Harry Potter and the Awful Dursleys

I don’t write fan fiction. Never have.

That being said, The Leaky Cauldron has a contest running through June 30th, 2007. The challenge is to write a chapter imagining what happens when Harry has his last fateful stay with the horrible Dursleys. The chapter cannot be longer than 2,000 words.

 Here’s my entry.

GOOD-BYE TO PRIVET DRIVE 

Harry had never seen Uncle Vernon speechless before.

Uncle Vernon’s walrus-like moustache quivered with rage. His huge red face resembled nothing so much as an oversized radish—Harry suddenly thought of Luna’s hand-carved radish earrings and had to quickly stifle a laugh—as he sputtered wordlessly. Finally he managed to form some sounds. “You! Them! Out!” He pointed first at Harry, then at Ron and Hermione, and then at the door.  He jabbed his finger again at the door for emphasis.

Harry fought down his anger.  “Uncle Vernon,” he said desperately, “please. You’ve got to let us stay, at least for a week or two. Remember what Professor Dumbledore said!”

“I don’t care what that doddering old fool says. And don’t bother sending him around again, either,” added Uncle Vernon. “I won’t let him in the house again, I can tell you that much.”

“He can’t come around again. He’s dead,” said Harry dully.

“Dumbledore’s dead?” asked Aunt Petunia sharply. “How? What happened?”

Everyone in the room stared at her, shocked.

She flushed.

“He was murdered by Severus Snape,” Harry said deliberately, “on Voldemort’s orders.”

Aunt Petunia paled. “They can stay, Vernon. And I don’t want to hear any more about it.” She turned and walked out of the room, leaving everyone gaping after her.

When Uncle Vernon regained his composure, he snorted at Harry. “Fine. But you know the rules. No, you know what.  And she,” he said, jerking his thumb towards Hermione, “sleeps in the guest room. No hanky panky in my house.”

Hermione flushed angrily while Ron grinned.

 

Harry, Hermione, and Ron did their best to stay out of the way of the Dursleys during the two-week stay at Privet Drive. Apparently, the Dursleys were doing the same.  Every day a platter of sandwiches appeared in front of Harry’s door, along with some fruit and bottled water. The invitation to stay away from the kitchen and the dinner table was obvious, and as none of the trio had any desire to join Uncle Vernon, Aunt Marge, or Dudders, they stayed in Harry’s room to strategize.

“Well, you know we’ve got to go to Bill’s wedding first,” pointed out Ron. “Mum’ll kill us all if we miss that.”

“Not to mention Ginny,” added Hermione slyly.

“Come off it, Hermione,” Harry said. “You know I can’t do that now. I’ve got to take care of Voldemort.” But he couldn’t deny to himself that he was looking forward to seeing Ginny once more before setting off on his quest to find the remaining Horcruxes.

“So the Burrow first. And then Godric’s Hollow. But then where?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry hopelessly. “The ring was in Gaunt’s house. And Malfoy had the diary. The snake, well, the snake’s with Voldemort, isn’t it? The locket was in the cave where Voldemort tortured those kids from the orphanage, only it wasn’t the real Horcrux.”

“So Voldemort puts the Horcruxes in places of special kills.”

“Reckon maybe one of the Horcruxes is in Godric’s Hollow?” asked Ron.

“I dunno. He didn’t really have time to hide one there, did he?”

“Nah. I guess not.”

They sat in glum silence.

“Hey! What about in the Riddle mansion? The one you were seeing in your dreams?”

Harry nodded slowly. “That’s a possibility.” He turned to Hermione. “Any luck yet with R.A.B.?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I’m sorry, Harry.”

 

The last day of the two weeks arrived at last. Harry’s birthday. He thought he’d never been so glad, and yet so curiously sorry, to see a birthday arrive. He was 17, and at last of age. He could legally perform magic, and he was no longer bound to return to the Dursley house every year. But he was also at the end of his youth, not of his innocence, for he knew that he had lost that a long time ago.

Ron and Hermione had left early that morning for the Burrow, Harry promising that he would follow shortly thereafter.  He somehow felt the need to finish his life at the Dursleys’ by himself.

With a wave of his wand, Harry’s belongings neatly folded themselves into his trunk, which then closed and locked itself.  Harry pointed the wand at Hedwig’s cage, and the mess of droppings and mice bones vanished. He sent his trunk and Hedwig’s cage to the Burrow, and looked around at the bare room.  I won’t miss this place at all, he thought, and then remembered to check under the floorboard.  He found nothing but a few scraps of parchment and some stale cake crumbs. He smiled, remembering the summer of Dudley’s diet, when he had received an unprecedented 4 birthday cakes.

Suddenly hearing a noise behind him, he dropped the floorboard and sprang to his feet, wand at the alert.  It was Aunt Petunia.

“Harry, I—we—haven’t been very kind to you, have we?” she said with a twisted smile.

Harry gaped at her. Of all the things he had ever expected to hear from her mouth, this was the last. “No, you haven’t,” he said bluntly, stowing his wand in his hip pocket.

“I saw what it did to her.”

“My mother, you mean.”

Petunia nodded. “Lily.”

“What do you mean?”

“It took her away from me. And then she was with all those strange people. And she got herself killed, didn’t she?” Petunia was almost foaming at the mouth.

Harry forced himself to stay calm. “It’s not like she was asking to get killed. She was protecting me, you know. She didn’t have to get killed. Voldemort wanted to kill me. She saved my life. At the cost of hers.”

“And now you’re going to go get yourself killed, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t really a questions, and Harry knew it. “Possibly. I hope not, but it might happen. Someone has to stop him, Aunt Petunia.”

“We hoped that you wouldn’t be magic, but we could see it in you even when you were a baby. And Vernon, he hated anything the least bit abnormal. I couldn’t let him see—“ she shuddered.

Harry felt a twinge of pity for her.

“He wouldn’t have married me if he had known about Lily. And when he found out, well, he would never let me have any more children. He was afraid if we did one of them might be, well, you know—“  She sat down on the bed.

“Magic,” Harry finished her sentence.

“And he watched Dudders all the time,” she went on convulsively. “Thank heavens he never showed any signs of, well, you know, or I don’t know what would have happened. And then you came! And Vernon wanted to ship you off to an orphanage. Well, you’ve heard Marge talk. He was the same way. But I knew we had to let you stay with us. I, well, Harry, as I say, I know we were cruel to you. But that was the only way Vernon would allow it.”

Harry nodded slowly. “So you treated me rotten but you kept me alive.  I guess I can appreciate that.”

Petunia’s eyes filled with tears.

“So how did you know Severus Snape?” he continued brutally.

Petunia gasped. “What do you mean?”

“Only that when I got here, Uncle Vernon wasn’t going to let us stay. And then I said that Snape murdered Dumbledore, and you told him he had to let us stay. So I figure that must mean something to you.”

Petunia was silent for a few moments.

Harry waited for her to speak.

“He came to visit Lily one summer. Awful, dirty boy!” Her voice quivered with disgust.  “I don’t think he ever washed his hair,” she said, casting a scornful look at Harry’s unruly mop of hair.

“Did you ever hear them talk about anything?” he asked urgently.

“Well of course I did. I told you so.”

Harry was bewildered. “What?”

“When you were talking about the dementors. Don’t you remember?”

Harry cast his mind back to when the dementors had attacked him and Dudley, and remembered Aunt Petunia saying something about overhearing “that awful boy” telling Lily about the dementors. At the time he had thought she was referring to his father, but—“Do you mean that was Snape?”

“Of course!” she said, surprised.  “He was repellent.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

She shook her head. “Not really.  He never said anything much if he saw me around. He always had this nasty sneering look on his face when I was there.”

Harry was very familiar with that look.  “What about Dumbledore? Did you correspond with him?”

Aunt Petunia shook her head. “What Dumbledore and I may have corresponded about is none of your business.  I’ve said more than I should have already, Harry, but somehow, knowing that I probably won’t see you again, well,” her voice trailed off and her eyes suffused with tears again.  She stood up and looked at him.  “You don’t look a thing like Lily. Not at all, but your eyes. They’re so much like hers.”

“I’m not coming back, Aunt Petunia,” Harry said firmly. “But if you ever want to write me—“

“No.”  She dashed her hand across her eyes to dab at the tears. “Best cut it off clean. We’ve brought each other nothing but grief and heartache. You ought to leave now, before Vernon and Dudley get home. Save yourself a lot of trouble..”

Harry and Petunia looked at each other, sharing a glimmer of understanding.

Then Harry left his aunt standing alone in the smallest bedroom in #4 Privet Drive. He walked down the stairs, out the back door into the garden. He spun around deliberately, and disappeared.

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