A Touch of Death

When my Aunt Petunia died suddenly one warm summer's night everybody thought that I had killed her and was hiding behind cowardice to pretend otherwise. That was certainly the conclusion my Uncle came to, supported rather forcefully by my cousin Dudley. I remember clearly that night; rather, the early morning of my sixteenth birthday that dawned hot and sticky and full of tension.

When I look back at that time I almost remember feeling that something was out of place all along. I woke up much earlier than usual, even before the birds, and now my mind plays tricks on me, remembering sick feelings in my stomach that couldn't have been there at the time, because right then I couldn't have known that anything was wrong. That my Aunt was dead in the next room while I lay in my own bed, ignorant and unhelpful, still disturbs and saddens me more than I ever let anybody know.

But soon after that still moment in the dawn came all the chaos, starting with my Uncle, who hammered down my door and thundered at me to get up and put my Aunt right again. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about and neither, it seemed, did Dudley, who emerged from his own room sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired. My Uncle dragged me into the main bedroom and that was when I saw her, and that was when the cold, sick feeling first hit my stomach, because I knew that she was dead before I even got to her.

My Uncle wouldn't believe me. First, he wouldn't believe that she was dead, and he yelled and screamed and finally sobbed at me to put her back to rights. He begged me on his knees and I truly would have tried to conjure all the magical power in the world if I thought it could bring her back to him and stop him looking like he did, so lost and ruined. Later, he wouldn't believe that I hadn't killed her, and he showed me such hatred then that I ran away out of Surrey and never went back.

For the rest of that terrible morning all Dudley did was stand in the background, ashen-faced and somewhat diminished. But he found a way to come to terms with his grief soon after by kicking me into a pulp whilst his father phoned the police in the next room. My Aunt still lay upstairs and all I wanted to do was to be with her instead of curled up in a bloody heap on the rug in the hall being kicked by her son. I don't know what I thought I could achieve by being with her. Maybe my place really was with Dudley. I think it made him feel better, at least.

When the police eventually came Dudley stopped kicking me and stood dry-eyed and silent while they gently took his mother away. I wondered if I was lucky to have been spared this, all that came after the death of a parent. I wondered how he would handle the next few days and weeks and months, and I wanted to say something to him, to tell him that things would be alright, but he wouldn't have believed it from me and anyway, I wasn't sure that things would be alright for him. I didn't think he would be able to cope without his mother around to love him as protectively as she did.

I didn't have much time to spare any more thoughts for my wretched cousin, however, because I was brought quite sharply back to the reality of what had happened by several policemen taking me away from Privet Drive in the back of a police car.

The police, it turned out, were more sympathetic than I had thought they were going to be, much to my Uncle's consternation, who swore and ranted at them and screamed at the top of his lungs that I was guilty as sin and that I was the one who had taken a wife and a mother away from their home. But in the end, his temper counted against him, and the police seemed more inclined to believe my story of innocence in the eventual light of there being no substantial evidence to prove I had done anything.

I had convinced the police but my Uncle swore he wouldn't have me in the house, telling me coldly and not without passion that if ever he caught sight of me again he would certainly kill me.

I ran away that night to Ron's house armed only with my wand. It took me the rest of that day and all of the night to get to Ottery St Catchpole and when I turned up on the Weasley's doorstep muddy and sweaty from alternately hitching lifts from passing cars and walking, and still with dried blood on my shirt and hands from Dudley's revenge, I was greeted with screaming from Mrs Weasley. Later I learned that she was convinced Voldemort must have got to me. She wouldn't let me speak at first and called for Dumbledore, who Apparated to us immediately and looked me straight in the eye.

I told them the story of what had happened over breakfast. When I told them my Aunt was dead Mrs Weasley broke into tears on Mr Weasley's shoulder; Ron dropped the pan of sausages he had been holding; and Dumbledore's hands shook as he asked me what I had done.

No matter how many times I swore I hadn't touched her they still wouldn't believe me.

x

I let out a roar of frustration as I banged my fist on Mrs Weasley's scrubbed kitchen table and shouted for the nth time that morning, "I didn't do anything." I gripped my hair tightly in my hands and screwed my eyes tightly against Dumbledore's head-shaking and the frowns of the other Order members who had been called to the Burrow and who made the kitchen seem more cramped than ever.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" I croaked at them, voice hoarse from overuse and suppressed tears. "I was in my bed all night, and then I wake up, right, I wake up and there's my Uncle, bashing on the door as if he wants it to cave in. He bursts into my room and starts sounding off at me about making my Aunt right again, or something, so I go in there, into their room, and there she is, ok, there she is, just - just lying stone dead in the bed."

"And you didn't enter your Aunt and Uncle's room before that point?" Mr Weasley said, repeating the question for at least a third time.

"I'm not allowed to go in there."

They wouldn't stop looking at me. "Why won't you believe me," I finished, somewhat pitifully.

"Because we were watching the house all night, Harry, that's why," Kingsley Shacklebolt said in his deep, resonant voice. "Nobody entered the house, and nobody left it until the police came on the scene. From early reports we have, it looks more than likely that your Aunt was subject to the killing curse. You were the only wizard in that house."

I looked at him, incredulous. "You really believe I would be capable of generating the amount of hatred and - and dark power necessary to perform that curse? Do you really think I could do that?"

They didn't answer straight away but after a while Tonks, of all people, said in a small voice, "We all know how you felt about your guardians. We all knew what you thought about being sent back to live with them."

I couldn't find any words at all. What Bellatrix Lestrange had told me back at the Ministry sang through my head and in a moment of insanity I dearly wished she could have been there to attest to the fact that I just wasn't capable of performing an Unforgivable Curse.

"I couldn't," I started, feebly, "I would never -"

"The fact remains, Harry, that your Aunt is dead and you are in a very grave position," Dumbledore said slowly. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "I have so far been able to stall the Ministry from hearing about this incident but it will not be long before they catch wind of it. You have no alibi, do you?"

"Hedwig?" I muttered weakly, but the joke did not go down well. "Professor," I appealed. "You have to know I'm telling the truth. I did not kill my Aunt. Ok, so I didn't like her. Ok, so she was very nasty to me for a long time. But when I saw her there and heard my Uncle's pleading there's nothing in the world I would have wanted more than the power to bring her back."

"That doesn't mean that you did not send her away in the first place," Shacklebolt put in, and how I hated him for that.

"You carry on like that and I'll send you away," I said, rising from my chair, forgetting myself and the trouble I was in.

"That will do," Dumbledore said, standing up also and laying a firm hand on my shoulder.

"Don't you believe me, Professor? Don't you know that I couldn't kill a living soul?"

But I already understood that he didn't know that, because he didn't want to know that, because he would one day come to rely on the fact that I was capable of killing. He looked down at me, all the life gone out of his eyes.

"I trust you, Harry, to tell me the truth," he said. "But that will not be sufficient for anybody besides you and me."

Dumbledore proceeded to make plans for the other Order members, assigning some to try to collect any evidence on the sly, others to keep up with the Ministry's progress on the matter, and others to try to slow the release of the news. I could have seen this as a vague attempt to try to help me out of an impossible situation, but all I saw was a whole crowd of people thinking me a murderer. Looking back, I suppose that had to happen sooner or later.

It was like being stuck inside a desperate, recurring nightmare; yet all the time one unanswered question was going through my mind. I put it to Dumbledore when all the Order members had finally disappeared to their duties.

"Professor," I whispered. "Why don't you just use Legilimency? You have my permission, if it will get me out of this mess."

Dumbledore breathed out long and slow before he answered me.

"Even if I used Legilimency," he said carefully, "it would not be enough evidence for Cornelius Fudge. He would simply believe me of tampering with your story to prove you innocent yet again. He does not fully trust me even now. And besides," he continued when I tried to protest against this reason, "I'm afraid of using Legilimency to enter your mind."

"Why?" I asked edgily, not sure that I wanted to know the answer.

"Because, Harry," he said, looking away from me for the first time that morning, "I'm afraid of what I might find."

x

What do you do when the person you rely on most in the world lets you down at the worst possible moment in your life?

I decided to make a run for it while I still could. The way Dumbledore was carrying on if I wasn't careful I'd be on my way to a Ministry trial before I could blink, and then to who knew where? Azkaban, even? I couldn't let that happen to me so I made my excuses and pretended I needed the bathroom. Ron followed me up the stairs and into his room.

"What are you doing?" he asked me, catching me completely off-guard as I scrabbled around, rifling through the scraps of paper on his desk.

"Hermione's full address," I told him quietly, urgently. "Do you have it?"

"Why?"

"I need to stay with her for a while. If I go to hers she might hide me from the Ministry, just until I can sort things out in my head."

"You're going to run away?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding my head. Ron sat down heavily on his bed and looked at me like he didn't quite know me.

"I have to, Ron," I told him. "I can't stay here - everybody thinks I killed her. Dumbledore does. The whole of the order does. Your parents do. I mean, hang it all, Ron, even you do."

Ron mumbled something about not saying that he didn't believe me but I cut him off.

"It's ok, mate, I don't need you to believe me or even to trust me. I can do this bit on my own. But what I can't do is get carted off to prison for a crime I didn't commit."

Ron took a deep breath in which he seemed to make up his mind. He walked over to his desk and rifled around until he pulled out a scrap of parchment, which he pressed into my hand.

"Here. Take it," he said, and I looked down at Hermione's neat handwriting that marked her address.

"Cheers."

Ron looked at me steadily and said again in a clear voice, "Mate. I never said I didn't believe you, ok?"

I nodded at him and he led me out of his room. He led me down the stairs and we snuck past the kitchen where Dumbledore was talking quietly with Mr and Mrs Weasley. Ron led me to the back door and I stepped out into the fresh air.

"How will you get there?" Ron asked me.

"I'll hitchhike again, and walk. It shouldn't take too long."

"Harry," Ron said anxiously, "be careful, won't you? Don't forget You-Know-Who's still out there looking for you, whatever else is happening."

"Don't worry about me," I said, and I turned to go but he grabbed my wrist and held me back.

"Do us a favour, mate - make sure Hermione's safe, ok?" He frowned with concern at me as he said this. "Just - just don't get her into any trouble. If things start to look dangerous just leave."

I knitted my eyebrows at this but simply said, "I will, Ron," in what I hoped was a reassuring tone.

And then I ran, off the Weasley's small plot of land and away to the nearest main road.