Just Plain Harry

Chapter 1 The Twenty-Fourth of July

Harry lay on his bed and willed himself not to see it - not to think about it. But even when he closed his eyes and tried to think of something else - Quidditch, or Cho Chang - everything led back to Cedric, and the date. It was July 24th, exactly one month since Voldemort had killed Cedric and risen to his full power again, and that was all Harry could think about.

He had gotten quite good at not thinking about it all in the three weeks since he had arrived back at the Dursleys'. Hermione would be so proud of him - he had already finished all of his summer assignments, and was even going back and studying his old books again from the beginning, just to keep his mind occupied. Though, judging by her letters, she was more worried than proud.

But even thinking about his friends couldn't keep his mind from Cedric tonight. Not even remembering Ron's last letter, which seemed to Harry to be just one long scream of frustration over Hermione. She had gone to Bulgaria to visit Viktor Krum for a week, and she and Ron had been conducting a tremendous letter fight ever since. Usually, hearing about both sides of their arguments, especially since he had started figuring out their changing feelings for each other, could take his mind off his own problems. Not tonight. Harry supposed that was all right, though - it was appropriate that he couldn't think of anything but Cedric, one month after his death.

That wasn't the only thing to worry Harry, of course. He spent many hours, when he wasn't working on schoolwork, just staring out the window, waiting for letters to come. Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Hagrid - he worried about them all, and there was nothing he could do for any of them. Not stuck here at the Dursleys', anyway.

Although it was more bearable here this summer, mostly because the Dursleys had adopted the practice of simply ignoring Harry. They didn't call for him to wake up, they let him get his own meals, they didn't even make him do housework. Maybe they thought that if they just ignored him, he would go away. And he would, just as soon as Professor Dumbledore said he could. He was sending the Headmaster owls every week, and he knew Ron was, too. Harry wanted to be at the Burrow so much he could taste it - to laugh at the twins' jokes, to talk with Mr. Weasley about Muggle things, to be stuffed full to bursting by Mrs. Weasley, to spend time with Ron, to just feel the love that surrounded him there. The Weasleys loved him - Harry, not the Famous Harry Potter, just Harry. He would even like to be lectured by Percy right now, as long as he was there.

Harry groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. Stop thinking about it, he told himself. Dumbledore will let you know as soon as it's safe. He knows how important it is to you. And you don't want to put the Weasleys in danger, just because of you, do you? Even more danger than they're already in, that is. That thought made him groan again.

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Harry couldn't believe it - Aunt Petunia hadn't even been coming in to clean.

"Erm...come in?" he said, taking the pillow off his head and staring at the door as it opened.

Aunt Petunia opened it just enough so that she could sneak in, and shut it quickly behind her. Harry didn't know why she did that - Uncle Vernon was away at some week-long meeting about drills for his company, Grunnings, and Dudley was completely engrossed in his favorite TV program - Harry could hear the TV from up here.

"Gracious, Harry, we've been leaving you alone all summer, the least you could have done was keep your room clean!" She stalked around, glaring at the quills, parchment, school books, and owl feathers that were scattered around the room. When she looked at Harry sitting there on the bed, though, her eyes softened.

"Are you...all right?" she said.

It was absolutely the last thing Harry had expected, and it shocked him so much that he told her the truth.

"No," was all he said, but he must have looked completely flabbergasted - he sure felt it - because she reddened.

"I was...I've been watching you," she said, but then she shook her head. She stared at him, and he stared back. Then she walked quickly over to his desk chair and sat down.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have Lily's eyes?"
"Erm...yeah, actually, lots of people," Harry said.

Aunt Petunia looked vaguely interested, which, since it was obvious that the only people who could have told Harry about his mother's eyes were wizards, Harry thought must mean that she was consumed with wonder.

"Um...my Headmaster told me once, and some of my mum and dad's friends from school..." Harry trailed off, because Aunt Petunia looked almost pathetically eager.

"Which ones?" she asked, but almost immediately shook her head sadly. "It doesn't matter, anyway. I -" she stopped again, while Harry just sat there and watched her. He had no idea what was going on here.

"One summer, Lily came home from school with the exact same look in her eyes that you have right now," Aunt Petunia said in a rush. "She didn't want to tell me why at first, and I know she never told my parents. But I was persistent, and eventually...she said that one of her friends had a secret that would alienate him from the rest of the wizarding world. She said that it probably wouldn't bother me more than any other type of wizard, but in her world..." Aunt Petunia stopped, swallowed, and went on. She was twisting her hands together in her lap. "In her world, it was a big deal. And one of her other friends had done something to jeopardize the secret, so that someone who wasn't their friend found out about it, all for some stupid joke. Of course, she was all proud of James, you could see that in her eyes, too - I suppose he did something terribly brave, as usual. But her main worry was the friend with the secret. He was in danger, she said, and there was nothing she could do about it, which haunted her. I could see it in her eyes, and that's the look I see in your eyes all the time, Harry."

All of that speech came out in a rush with barely time for breath, while Harry watched in wonder. It was definitely the longest speech Aunt Petunia had ever given to him, and she had never spoken of his mother before. It was weird to think of the two of them as sisters, confiding in each other, even a little. His mum had obviously not told Aunt Petunia exactly what the secret was, but Harry knew. Professor Lupin, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in Harry's third year at Hogwarts, and one of his parents' best friends, was a werewolf. Sirius had played a joke on Severus Snape, another of Harry's teachers, whom all of Harry's parents' friends hated. The joke would most likely have killed Snape, but Harry's dad had found out about it and stopped it, though not before Snape saw Lupin changing into his werewolf form. Harry had never really thought before about the fact that Sirius had risked Lupin's secret and future just for that joke. It shocked Harry, because he knew that Sirius and Lupin were so close they were almost brothers. How could Sirius have done that?

"And then later, at the wedding," Aunt Petunia said, which brought Harry out of his thoughts immediately. She almost seemed to be talking to herself.

"At the wedding, almost everybody had that look in their eyes. Oh, they all looked happy, and had lots of fun - lots of stupid, immature jokes -" her voice took on a scornful tone that sounded more like herself "but they all looked...I don't know. Like someone had murdered one of them, or was going to murder one of them, but they didn't know which. It was...it was very strange."

Harry just stared at her. He had never thought that Aunt Petunia had been at his parents' wedding - she wasn't in any of the pictures he had of it - though he supposed it made sense. But since when had she been so observant? The wedding had been at a time when Voldemort's power was starting to peak, so no wonder everyone had looked haunted. Voldemort was going to murder one of them - two of them, actually, Harry's parents. To stop himself from thinking about it, Harry forced his thoughts back to his aunt.

"But there was one man," Aunt Petunia was saying, still twisting her hands in her lap and looking at them, not Harry. "His name was...Remus. Strange name, but his eyes looked like they had always been haunted. We talked a lot - we were paired up as attendants. Lily hadn't asked me to be her maid of honor, of course, that was one of her magical friends, but I was a bridesmaid, and Remus was a groomsman." She hesitated, then pulled a picture out of her pocket, which Harry stared at, shocked again.

It was a wizard photograph. It was a formal pose, his parents in the middle, and three couples grouped around them, all in their wedding finery. But the people were moving, most of them waving at Harry, although the young Aunt Petunia in the photo did so almost sheepishly. Sirius was waving with one hand and giving Harry's dad bunny ears with the other. Harry stared at it, thinking about how the lives of the people in the picture had diverged so drastically soon after it was taken.

Aunt Petunia looked down at the picture in her hands.

"That's Remus," she said, pointing at the man who was standing next to her, smiling and waving up at Harry. "Do you...do you know him?"

"Um, yeah," Harry said. "He was one of my professors."
"Oh," Aunt Petunia said. "Is he...did he...oh, never mind. It isn't important."
She stood up and thrust the picture into Harry's hands.

"You keep this. Just don't let your uncle see it," she said, shuffling to the door. She turned and looked Harry straight in the eye, for the first time since she had mentioned his mother. She had tears in her eyes, which shocked Harry again. How many shocks was he going to get in one day?
"I just wanted to let you know that I know that you're hurting. If you need someone to talk to...well, I'll try."

And with that, Aunt Petunia sneaked out the door again.

Harry lay back on his bed again, looking at the picture, and trying to figure out what to make of all this. He recognized most of the people in the picture. There were his parents, of course, and Aunt Petunia with Professor Lupin. Harry's godfather, Sirius, was next to his father, with a woman that Harry didn't know. He supposed that she was his mother's maid of honor. He wondered who she was, and what had happened to her, but his attention was mostly drawn to the fourth man in the picture, Peter Pettigrew.

Peter had been one of his dad's best friends at Hogwarts, one of the boys who had become Animagi to keep Lupin company when he transformed. But later, he had betrayed them all the Voldemort, allowing Voldemort to kill Harry's parents and framing Sirius for the murders, so that Sirius had had to spend twelve years in Azkaban. Looking at the small, slight man waving up at him from the picture, Harry could hardly believe it, though he knew it was true. They all looked so happy, and so much the group of life-long friends. And yet, Pettigrew must have even then been working for Voldemort.

Harry put the picture on his bedside table, determined not to think about it. The other weird thing about the conversation, aside from it happening at all, that is, was Aunt Petunia's obvious interest in Remus Lupin. Harry knew a crush when he saw one - there was Ron's for Fleur Delacour as an example, or even his for Cho Chang. But to think of Aunt Petunia and Professor Lupin...it was just too strange, especially since she still seemed to think about him. That almost goes from the crush stage to, oh, unrequited love, Harry thought. If it has lasted this long...

Rolling over onto his stomach, Harry grabbed his quill and parchment from his table. He had to write to Ron about this - it was just too funny. But when he tried to write about it, he stopped. It really wasn't funny, it was almost pathetic. But it was real, and Harry found that he couldn't make fun of Aunt Petunia. Maybe he could write to Hermione, he thought, but then he reconsidered that, too. She would understand, and she wouldn't laugh, but somehow Harry just couldn't do it.

He found himself writing, "Dear Ginny," before he thought about it. She would definitely understand, she certainly wouldn't laugh, and somehow, he felt comfortable telling her about it. He got stuck half-way down the page, however. She might not laugh, he thought, but she would be embarrassed. It was too much like he was comparing it to her crush on him, and that might hurt her, which he would never want to do. He didn't return her feelings, but she was still his best friend's sister, and he didn't want to hurt her.

Harry crumpled up the parchment, put his glasses on the bedside table, turned off the light, and rolled over. He wouldn't write to anyone, but he certainly wanted to ask Professor Lupin if he remembered Aunt Petunia. Yet another thing to ask his parents' friends about, whenever he saw them again.

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

Chapter 2 - A Tolerable Birthday

Harry sped through the air on his Firebolt, enjoying the wind through his hair. He wasn't playing Quidditch, he was just flying, something he rarely did. But when he started to descend, without really meaning to, towards an old, ivy-covered house on a hill, he realized what was happening and whimpered in his sleep. He didn't want to go there again, but he didn't seem to have much choice, since he couldn't make himself wake up.

Without trying to, Harry circled the house once, then swooped down into a room...the same room as before...with the same arm chair, but this time it was facing a table, and Harry could see who was sitting in it. Voldemort. His face seemed to be paler than ever, his red eyes were narrowed even further than usual, and he was laughing. The other men in the room were laughing, too, but Harry couldn't make out who they were.

"Yes, it's better this way," Voldemort was saying, his high-pitched voice sounding positively gleeful. "He will think he is safe now, since he escaped from my clutches. But, one by one, the people he cares about will disappear, and die, and he will never know which will be next. Yes, imagine it...he will suffer as I suffered for thirteen years...until he is alone and friendless, praying for the end...yes..."

The other men in the room agreed with him, though Harry still couldn't tell who they were. He thought he recognized one laugh, but his dream self rejected that idea.

"And then," Voldemort continued. "Once he is bereft of everyone he ever cared about, he will get what he is praying for. Oh, yes, make no doubt about it. Harry Potter has no chance against me...he never did...and he knows it, too."

Harry heard agreeing voices, but, try as he would, he couldn't remain there. When Voldemort spoke his name, a pain more intense than he had felt before made him clutch his scar in his dream, which made him fall off his broom, which made him wake up.

Harry sat upright in bed, still clutching his scar, but already the pain was fading as he remembered what he had heard. "...the people he cares about will disappear...bereft of everyone he ever cared about..." He couldn't let that happen. He just couldn't. But what could he do? Voldemort knew about all his friends, he knew about Sirius and Professor Lupin, thanks to Wormtail, he knew about the Weasleys. He would want to kill them, anyway, since Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Charlie were already working to bring him down, too. Percy would come around soon, Ron said in his letters, but for right now, he still believed the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, when he said that Voldemort hadn't returned. It hurt Harry that Percy didn't believe him, but that was yet another thing he couldn't do anything about.

Harry lay back down on the bed, the pain in his scar almost forgotten. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't stay with the Dursleys forever - setting aside that he didn't want to, they would never allow it. And staying away from those he loved wouldn't save them, not if Voldemort was already set on this course. What could he do to help if he was stuck at the Dursleys, unable to do any magic at all? What could he do to help if he was right there, though? He had no idea.

Well, there was one thing to do right away. He had promised Professor Dumbledore to write him if he had any dreams of Voldemort. Of course, he had had dreams of Voldemort every night since the third task, but he knew that this one was different. Those were just nightmares - scary and horrible, but just nightmares. This one was different. He should write to Sirius, too.

The letter to Dumbledore was easily written, and set aside for when Hedwig came back. But Harry got stuck half-way through his letter to Sirius. How could he tell Sirius that he was in danger, all because of him? "Oh, by the way, godfather, you're in more danger now than you have been since you escaped Azkaban, all because you love me." Yeah, that sounds about right.

Harry threw his quill down and put his head in his hands. Why me? he thought. All I ever wanted was a normal childhood, with parents and friends and...normal things. Why did I have to be The Boy Who Lived, so that even my friends are in awe when they think about it? He always tried very hard not to think these things, but sometimes, like now, he just couldn't help himself.

As Harry sat there, allowing himself a few minutes of despair, he heard the familiar flap of wings. Then he heard more wings, and more. Hedwig appeared in his window, swooping in to land on his desk. She was followed by at least twenty other owls, all bearing packages and letters. Harry took Hedwig's first, of course. It was from Hermione.

Dear Harry,

Happy Birthday! I hope you don't mind that I kept Hedwig an extra day...I wanted to make sure that you got this on your birthday. I've been thinking about giving it to you for awhile, but wasn't sure you were ready. But you said you had been studying a lot, so I guess you are. Promise me you won't try it without me, though, I've been doing lots of research, and it could very easily go wrong. We'll work on it together, okay?

Ron is still being a complete and utter idiot. Harry, you have to make him see sense. It is nothing to him if I write to Viktor, is it? Or if it is,

Well, I'm not going to spoil your birthday with my problems. I hope you'll be able to go to the Burrow, but, at any rate, I'll see you on September 1st.

With love from,

Hermione

Harry stared at the letter, thinking about his friends. How could he make Ron see sense? Ron never saw what he didn't want to see, and it was painfully obvious that he didn't want to see his feelings for Hermione. Oh, well, there was nothing he could do about it now. He turned to her present, which he could feel through the wrapping was a book. When he opened it, though, he gasped. Animagi: A Guide to Finding Your Inner Animal. How had Hermione known? Ever since he had found out that his father was an Animagus, he had wanted to do it, too. But it was very advanced magic, and he wasn't sure he was up to it. If Hermione helped him, though... Wow, Hermione!

Harry tore himself away from the book, and looked at the other owls perched around the room. Thinking about Aunt Petunia's face when she saw the mess in here made him smile, but he set about removing all the letters and packages so that the owls could leave. He left Pigwidgeon for last, because he was flitting about the room, instead of waiting for Harry to remove his burden, like a proper post owl should. Hermes was there too, with a positively enormous parcel. Hermes was Percy's owl, and always reminded Harry of his owner, since he held himself very stiff and looked very proper. Harry was surprised to see him - usually he was out delivering yet another letter to Percy's girlfriend, Penelope. Hermes hooted softly at Harry, then took off again into the night, making Harry grin. Percy must have told him to come right back.

The enormous parcel Hermes had carried contained a large chocolate cake, a blue Weasley sweater (which was a good thing, because his old one was several inches too short now), a picture in a frame, and a letter.

Dear Harry, the letter read in a small, firm hand that Harry didn't recognize:

Happy Birthday! Mum sends along the cake and sweater, of course, and we all send our (here a word was heavily scratched out) best wishes. The pictures are from Fred, George and me. I got them from people around school, and Fred and George invented the frame to hold more than one. They should be real inventors, not just of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. No, we shouldn't. Yeah, what does she mean, real inventors? You just tap lightly on the upper right-hand corner of the frame to switch pictures. You can add more, too, but that's more complicated, and Fred and George will have to show you how.

Hope you had a tolerable birthday, Harry, even with the Dursleys. If I don't see you before, see you on the Hogwarts Express.

Ginny

Harry couldn't help but grin at the letter, especially at the twins' interjections. But he could guess what the word was that Ginny had scratched out. He hoped she wouldn't mope around after him again this year. Though she actually hadn't last year, come to think of it. He had been so busy with the Triwizard Tournament and watching Cho to realize it then, but now that he thought about it, he hadn't really seen much of her last year. Well, that was a good thing, wasn't it? She was probably just embarrassed about her old crush, that's why she scratched out 'love.' The rest of the letter was certainly just plain friendly.

He turned to the picture frame, which currently held a picture of Ron, Hermione, and himself, flopped down on the ground out by the lake at Hogwarts. He remembered when it was taken, after a particularly grueling Transfiguration class. Dean Thomas, another Gryffindor friend of theirs, had taken it, saying that he wanted to prove that even Hermione was overwhelmed sometimes. Harry grinned, and tapped the upper right-hand corner of the frame. Most of the rest of the pictures were also of Ron, Hermione, and himself, but there was one with all of the Weasleys outside their house, waving at him. It had obviously been taken this summer, because Ron was even taller than he remembered, and everyone, though waving furiously, looked a little sad and worried. He knew what Aunt Petunia had meant about everyone being happy but also looking haunted. Harry didn't want to see the Weasleys like that. He flipped to the last picture quickly.

This one, Harry didn't remember being taken. It was of Ron and himself at the Yule Ball last year, sitting at a table and talking. Their dates for the ball, Parvati and Padma Patil, weren't in the picture, which, considering how mad the Patils had been at them, was probably a good thing. He and Ron were laughing, so they couldn't have been talking about Hermione or Hagrid, two things they had talked a lot about that evening. Behind them were the dancers, including Hermione and Viktor Krum, so it was also a good thing Ron wasn't looking around. Fred and Angelina were dancing, too, and so were Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, and poor Ginny and Neville, with Ginny wincing at every other step as Neville stepped on her feet. Remembering how carefree and happy they had been at the ball, and how many of the people in the picture were now in grave danger, Harry flipped the picture frame again, back to the first picture.

Trying not to think about it, Harry turned to Ron's letter and parcel.

Dear Harry,

Happy Birthday!

I have the best birthday present ever - Dumbledore says you can come here for the last week of the summer! I'm going to ask Hermione, too. Hopefully she can tear herself away from Vicky for that long.

Things are still weird here. I'm still doing my "internship" at Dad's office - it's a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Muggles do come up with some useful things. Like your real birthday present - we've gotta think of some ways to get Malfoy with this!

Well, I'll see you soon. I can't wait!

Ron

Harry tore open the wrapping on Ron's gift to reveal a water gun. He had to grin, imagining Draco Malfoy's face when they hit him with a stream of water without using a wand. Ron was right, there were definite possibilities here. But the best news of all was that he could go to the Burrow. Maybe he could even help Ron out with his "internship" at the Ministry. In reality, Ron was helping his dad's assistant to run the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office while Mr. Weasley did things for Dumbledore. Ron had been enormously flattered when his dad asked him for help, even though he had complained again about his dad working in the most boring office. Harry was glad that it was turning out better than he had thought it would.

Harry put down the water gun, and set about opening the rest of his presents. Hagrid had sent him some fudge, which was actually good, so Harry suspected that maybe Madame Maxim had had a hand in making it (Hagrid mentioned he was still with her in the letter attached to the fudge). Colin Creevey gave him a picture, too, and Harry could certainly understand why he hadn't given it to Ginny for her present. It was a picture of the Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw match from Harry's third year, when Malfoy and his goons dressed up as dementors to try to scare Harry and sabotage the match. Harry had conjured a wonderful Patronus to charge down the "dementors," so the picture was of the four Slytherins down on the ground, tangled in their cloaks and obviously out of it.

Everyone, from Professor Lupin to Neville, sent him wonderful presents, but nothing compared to what Sirius sent him. It was a set of letters that his dad had written to Sirius - nothing earth-shattering in importance, but they were letters that his dad had written, and it was the best birthday present Harry had ever gotten. He settled down to read them, forgetting, for the moment, about his dream and all that it meant.

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