Save One Thing

Save One Thing

Chapter Two

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.

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