.”

“Get up.”

“I’m busy.”

“Get up, now!”

He makes a show of continuing whatever he was writing, as if he hasn’t heard you at all. You shake the table a few more times and kick him in the shin once, but he doesn’t even bother to look up at you again. He does get up, eventually, and he takes a long time doing it, making sure every paper is perfectly folded and neatly stacked before carrying them off to his room, and he gives you a stare that says he’s leaving because he wants to, not because of anything you did or told him. You sit down and turn on the television and eat the candy bar from your pocket so fast it makes you feel sick afterwards.

Harry keeps his distance for the next few days, passing you only occasionally in the hallways or on the stairs, and he makes sure to stop and back up against the wall, so you have room to walk by, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

You didn’t expect to see him ever again, and you don’t like that he’s back. You don’t like the way he looks at you, as if you’re not really there, and you don’t like the way he’s constantly shuffling through his trunk of freak things, and you don’t like the way he gets letters from his owl right through the front window where everyone can see. You know that if your mum and dad were here they wouldn’t let him stay, but they’re not, and that’s Harry’s fault too.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Harry goes back to Number 4 Privet Drive, even though he promised himself he never would. It’s not the first promise he’s broken.

Grimauld Place was destroyed completely by a cursed explosion one year back, and the Burrow is falling apart piece by piece. Ginny and Ron go to stay with Hermione until they can make it stand on its own without magic. They try to drag him along with them, but he refuses. He doesn’t want his friends around if the Death Eaters come for him, and he knows they will come. He remembers the look in their eyes as they stared down at him after he destroyed their master, no matter how hard he tries to forget. It’s only a matter of time before they find him.

It’s strange to walk freely through the house and not hear Aunt Petunia’s shrill cries or Uncle Vernon’s gruff orders. There is only Dudley, and even though he’s grown to roughly the size of three people, it still seems terribly empty.

On his second day back, Harry gets a letter from Hermione scrawled in pencil on lined notebook paper. Even her normally precise handwriting looks rough and shaky. He almost doesn’t want to read it, because everything is different and wrong now, and he can’t let himself hope that she has any good news to tell.

Dear Harry,

Something’s going on, and you must already have realized it’s much bigger than they told us at school. The Ministry is still trying to figure out what, but they can’t even get into their own building anymore, and we never could rely on them for the truth. This has something to do with you, Harry— something to do with the connection between you and Voldemort. They think that created a balance of some sort, but whatever it was, it’s gone now and no one can get any magic to work, not even potions or arithmancy, and all of Neville’s plants are dying.

You hold the key, Harry. Try to remember the first time you defeated Voldemort— the very first time. We think there might be some clues there. Nothing like this happened then, and we need to know why. We need you. We need to know where all the magic’s gone.

~Hermione

Harry can’t remember. He was little more than a year old, and all that he can hold in his mind when he thinks of it are his parent’s screams. Hermione’s right, as usual. She’s right about magic, and she's probably right about the Ministry too. The Occulmency he put everything he had into learning is certainly useless now. He can’t even shut his mind off from the sounds of Dudley belching in the kitchen or stomping up the stairs, and he’s sure she suspected as much the second she could no longer see the symbols in her books.

She’s wrong about something, though. Defeating Voldemort the first time didn’t mean what she thinks it does. It wasn’t that he was chosen or marked or loved enough to escape death. It was that he saved something. He saved towns from being destroyed and people from dying in Death Eater raids, and even if it only lasted a few years, that was what made the difference. Of course, magic hadn’t deserted them then. Voldemort still lived, without a body perhaps, but he was never really gone— not until now.

Harry knew that if he hadn’t done it to save things, defeating Voldemort would make him nothing more than a murderer. He broke the wand so his friends would be safe and so Hogwarts would always be there and so muggles could keep living their boring, little lives in their boring, little houses and never question that another world existed just beyond everything they thought was normal. And he knew even that would come at a price. But now he wonders if it was worth it, and he wonders if he had any right to make that choice for everyone else.

Dear Hermione, he writes.

I tried, but I can’t find any clues listening to my parents being murdered. I think even you would have trouble properly remembering back that far. It’s a shame that I hold the key, as you say, because you would clearly be much better suited for it than I am. There have been other dark wizards in the past. Perhaps your time would be better suited researching the aftermath of the Grindewald wars than pestering me.

~Harry

That night, Dudley is upstairs playing on his computer, and Harry sits on the sofa in the lounge, trying to remember how it felt to hold his wand for the first time and how happy he was when he managed to conjure a real Patronus and what it was like to fly. He thinks that if he can force his mind back that far he may be able to go a bit farther while still holding on to some good memories, maybe even as far back as Hermione wants, and he already feels bad about sending his letter off with Hedwig before thinking about the things he wrote.

He can’t concentrate. He’s tired and hungry and aching to move, and there’s a strange whirring noise coming from the second floor and muffled voices coming from outside and a sound like fingernails scratching against glass. Tentatively, he rises from his seat and draws back the curtain and comes face to face with the pale, white mask of a Death Eater.

On instinct, Harry reaches in his pocket for his wand, but it’s not there, and even if it was, it wouldn’t have been of any use. The Death Eater doesn’t seem to see him, though. It turns away and walks to where a whole crowd of them stand under the light of a street lamp. They speak huddled together, and Harry cannot understand their words. He notices that some of them hold long wooden sticks and he watches as they step hesitantly onto the front lawn, look around and then turn back as if there isn’t anything there to see.

They stay all night and so does Harry, watching them as he crouches by the window. They come the next night too, and the night after that, and sometimes, they get so close he can see their eyes darting curiously beneath their masks, but they never notice him.

It won’t last, though. He knows it won’t last, and it’s only a matter of days or weeks before they find him. He knows he won’t be able to fight them when they do, and that hurts the most. He sleeps during the day, when he can, but Dudley rarely keeps quiet long enough for him to get any rest. He reads muggle newspapers and even ventured to quietly turn on TV news a few times, but there’s nothing he can recognize as unusual and certainly nothing that could be magic.

It takes over a week for Hedwig to come back with another letter from Hermione. For a while, Harry wonders if she’s lost and begins to blame himself for that too, but then, she lands on the table with a thud and doesn’t move as he untangles the crumpled paper attached to her leg with a rubber band. Hermione wrote in pen this time, and her handwriting is barely legible.

Dear Harry,

I’m sorry if I came off as nagging the last time I wrote. Are you okay? You can come here, you know. My parents want you to come here. The Ministry is putting out its official statements saying that all magic is gone, except they don’t call themselves the Ministry anymore, because there’s nothing left to be Ministry of. They think they’re just a bunch of people who could do things once but now can’t.

I don’t believe it, not yet. I know it’s hard to think of your parents, but there has to be a way. Keep trying, Harry. You have to keep trying.

~Hermione

He picks up a pen and paper, but he doesn’t know what the write. He has to tell the truth. He owes her that much at least, but he can’t tell her everything, and her certainly can’t accept her offer of coming to stay with her parents. He takes a deep breath, forcing down the lump that rises in his throat. The most important thing is not getting to short with her like he had in his last letter.

Dear Hermione,

I’m sorry I can’t remember. I was only a year old. Everyone thinks I should be able to do these things, but I can’t. I was trying to make it better, but I think I actually made everything worse. I don’t know what else to do.

I hope you’re doing well and Ron’s okay and so is everyone else staying with you.

~Harry

He rolls the paper gently and gives it to Hedwig, who wobbles and scratches the table with her talons before flying out the window, and he closes his eyes and tries not to think that it could be the last letter he’ll ever write. Then, he walks into the lounge to find Dudley sprawled over the sofa, using the remote to flip through channels. Even beneath the noise of the television, Harry can hear the whirring coming from upstairs, and as he draws the curtains closed, he notices that the sun is just beginning to set over the neighbors’ identical rooftops. “Can you hear that?” he asks, but Dudley only snorts something inaudible. “What? Can you hear it?”

“Go ‘way.”

“That noise—”

“It’s my radio or my play-station or my remote control airplane. I don’t know which.”

“Well,” Harry says, as if he’s talking to a complete idiot, which Dudley pretty much is. “Why don’t you turn them off, then?”

Dudley grunts. “Why don’t you?”

“Fine,” he says, starting to walk away. “Fine, I will.”

“You better stay out of my room!” Dudley screams after him, and he hasn’t gotten five stairs up before Dudley pushes him halfway over the banister, stumbles heavily into his room and slams his shut door behind him.

Harry is slow to walk back downstairs and take his seat at the window. By the time he gets himself situated, all light has faded from the sky, and the Death Eaters are stumbling through Aunt Petunia’s flowerbeds.

The next day, he gets a letter from Hermione, only this one comes in the though the mail slot with the muggle post.

Dear Harry,

It’s gone. No one can even detect hints of it anymore, not even at Hogwarts. It’s not your fault, you know. You saved us. You saved everything. It’s just that we spent so long learning every bit of it we could, and now none of that matters, because it’s gone. I’m sorry.

~Hermione

He reads it twice more and takes a deep breath. Then he stares at a blank sheet of paper, but can think of nothing to write— nothing truthful and certainly nothing comforting. He’s almost glad when Dudley storms into the kitchen and demands that he leave.

Back in his room, Harry digs through his trunk, searching for some sign that something might still have a little magic left in it, but when he sees the state of his wand— dull grey and rotting, he shoves what he can under the floorboards, so he doesn’t have to look at it any longer and leaves the rest scattered on his bed before going back downstairs and waiting for the sky to darken.

He watches more carefully this time, but he still can’t tell where the Death Eater’s come from. They gather, as they always do, on the sidewalk and the front lawn, and this time, a few of them have traded their wooden sticks for crowbars and knives that gleam faintly in the dim light of the street lamp. He watches as they bend down to pick up pebbles and handfuls of dirt from the garden, and he presses his head to the window, knowing there is only that thin pane of glass separating them.

He wakes early in the morning sore all over with the windowsill digging into his back, and he hears it again— the whirring sound coming from the second floor. It’s not in Dudley’s room, he finds. Not even Dudley is in Dudley’s room, and amazingly, all of his electronic toys are turned off.

Harry follows the sound to his own room, stopping at the doorway when he sees Dudley sitting on the floor poking through his quills and wand care kit with chocolate frogs and peppermint toads hopping around his feet. He watches as Dudley reaches a fat finger out cautiously and touches one before scooting back fast as it springs away in the opposite direction. “They’re chocolate,” he murmurs to himself.

Harry blinks and takes a deep breath. “They’re jumping.”

“You!” Dudley turns on him with surprising speed. “What are you—”

“This is my room,” Harry snaps, cutting him off. “What are you doing in here?”

“I was hungry,” Dudley says, as if that explains everything. “And this is my house.”

Harry gives him an odd look and then closes his eyes. “No, it’s not,” he says absently. It sounds like the whirring is coming from right beneath his feet. “What’s that noise?”

Dudley shrugs, still starring at the frogs and toads, which start to jump noticeably higher. “Dunno.”

“Get out, Dudley.”

Dudley stands, trying and failing to catch a few frogs on his way up. “You shouldn’t keep your freak stuff just lying about,” he says with a sneer.

“You shouldn’t touch it,” Harry mumbles as Dudley stomps out the door.

He hears the whirring slow to a soft rattle beneath the floorboards that’s quickly getting softer, and he pries them open quickly, splintering his fingers, just in time to see the pocket sneakoscope Ron had given him for his thirteenth birthday toppling over onto its side. He takes it out and examines it for a few moments before setting it on his nightstand and watching as it doesn’t spin.

On the floor, the frogs and toads have gone still and are beginning to look cracked and chalky around the edges.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry’s in the kitchen listening to some news program on the radio. He looks at you curiously for a second when you enter and turns it off before you can tell him you’ll pound him if he doesn’t, but he makes no move to get up. He watches. He watches as you take a piece of fudge cake from the refrigerator and as you take the first few large bites. “Stop it,” you say, but he doesn’t. He watches, unsurprised, as the television turns on without you touching the remote and as it flicks off when you get up to leave. “What are you playing at?”

“Nothing.”

“You-you’d better . . .” You stand there, trying to come up with something to say, but you can’t think properly, and you don’t know why, but your hands start shaking, and then you hear it— wing-beats.

Harry’s owl has turned from white to a dull, yellowish grey, and its eyes look foggy and sick, but Harry still lets it hop all over the table when it flies in through the window. He pats its head for a few seconds, and then he turns back to you and starts watching again.

“Quit it.”

“What?”

“Quit being weird.”

“Already have,” he says, but your heart starts beating fast, and you can’t concentrate to figure out what he means by it. The magic is getting brighter, so bright that you can see it even when you close your eyes. You can feel cool winds swirling all around you, and you hold a napkin between two fingers and drop it to see where those winds are coming from and where they’ll carry it, but it falls straight to the counter. You chance a quick look at Harry to see if his mess of hair is blowing about, but it’s perfectly still and just the same as always, except for a rather obvious bald patch in the back.

The winds blow harder, touching nothing but your skin, and when you shiver slightly, Harry tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes. “Stop,” you say, but he doesn’t, so you grab a grab a package of biscuits and leave. You can feel Harry’s stare on the back of your neck all the way to your room.

~*~ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry wasn’t sure of it at first. He didn’t want to let himself think it could be possible only to be disappointed in the end, but he’s been paying attention for the past few days, and over the years, he’s grown used to impossible things happening. He isn’t surprised when Pig flies into the kitchen and starts trying to make a nest in his hair.

“I heard that,” Dudley shouts from the lounge. “I’m sick of your ruddy freak bird doing whatever it likes.”

“Hedwig’s sleeping,” Harry calls back, trying to get the tiny owl untangled and vaguely wondering what made Dudley leave his room again.

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying,” he says. “You do know that owls are nocturnal?”

“What?”

Harry rolls his eyes and rakes a hand through his hair, trying to loosen Pig’s grip. “They tend sleep during the day,” he says with an exhausted sigh. “Day is what it’s called when the sun’s out and it’s not dark. You know, I actually think we’ve been over this before.”

“Shut your face.”

Harry expects Dudley to come waddling in and start screaming at him, but instead the television gets louder, and he reminds himself that Dudley’s never been one to do any unnecessary walking. A few minutes later, he manages to get Pig out of his hair but only by cutting quite a bit off the top. He absently wonders what state his head must be in now and if he should take Hermione up on her offer of a hat. Beside him, Pig hops excitedly over Dudley’s placemat then drops a letter on the table and zips out the window. Unexpectedly, the writing on the envelope is Ron’s, not Hermione’s.


Dear Harry,

I won’t yell at you for not writing to me, since you’ve obviously gone mental. The thing is I think Hermione has sort of gone mental too. But you shouldn’t worry about that— I mean it’s all happening in a very Hermione way, all planed out and organized according to colored timetables and corresponding the growing season of mandrakes and the phases of the moon.

Maybe she’s right, and I am just being thick headed like everyone tells me, but I don’t think all the magic’s gone. I think we would be able to tell if it really was. It’s just not where you’re looking for it, and you don’t have to be looking, Harry. You’ve done what you needed to. You’ve done more than enough. It’s like when you lose things, and they always turn up in the least expected places. Neville says if it’s anything like Trevor it’s probably scared and tired and hiding by the lake, lounging about and snacking on flies until it feels better. I don’t know about the flies, but the rest seems to almost make sense.

Mum’s worried about you. She thinks you should come over here and eat chicken soup and rest until everything’s perfect. I think you should just stop trying to save the world, because you’re going to drive yourself completely mad. I’d tell you to sit back and do nothing, but you have being a hero beaten so far into your brain by now that you probably can’t. So forget about magic and the Ministry and all the great big messy problems.

Save one thing or save little things or come visit and save me from Percy’s lectures on how bloody fascinating muggle money is. I swear, he sent away for something called a kedit card and nearly died of happiness when he saw all the forms to fill out. Then he made me go with him to a bank. I think there was something wrong with it, because there weren’t any carts or goblins or anything, just velvet ropes and lines we had to wait in for hours, and he was giggling, Harry. Giggling.

We’re fine, though, at least as fine as we would have been back at home. My brothers are all here, did you know? I don’t expect Hermione’s been giving you any real news. Everyone’s trying to educate me on muggle contraptions or proper manners or the difference between molars and bicuspids. I tried to tell them I’m bloody finished school and don’t need any more educating, but they won’t listen to me. Nobody ever listens to me.

If you’re lucky, Pig hasn’t made too much of a mess. Sorry if he did. He’s been a little jumpy lately, but I thought he would work better than Errol or Hermes on account of him being a normal owl rather than a magical one.

Hope your muggles aren’t being too horrible.

~Ron

There’s a reason Ron doesn’t write letters often and tries to keep them short when he does. It’s the same reason Hermione always seemed seconds away from screaming in frustration when she helped him revise his Defense papers and futilely tried to convince him not to include pages on the death of Uncle Bilius. Harry has to read the letter twice before he can get any information out of it and four times before it starts really making sense. He’s still looking it over in mild awe when a stubby, pink finger reaches over his shoulder and pins it to the table.

“I know what this is,” Dudley says.

“Really?” Harry turns his head slightly and looks up into Dudley’s small, watery eyes. “Congratulations.”

“It’s a freak letter. It’s from one of your freak friends.”

“I underestimate you sometimes, don’t I? Maybe one day you’ll even learn how to read.”

“I don’t want to read that,” Dudley says. “It probably has freak germs crawling all over it”

“You’re touching it,” Harry says absently.

Dudley’s finger jumps for a second and trembles slightly but then pushes harder into the paper. “I-I’m not afraid of your stupid letters.”

“Oh?”

“You’re not allowed to have it here.”

“Well I do.”

“Get rid of it,” he says, and Harry can’t help but smile.

“Make me.”

There are little beads of sweat popping up all over Dudley’s large face, but he’s shivering and his teeth are chattering, as if it’s cold. Suddenly, all the burners on the stove flare up in swirls of blue-white flame, and Harry can hear Dudley’s breath coming in sharp pants as he turns and runs clumsily up the stairs.

Harry switches the stove off by hand. That’s the only way he can do it now, and he picks up a pen and a piece of paper, and he writes.

Dear Ron,

You’re right. You’re right about everything, except that it’s called a credit card, and muggle banks generally don’t have goblins.

~Harry


At night, Harry sneaks into Dudley’s room and watches Dudley sleep. Sometimes Dudley snores, and sometimes he screams, and sometimes he doesn’t make any noise at all, but his shoulders rise and fall too quickly, as he jerks and shudders and pulls blankets up over his head. Harry doesn’t move to wake him. If this is a spell, he does not want to break it.

Impossible things can happen— he knows this, babies can defeat dark lords and foolish boys can pull enchanted stones from mirrors and swords from hats with nothing more than an unselfish wish. Their impossibility is not enough to stop them from happening, but it won’t let them keep going, not long and never permanently. Charmed lives are not made from luck but obligation and responsibility. The magic that protected the baby wears thin as he grows older, and the foolish boy pays for his impetuousness with the lives of those closest to him. However these new shields were made, Harry knows it’s only a matter of time before they too fail. It’s only ever been a matter of time.

So he concentrates, and outside, he can hear the confused voices of the Death Eaters, and through the window, he can see their shadows passing in and out of the lamplight. He closes his eyes, and he tries to feel for any faint hints of magic floating through the air, but it’s too hot and thick and stuffy, as if there’s really not enough left for both him and Dudley to breathe at once. But no matter how uncomfortable the room becomes, Harry doesn't leave it, and he silently wills Dudley to stay asleep and to not find him there and to keep doing whatever it is he’s doing, however he’s doing it, for as long as he can.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part two