Dec 01 - The One Where Harry *isn't* Raped.
Yay! Day one!
Fandom: Harry Potter
Prompt: The one where Harry isn't raped. But that's not what everyone seems to think.
Harry’s stomach rumbled ominously as he pulled the last weed from the back garden’s flower beds. The summer had been especially hot that year, with only about three items in most people’s wardrobes being bearable to wear without the desperate desire to suddenly strip due to heat and temporary insanity.
However, Harry had more troubles than just the heat. He was even more exhausted than he usually was during Summer (which was, admittedly, due to the heat) and was desperately trying to find a way of completing his summer homework while his ‘freaky’ stuff was all locked under the stairs.
Well, that’s not quite true. He wasn’t that desperate. He was still a teenager. And Hogwarts was still school. Like many students he was trying to calculate whether he could do it all on the train.
He headed inside to get a glass of water, carefully scraping his shoes before stepping into the meticulously clean kitchen.
He drank what must have been two pints of water, before cleaning the glass carefully and replacing it. He then ran a mop over the mud on the floor.
He might not have liked it, but he had known the Dursleys for fourteen years. He knew how they’d react if he wasn’t this careful. What’s more, due to the heat effectively beaching Vernon and Dudley (like the whales they are, Harry thought) Petunia had become even more vigilant against Harry and his “messiness”, due to the fact that she knew she could rightfully blame it all on him.
Harry checked the kitchen clock. It was half past five. He had half an hour before starting to cook dinner, so he slipped quickly upstairs, glancing into the living room where Vernon and Petunia stared at the TV, under the cooling wind of the electric fan.
***
Harry threw himself back onto his bed. The sheets felt marginally cooler than the air, and his bed was in the shade, so he closed his eyes for a bit.
About twenty minutes later he heard a tapping on his window, and woke up to let an owl in. Well, it was probably an owl. It also looked a bit like a bat.
It was carrying a letter (surprisingly enough).
He guided the owl over to his desk, where he cautiously handed it an owl treat, hoping that, whatever it was, it would appreciate it. He opened the letter.
Dear Harry,
How is your summer going? Sorry I haven’t written much, but I was a little distracted, and I couldn’t tell you, and seeing as my life was a little consumed, there wasn’t much else to talk about. Anyway, I can tell you now.
I’ve got my old house back! Which sounds alright, especially with that exclamation mark, but it isn’t really. It’s rather bleak. So, I went through it, took some stuff that looked dark and expensive and sold it to a friend in Knockturn Alley. Then I gave the house to Dumbledoor for his anti-Voldemort group and bought a smaller house. Well, un-mortgaged it. Sort of. The Blacks had a load of old houses that they pawned, or sold on a lease and I just bought one back.
And now I’m living here with Moony! It’s nice, the people who were living here (who weren’t Blacks) got rid of the ancient damp feel (nothing belonging to the family was left here) and it’s just an ordinary house (with super amazing defences/wards/whatever).
So, the point is, we have a new house and it’s safe, so would you like to come and stay? Just say when!
-Sirius
Harry grinned. It was true, he hadn’t heard much from Sirius, and Ron and Hermione had started talking only about each other, something Harry wasn’t sure he was comfortable with. So their letters were less of a comfort than they used to be. And this summer felt like it was just going on and on and on. The heat probably didn’t help.
Harry rubbed the paper between his thumb and forefinger, finding another slip of parchment behind Sirius’ letter.
Dear Harry,
Sirius said he was writing to you so I thought I’d add my two penny’s worth. We’d love to have you stay for however long you want, whenever, as we’ve finally finished unpacking and realised that, both being unemployed at the moment, there is nothing else to do. We may have to re-decorate the spare (or ‘your’) room, just for the sake of it.
You will be quite safe here, don’t worry, just tell us if you want to come, and if so when.
-Remus
P.S. Sorry about whatever strange creature Sirius ends up sending this with. He’s known for thinking the weirder you look, the harder you’ll work. (It’s an interesting belief, with no evidence to back it up that I’ve seen.)
Harry allowed himself about twenty seconds of insane grinning, before forcing himself to check the clock. He should probably start dinner if he intended to have it all cooked before the start of whatever program starting at seven the Dursleys were planning to watch.
He forcibly left the letter under his pillow, squashing the ridiculous urge to put it in his pocket and carry it around. He turned to the owl and awkwardly told it, “right, you can go home if you want, or wait here for an hour before I write a reply.”
The owl-bat thing looked back blackly. As usual, Harry felt self-conscious before trying to talk to the owl (sometimes things that haven’t been there from birth never feel normal) and this only made him feel stupid. So he left the window open (it was a warm night) and went downstairs to cook.
Happily passive-aggressively cooking heavy, hot, winter foods, Harry tried to stop himself from composing letters to Sirius and Remus accepting their invitation without sounding desperate.
He had reached the point where he had forgotten the beginning of the only letter that was sounding decent, when he started setting the table.
He was aware that the Dursleys wanted to watch TV while eating (in their new summer “keep-unfit” regime) but firstly, he wanted to annoy them, and secondly, last time he had attempted to serve food in the living room (the day before) he had been batted out of the way of the TV so many times that he fell over trying to stop the food from spilling. The food hadn’t spilt, so no-one cared. Except perhaps the stuff under the sofa, which Harry hadn’t bothered to clear out due to the bruises on his hips (from Vernon’s massive hands batting him) making it hurt to bend over that far.
Happy with his neat setting of the table - medium-nice napkins at all (Petunia would kill him if he put out the very-nice napkins) - he entered the living room to announce dinner.
***
After a satisfyingly unsatisfying dinner of winter stew (Vernon, Petunia and Dudley had been annoyed, but hadn’t found the irrationality to blame Harry. It had been brilliant.) and stacking the dishwasher, Harry took the stairs two at a time and pulled the letters out from under his pillow.
He pulled a sheet of paper from the refill pad he’d bought in the newsagents and started to reply. Trying hard not to seem desperate, he talked about everything other than going to stay with Sirius and Remus first:
Dear Sirius,
Summer’s been too hot and rather monotonous so far. Glad to hear yours has been more productive!
Don’t worry about any lack of letters, you have an excuse.
I’m happy for you that you got a house, it sounds like a proper home.
I’d love to come and stay! I’m just living through the days here, so I can come whenever you’re ready to receive me.
-Harry
Then, attached to the back:
Dear Remus,
Thank you for your letter. Like I said to Sirius, I’d love to come stay with you two and so far I have no plans for doing anything else. Basically I’m happy to come and go whenever you want/get tired of me.
Looking forward to seeing you,
-Harry
P.S. Maybe he reasons that if you’re a weird looking bird you get less work and therefore work harder on the work you do get?
The bat/owl was still there so Harry tied the scroll onto it’s leg, fed it a chunk of meat from the stew (only lukewarm and slightly soggy, but the thing didn’t seem to mind) and sort of threw the bird out of the window.
***
Morticius returned to the Grotto (which was what Sirius had renamed the house, to Remus’ quiet horror) with Harry’s letters about a day after leaving them. It was morning, relatively speaking, so Remus had been up a few hours and Sirius was having breakfast.
They both read the letters directed to them, then, without discussing it, swapped and read the other’s.
“Well, Harry’s perceptive,” Sirius commented, having read Harry’s explanation for his owl choice.
“He is . . . mature. Only Molly and Andromeda so far have commented on how home-y our house is.”
“Is that maturity? I thought that was just . . .” Sirius trailed off.
“Just what?”
“Well, you know when we met, and he’d only just got his head around the idea I wasn’t a serial murderer and was . . . y’know.”
“Yes.” Remus forgave Sirius for not mentioning James and Lily.
“He asked to come live with me then, didn’t he? So his own home can’t be that great.”
“I suppose.” Remus thought back to the relationship he and Harry had had during his brief stint as a Professor. He’d not thought much about Harry’s need for the relationship, knowing that he himself had been rather desperate for a link back to the Marauders. But looking back now it was easy to see Harry too had a desperation for a link back to his original family, one that he clearly didn’t find at home. “He’s coming here though,” Remus pointed out, more to comfort Sirius than anything, “he can stay with you now.”
tbc
A/N: TBC because it ran away from me and I have no more time tonight!. I'm so sorry, but now I have to focus on the dates of Advent to come. If someone prompts me the next chapter of this in adventchallenge (or in fact, the next chapter of any WIP you know of mine) I can continue it in December, otherwise you'll have to wait 'till the new year.
A/N 2: I still have spaces in my advent challenge post, which is here, so hurry and leave a prompt!
Fandom: Harry Potter
Prompt: The one where Harry isn't raped. But that's not what everyone seems to think.
Harry’s stomach rumbled ominously as he pulled the last weed from the back garden’s flower beds. The summer had been especially hot that year, with only about three items in most people’s wardrobes being bearable to wear without the desperate desire to suddenly strip due to heat and temporary insanity.
However, Harry had more troubles than just the heat. He was even more exhausted than he usually was during Summer (which was, admittedly, due to the heat) and was desperately trying to find a way of completing his summer homework while his ‘freaky’ stuff was all locked under the stairs.
Well, that’s not quite true. He wasn’t that desperate. He was still a teenager. And Hogwarts was still school. Like many students he was trying to calculate whether he could do it all on the train.
He headed inside to get a glass of water, carefully scraping his shoes before stepping into the meticulously clean kitchen.
He drank what must have been two pints of water, before cleaning the glass carefully and replacing it. He then ran a mop over the mud on the floor.
He might not have liked it, but he had known the Dursleys for fourteen years. He knew how they’d react if he wasn’t this careful. What’s more, due to the heat effectively beaching Vernon and Dudley (like the whales they are, Harry thought) Petunia had become even more vigilant against Harry and his “messiness”, due to the fact that she knew she could rightfully blame it all on him.
Harry checked the kitchen clock. It was half past five. He had half an hour before starting to cook dinner, so he slipped quickly upstairs, glancing into the living room where Vernon and Petunia stared at the TV, under the cooling wind of the electric fan.
***
Harry threw himself back onto his bed. The sheets felt marginally cooler than the air, and his bed was in the shade, so he closed his eyes for a bit.
About twenty minutes later he heard a tapping on his window, and woke up to let an owl in. Well, it was probably an owl. It also looked a bit like a bat.
It was carrying a letter (surprisingly enough).
He guided the owl over to his desk, where he cautiously handed it an owl treat, hoping that, whatever it was, it would appreciate it. He opened the letter.
Dear Harry,
How is your summer going? Sorry I haven’t written much, but I was a little distracted, and I couldn’t tell you, and seeing as my life was a little consumed, there wasn’t much else to talk about. Anyway, I can tell you now.
I’ve got my old house back! Which sounds alright, especially with that exclamation mark, but it isn’t really. It’s rather bleak. So, I went through it, took some stuff that looked dark and expensive and sold it to a friend in Knockturn Alley. Then I gave the house to Dumbledoor for his anti-Voldemort group and bought a smaller house. Well, un-mortgaged it. Sort of. The Blacks had a load of old houses that they pawned, or sold on a lease and I just bought one back.
And now I’m living here with Moony! It’s nice, the people who were living here (who weren’t Blacks) got rid of the ancient damp feel (nothing belonging to the family was left here) and it’s just an ordinary house (with super amazing defences/wards/whatever).
So, the point is, we have a new house and it’s safe, so would you like to come and stay? Just say when!
-Sirius
Harry grinned. It was true, he hadn’t heard much from Sirius, and Ron and Hermione had started talking only about each other, something Harry wasn’t sure he was comfortable with. So their letters were less of a comfort than they used to be. And this summer felt like it was just going on and on and on. The heat probably didn’t help.
Harry rubbed the paper between his thumb and forefinger, finding another slip of parchment behind Sirius’ letter.
Dear Harry,
Sirius said he was writing to you so I thought I’d add my two penny’s worth. We’d love to have you stay for however long you want, whenever, as we’ve finally finished unpacking and realised that, both being unemployed at the moment, there is nothing else to do. We may have to re-decorate the spare (or ‘your’) room, just for the sake of it.
You will be quite safe here, don’t worry, just tell us if you want to come, and if so when.
-Remus
P.S. Sorry about whatever strange creature Sirius ends up sending this with. He’s known for thinking the weirder you look, the harder you’ll work. (It’s an interesting belief, with no evidence to back it up that I’ve seen.)
Harry allowed himself about twenty seconds of insane grinning, before forcing himself to check the clock. He should probably start dinner if he intended to have it all cooked before the start of whatever program starting at seven the Dursleys were planning to watch.
He forcibly left the letter under his pillow, squashing the ridiculous urge to put it in his pocket and carry it around. He turned to the owl and awkwardly told it, “right, you can go home if you want, or wait here for an hour before I write a reply.”
The owl-bat thing looked back blackly. As usual, Harry felt self-conscious before trying to talk to the owl (sometimes things that haven’t been there from birth never feel normal) and this only made him feel stupid. So he left the window open (it was a warm night) and went downstairs to cook.
Happily passive-aggressively cooking heavy, hot, winter foods, Harry tried to stop himself from composing letters to Sirius and Remus accepting their invitation without sounding desperate.
He had reached the point where he had forgotten the beginning of the only letter that was sounding decent, when he started setting the table.
He was aware that the Dursleys wanted to watch TV while eating (in their new summer “keep-unfit” regime) but firstly, he wanted to annoy them, and secondly, last time he had attempted to serve food in the living room (the day before) he had been batted out of the way of the TV so many times that he fell over trying to stop the food from spilling. The food hadn’t spilt, so no-one cared. Except perhaps the stuff under the sofa, which Harry hadn’t bothered to clear out due to the bruises on his hips (from Vernon’s massive hands batting him) making it hurt to bend over that far.
Happy with his neat setting of the table - medium-nice napkins at all (Petunia would kill him if he put out the very-nice napkins) - he entered the living room to announce dinner.
***
After a satisfyingly unsatisfying dinner of winter stew (Vernon, Petunia and Dudley had been annoyed, but hadn’t found the irrationality to blame Harry. It had been brilliant.) and stacking the dishwasher, Harry took the stairs two at a time and pulled the letters out from under his pillow.
He pulled a sheet of paper from the refill pad he’d bought in the newsagents and started to reply. Trying hard not to seem desperate, he talked about everything other than going to stay with Sirius and Remus first:
Dear Sirius,
Summer’s been too hot and rather monotonous so far. Glad to hear yours has been more productive!
Don’t worry about any lack of letters, you have an excuse.
I’m happy for you that you got a house, it sounds like a proper home.
I’d love to come and stay! I’m just living through the days here, so I can come whenever you’re ready to receive me.
-Harry
Then, attached to the back:
Dear Remus,
Thank you for your letter. Like I said to Sirius, I’d love to come stay with you two and so far I have no plans for doing anything else. Basically I’m happy to come and go whenever you want/get tired of me.
Looking forward to seeing you,
-Harry
P.S. Maybe he reasons that if you’re a weird looking bird you get less work and therefore work harder on the work you do get?
The bat/owl was still there so Harry tied the scroll onto it’s leg, fed it a chunk of meat from the stew (only lukewarm and slightly soggy, but the thing didn’t seem to mind) and sort of threw the bird out of the window.
***
Morticius returned to the Grotto (which was what Sirius had renamed the house, to Remus’ quiet horror) with Harry’s letters about a day after leaving them. It was morning, relatively speaking, so Remus had been up a few hours and Sirius was having breakfast.
They both read the letters directed to them, then, without discussing it, swapped and read the other’s.
“Well, Harry’s perceptive,” Sirius commented, having read Harry’s explanation for his owl choice.
“He is . . . mature. Only Molly and Andromeda so far have commented on how home-y our house is.”
“Is that maturity? I thought that was just . . .” Sirius trailed off.
“Just what?”
“Well, you know when we met, and he’d only just got his head around the idea I wasn’t a serial murderer and was . . . y’know.”
“Yes.” Remus forgave Sirius for not mentioning James and Lily.
“He asked to come live with me then, didn’t he? So his own home can’t be that great.”
“I suppose.” Remus thought back to the relationship he and Harry had had during his brief stint as a Professor. He’d not thought much about Harry’s need for the relationship, knowing that he himself had been rather desperate for a link back to the Marauders. But looking back now it was easy to see Harry too had a desperation for a link back to his original family, one that he clearly didn’t find at home. “He’s coming here though,” Remus pointed out, more to comfort Sirius than anything, “he can stay with you now.”
tbc
A/N: TBC because it ran away from me and I have no more time tonight!. I'm so sorry, but now I have to focus on the dates of Advent to come. If someone prompts me the next chapter of this in adventchallenge (or in fact, the next chapter of any WIP you know of mine) I can continue it in December, otherwise you'll have to wait 'till the new year.
A/N 2: I still have spaces in my advent challenge post, which is here, so hurry and leave a prompt!