Save One Thing

Save One Thing

Chapter Eight

No one saw you flying over London or Bath or Wiltshire. Most of what you passed was countryside, but even if it wasn't, even if it was all cities filled with thousands people, you still don't think anyone would have noticed you.

It's an unusual feeling, being invisible when for so much of your life you did nothing but demand to be seen, but it's no more unusual than the feeling of actually flying. There's nothing in the world you had to compare it to, but you would give up your room and all your toys and games to go just a bit higher, just a bit faster. You don't need to give anything up, though. The broom will move where you want it to as soon as you think it-- before you think it.

You almost don't want to go back. The flashing magic looks brilliant from above, and the cool wind started to feel perfect right around noon, when the heat of the day really began to settle in, but it's getting dark, now, and Harry will probably start wondering where you are or at least where his broom has gone, so you turn around, and you make one last stop to pick up a few things before returning home.

Harry's sitting by the window, and be jumps when you walk through the door. "What are you doing? Where have you been?!"

"None of your business," you tell him and go into the kitchen to start putting things away.

Harry follows you. "What's that?" he asks as you set a loaf of bread in the cabinet.

"Food, you know, stuff to eat."

"What? How?"

"I stole it, alright."

"Stole it?" he asks, looking increasingly jumpy. "Well, that at least makes sense."

"Calm down," you say, but that only makes him more upset.

"Easy for you to tell me that," he snaps. "While you were out robbing the grocer, I was stuck here, and the Death Eaters --"

"Can't get in," you say. "You know that, right? Even if I'm not here the-the m-magic-- it's everywhere."

"Is it?" he asks, slumping down into a chair and resting his elbows on the table.

"Well, everywhere except on you."

"Oh."

Neither of you watch the men out on the lawn that night, but you can feel them there, and that's enough. Harry stays in the kitchen, and you get bored and flip through old newspapers until you fall asleep on the sofa.

You wake up early the next morning and sneak out with Harry's broom before he gets out of bed. Flying is easier this time, not so scary when you first shoot off the ground, and your sense of direction is improving. You begin to see distances differently, not bound by towns or roads or street signs. You go back home in a straight line instead of following the avenues to Privet Drive from overhead, and you do a few back-flips before making an easy landing on the doorstep. You put Harry's broom in the cupboard, and go in to the kitchen for breakfast.

You're almost finished eating when Harry shuffles in groggily and flops down into a chair. "Where've you been?" he asks blinking at you.

You drop your spoon and quickly run a hand through your hair. "Me? Uh-Nowhere."

His eyes narrow. "What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing. I'm not smiling." Below you, your spoon rises up and starts stirring the cereal, but you don't pay it any attention.

He shrugs, and you hope he'll leave you alone, but instead he leans over your placemat to get a closer look. "Cornflakes?"

"Yeah," you say, "and that thing they're in is called a bowl."

He raises his eyebrows. "Doesn't food usually need to be smothered in hot fudge before you touch it?"

"Shut up."

"You actually went out to buy--" he begins then pauses and smiles to himself. "You went out to steal cereal?"

From beside you the milk bottle floats up and starts pouring its contents into your bowl. "It's better than that stuff you made, anyway."

"You did!" He says slapping the table and looking entirely too amused.

"Well I had to get something, didn't I? The stuff in the refrigerator-- I don't think it's real."

"Oh, It's definitely real," he says, giving you an odd look. "You've been eating nothing but for the past month."

Your hands are starting to itch again, and you want to go out and fly or make something move. You don't want to be here any longer, and you don't want Harry here with you, not when he's looking at you and trying to make you feel stupid. "Yes but--but I don't think it should really be there. I don't think my mum put it there."

He smiles but only halfway, and he doesn't look very happy. "It took you this long to figure that out? I told you weeks ago that you were doing it."

"Me?" you ask, and Harry gives a sharp, scratchy laugh.

"Who else?" He stands from the table, rolling his eyes at you.

"Well the refrigerator might have--"

"Just how slow are you? It's a dumb muggle refrigerator bought by your dumb muggle parents. Why on earth would it be making you chocolate pies? It's yours, Dudley. The magic that's all over everything is all yours."

You want to punch him or kick him or bang him over his stupid head with something hard, but Harry's weird, a freak, and that's not the way to really hurt him. "Except you," you say, twisting a napkin between your hands to keep them steady. "Don't forget that. The magic, it's all over everything, except you."

"Well it is yours," he hisses. "It's here because of something you're doing, even if you're not meaning for it to, it is, and just look what happens when you want something from it."

"What?" You ask with a shrug.

"Your spoon!" he nearly shouts, "and the milk bottle that was bobbing through the air a few seconds ago! You're doing it!"

"Oh that." You look down at your spoon as it keeps stirring the cereal, and you reach out to the magic and hold it still until it relaxes and the spoon drops back down into your bowl. "Well I know I can do some things, but . . . mine?"

"It's yours." Harry says, looking increasingly angry. You think he means for you to be angry too, but you're not sure why. You've always liked having things Harry didn't.

"Good," you say, and Harry's glare shifts back into his usual look of confusion, which you don't mind so much. You're confused too, really.

Neither of you say anything until a few minutes later when his owl flies through the window and drops a dead mouse in you bowl. "Feeling better, Hedwig?" he asks as it hops across the table to him and starts coughing and spitting clumps of fur and bone onto the floor. "You must be close to normal if you're hunting again."

"What is it doing?" you shout. "Get that thing off the table! And get this mouse out of my bowl!"

Harry smiles and pats the owl on the head, whispering, "Good job," before looking up at you again. "That mouse is a present," he says. "It means she likes you. Though, I can't imagine why."

"I'm not cleaning it up."

"Fine," Harry says, plucking the mouse out of your milk and soggy cornflakes by its tail and swinging it in your face. "It's dead, you know. It can't hurt you."

"It's gross," you say, but he only rolls his eyes.

"You're gross."

"Shut your face," you say, not feeling particularly mad. Even when you parents were here to threaten him, you doubt he would have done so much without flinging it in your hair or sticking it down your shirt. Just as Harry starts to swing it towards you again, it jumps back onto his shoulder and bites him in the earlobe before climbing down onto the floor and scurrying out the front door.

"Ouch!" he says sitting down and holding his ear.

You smile. "Looks like it wasn't as dead as your freak bird thought." Across the table, the owl gives an apologetic ruffling of its feathers. "It's okay," you whisper as Harry looks on, still confused. "I don't like dead mice so much."

The next day, the owl, Hedwig, brings you a chocolate bar, and it takes two hours for Harry to stop laughing. You scowl at him and put it in your pocket to save for later. As much as you try to be mad at him, its nothing compared to that tremulous, violent anger that made you want to scream and slam your fists through walls and lay curled up in bed until everything outside your room disappeared. Even if you'll never admit it out loud, he was right. The magic is yours now, and you can make it do whatever you want.

You go out flying every morning, now, and sometimes in the evenings too if Harry isn't watching you, but he usually is. At first it took so much focus to do even the smallest things and usually to undo them, because even though the magic is yours, it works on its own too. That doesn't scare you anymore, maybe only because it isn't trying to scare you like it was before or maybe because you're starting to understand that it was only ever your fear of it that hurt you, and there's nothing left to be scared of anymore.

Now you hardly have to concentrate to control it, to make it do exactly what you want. It's getting warmer and easier to walk and easier to breathe. You pass Harry in the hallway sometimes, and he gives you funny looks and asks what you're so happy about.

You wonder if he's starting to notice how things are changing, how everything seems brighter and covered in more magic than before. You wonder if you should tell him but decide it would only make him mad. So you smile, and you shrug, and you keep walking with your hands in your pockets and his eyes on your back.

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

In August, the night sky puts on a show of falling stars and Harry and Dudley watch this more intently than the Death Eaters in the yard below. It's a small change, really, just shifting their eyes upwards, but that seems to make all the difference. Sometimes, Dudley falls asleep only minutes after it gets dark, and sometimes, he talks to Harry, and sometimes, he stares up into the sky with a half smile on his face, and those times, all the stars seem to dance.

One moonless night, Dudley climbs out onto the roof with Harry's telescope in one hand and a bag of crisps in the other, and Harry follows him, not bothering to tell himself that he's only concerned for the telescope.

"What?" Dudley asks as he turns around to see Harry looking at him.

"Huh?" Harry doesn't know what else to say. He's always looking. He can't help but look at Dudley, even when it's clear that the last thing Dudley wants is to be looked at. He wonders how the simplest, most uncomplicated thing in his life suddenly became the biggest mystery, and he wonders if Dudley was strange all along and no one ever looked close enough to see it. "Just be careful not to break anything," Harry tells him.

"I won't."

"Do you even know how to use a telescope?"

Dudley looks up at him and blinks. Instead of answering the question Harry asked only because he doesn't trust himself when the silence grows too thick between them, he answers the one Harry's really interested in, the one he hasn't put into words yet, not even in his own head, the one about why everything's suddenly very different even when it seems like nothing really changed. "I wanted to do magic once," Dudley says with a shrug and stares at Harry a few moments longer before turning back to the telescope.

"What? You?"

"Yeah, me." Dudley looks up at him again, and his eyes don't seem to have changed despite the quickly darkening sky. "I didn't want there to be something you could do that I couldn't do, something you had that my--my parents couldn't give me."

"Oh," Harry says squinting down at the street.

"And I figured there had to be a way I could use it to pound you without having get up," he adds. "There is, you know. I'm pretty sure I could manage it now."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harry says, rolling his eyes, and below him all the streetlights flicker to life.

Dudley drops the crisps onto the roof and gives him a weak punch in the arm. "You'd better."

"You know what I wanted?" Harry asks, sitting down and stretching his legs out in front of him. "I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be able to fit in to a place like this-- a house that looks like all the other houses and not be different from anyone else."

"That's rubbish," Dudley says, still fumbling with the telescope. "You never wanted to, not early on at least. You were happy when the letters came-- the letters about your school, and you were always acting weird before that, sneaking about, hiding in that cupboard--"

Harry stares at him incredulously. "I lived in that cupboard. I was locked in half the time."

Dudley shrugs. He finally gets the legs of the telescope adjusted so it can stand despite the slant of the roof and looks into the eyepiece pointed at the sky. Then, he turns it downwards to the yard and looks rather more intently. He doesn't look at Harry when he speaks. "You used it, though-- magic, I mean. You used it to try and scare me."

"I needed to use something or you'd never stop beating me up."

Dudley looks back at him, as if he can't imagine why he wouldn't want to be beat up constantly. "You don't get it," he says. "You could have fought back. I wanted you to fight back."

"Hardly a fair fight-- half the time you used your friends to hold me down."

"And that giant never did anything to me?" Dudley asks, voice shaking. "Or those twins? Or that---that thing in the alley? I'm the one who needed to use something, and all I had was ruddy Piers Polkiss."

"Oh," Harry says, not able to think of anything else.

Dudley flops down beside him, and Harry thinks, for a second, that the roof might cave in. "Yeah."

"What are we doing out here?" Harry asks, trying to change the subject. He tilts his head up towards the telescope. "And what are you doing going through my stuff?"

"I missed being outside," Dudley says, taking a deep breath, "and I wanted to try something." He points down to the Death Eaters already milling about the lawn. "Do you think I could make them go away?"

"What? No!" Harry nearly shouts, but there's already a smile creeping over Dudley's large face.

"See," Dudley says, fishing around in his pockets. "I have an idea." He pulls out a medium-sized grey stone and rolls it between the palms of his hands before holding it up for Harry to inspect. "We could throw these at them."

"That's your idea?" Harry asks in disbelief. "They'll see us."

"No, they won't," Dudley says, reaching into his pockets again, this time pulling out something long and shimmering that Harry recognizes immediately, even though he hasn't been able to see it for over a month. "Anyway, I found this it can make us disappear, except we really won't. We'll be under it the whole time."

"I know what it does. It's called and invisibility cloak, and it's mine. You should stop going through my things. You already ate all the candy."

"I know," Dudley says, shrugging. "You don't have to be so greedy about it. I'm trying to get these death muncher guys to go away, and all you can do is talk about candy."

Harry gapes, wondering if he should pinch himself to make sure this isn't really some horribly twisted dream. He doesn't stop gaping until Dudley stands and flings three stones into the mass of black robes. "Stop it," he hisses, grabbing Dudley's arm and trying to pull him down. "They still have guns. What if they shoot at us?"

Dudley uses his foot to push the invisibility cloak in Harry's direction. "Cover up then."

"What if they shoot where the stones are coming from?"

Dudley nods and looks like he's concentrating very hard on something for a second and then says, "Oh, their guns don't work anymore."

"What? You're mad."

"No." He searches his pockets again, this time pulling his hand up with the sneakoscope resting still in his palm. "See," he says, holding it up to Harry's face, "nothing to be scared of."

Harry pushes his hand away. "All that means is that you're too mad to be properly afraid. Now get down."

"No," he says defiantly, throwing another stone down. "Now watch this." The stone hits one of the Death Eaters square in the back of the head and it turns around and looks directly at them, or at least at the place they are. Even without the invisibility cloak on, Harry's pretty sure the Death Eaters can't actually see them. "Come on," Dudley whispers. "Shoot it!"

"Shut up," Harry hisses, standing up and clasping his hands over Dudley's mouth from behind, but Dudley doesn't thrash and shove him away like he expected, instead he starts to laugh, and the surprise of it causes Harry to loosen his grip

"Gee oof," Dudley mumbles, still laughing. Harry's hands drop to his shoulders and stay there. "Look," he says pointing down at the lawn, and Harry does.

Below him, many of the Death Eaters are lying on the ground flailing about while others stomp over them screaming and mumbling and bumping into each other. Of the words Harry can make out, the most common are 'soap' and 'eyes' and 'ahhh.' Then he sees them, hundreds of bubbles rising up against the night sky and realizes dozens are already clinging to his clothes and caught in Dudley's hair. "Bubbles?" he asks, fighting a smile. "You made their guns blow bubbles?"

Dudley's smile grows a bit wider. "I had one that did that once."

"Yeah, I remember."

He prods his finger into a few of the bubbles on Harry's shirt, popping them. "I think I broke it when I figured out I couldn't really use it to shoot you."

"I think it was actually when you used it to knock me over the head."

Dudley's smile drops a bit but doesn't disappear completely. "Go on, throw it," he says pressing a stone into Harry's hand. "It's fun. I used to toss these at cars all the time. Once, one drove straight of the road."

Harry rolls his eyes. And tosses the stone into the fray, knocking one of the taller Death Eaters behind the knee to send him falling face forward into the back of another one, and before he can ask or admit it really was quite fun, Dudley's nodding in approval and handing him another stone.

It doesn't take long for the Death Eaters to leave, some try to throw stones and clumps of dirt back up at them, but those turn into toy airplanes mid-flight and veer away from them to do steep dives and wild corkscrews before flying off into the night. Only one hits Harry in the head, and he's fairly sure Dudley did that on purpose.

When they're gone, Harry turns the telescope upwards for a while and watches the stars twirl until it makes him dizzy. Then he sits back down to find Dudley's asleep and very still, using his balled up invisibility cloak as a pillow. He lays his head back on the roof and closes his eyes and dreams he's back on his broom, flying over a dark countryside with only stars to light the way. The Death Eaters won't come back the next night or the night after. They won't find their way to Number Four Privet Drive ever again. This knowledge seems to bleed in through his half-conscious thoughts and wrap around him like a warm blanket, and he doesn't need to watch Dudley to know he's right there beside him.

He wakes slowly with the sun as its light starts to pour over the rows and rows of identical houses. Reaching over, he pokes Dudley in the stomach. "Hey? You alive?"

"Huh?" Dudley grunts, opening one eye.

"Oh, it's just you that you weren't moving, and you were so quiet I thought you might be dead."

"Disappointed?" Dudley asks, using his elbows and the roof to prop himself up.

Harry shrugs. "Not really."

Dudley stands, and Harry follows him towards the window. When he slips, Dudley grabs him by the arm and mutters, "Idiot" under his breath with a soft chuckle. Then, they go inside to find Hedwig on the kitchen table with another candy bar-- chocolate--- the only thing known to help someone recover after a run-in with a Dementor. Harry laughs, this time, because maybe Dudley isn't such a mystery anymore, and this time, Dudley laughs too.

"You're rubbing off on her," Harry says, and he doesn't think his owl is the only thing Dudley's rubbing off on. It's almost like he's everywhere at once, and the house seems to be reshaping itself to fit him. Dudley helps it by moving things around in ways that make hardly any sense, draping old jackets over chairs and putting hats on lamps. Every time Harry walks into a room, he expects to find Dudley there and usually does. Even when Dudley goes out in the mornings it feels like he's still around, as if he's filling the house with himself just to make it seem a little less empty.

When it gets dark, they wander around Privet Drive, and Harry rolls his eyes as Dudley throws stones at trashcans and playground equipment and one unfortunate cat. Sometimes, he stays at Dudley's side, and sometimes he runs ahead just because he's able to, and it feels good to breathe air that's not so thick and stifling. There's a cool breeze that sweeps through the streets at night, one strong enough to blow them both back and forth as they sit on the old, rusted swings, which are starting to look a lot less old and a lot less rusted than they did when Dudley first sat down. "I suppose they'd have to be in better shape not to break with you sitting on them," Harry says, half expecting to be punched in the face, but instead, Dudley blinks at him and starts laughing.

"Don't think you'll get away with anything," Dudley says a few minutes later, still breathing hard. "Just remember there are lots of ways I can get you now. You'd better be ready to fight back."

By the time they leave the playground, the swing set and the slide and the monkey bars are all taller and straighter and gleaming in the faint glow of the street lights. Harry falls twice walking back and stumbles the rest of the way with shortened strides because his feet don't seem to move as far as they should. At first, he thinks Dudley must have put his own weak version of a jelly legs jinx on him, but when he gets back inside and flops down on the sofa, he sees that the laces of his trainers are tied together. He smiles and makes plans to switch the sugar for salt at breakfast sometime when Dudley won't be expecting it.

For the next few days, Dudley can't stop laughing, and Harry begins to wonder if he'll forget how to do anything but laugh. But the sun starts shining brighter, and the grass looks greener, and Aunt Petunia's flowers are growing so fast they seem to be taking over the entire lawn, and sometimes, Harry catches the feather duster floating over the shelves or the dishes washing themselves.

At night, there are owls everywhere covering roofs and lawns and every tree branch and lamp post as far as he can see. There are huge horned owls and eagle owls that hop boldly through the streets and barn owls that gather together on the hoods of cars. There are even a few snowy owls that Hedwig joins flying lazily over Privet Drive and Magnolia Crescent searching for moles or mice or mars bars.

A small, grey owl that looks almost exactly like Pig lands on Dudley's shoulder and sits still long enough for him to feed it a whole pocketful of miniature chocolate squares. Harry thinks about telling him that owls don't eat chocolate, but he doesn't feel like being wrong. Instead, he tosses some of Hedwig's owl treats out over the lawns and up into trees, and Dudley laughs when a tawny owl swoops down and starts pecking at his feet shortly after he's run out.

He watches Dudley sleep, still and peaceful in his bed or on the couch or beneath the night sky when the owls have finally flown back to wherever they came from, and they can stay out on the lawn, knowing there won't be anymore Death Eaters searching for them. It's theirs now, Dudley's and his. They've found a way to bring safety with them wherever they go. Dudley's found it, to be fair, but Harry likes to think he had a hand in that, even if he's not sure exactly how any of it happened. Dudley doesn't seem to mind having him around anymore and seems amused more often than angry. He lets Harry kiss him, sometimes, and Harry thinks he tastes like the truly fresh air you can only get when you fly a few hundred meters off the ground and maybe just a bit like chocolate.

They sit on the roof again, laughing as owls gather on the sidewalks below, and Dudley makes the streetlamps turn on and of with the snapping of his fingers. It's all completely absurd and utterly impossible, and Harry ignores the whispered voice in the back of his that head tells him feeling like his can never last. Instead, he thinks about his friends and how happy they are. He thinks that the war has already been won, and that healing will come after, and he can lay back and watch the stars with Dudley as he waits, because there's nothing left to be scared of anymore.

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