Harry Potter and the Bonds of the Fathers

Ch 1. Escape the Pain

"Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more insecure than others, some never wanting to do the good deed to grant them their fame, but doing it anyway because they have no choice if they are to survive. Some become heroes by accident, and some do so with grim purpose. Some heroes kill, while others step in just the right moment to stop a killing.

There are some heroes hidden deep within the recesses of the heart, buried alive and just waiting for the rarest of conditions to come along and open them up. These people can be misjudged because of how well they hide, where sometimes even the most powerful magical implements cannot find the truth... until their Inheritance. The Inheritance of a wizard doesn't affect many but the effect it can have on some can change the world, and can only be more potent with wizards with a sub-species." ~Influential Wizards of the Times and Their Beginnings, Niles Pudmaout 1609-1897 Introductory to Clementine Thrush, Veela-Wizard mix, inventor of the Salveo Healing Charm.

Harry's POV:

Harry awoke rather abruptly in the middle of the night to a fierce pounding on the door that could only come from one person. A long string of threats and foul language told his foggy brain that he was correct. He groaned. Pain was sweeping under all of the oddly colored patches decorating his body and he rolled out of bed, grunting in pain as he hit the floor. He blinked rapidly, but his left eye was swollen shut and wouldn't open. Sighing, he carefully retrieved his glasses from under the sheltering of the bed. The dream he had was odd, and the pain seemed shockingly real. He had been lying like normal on his bead, but then his flesh had rearranged all over, growing and retracting wings, nails like talons, and growing a head like an eagle's with razor sharp teeth before sinking back into his own skin. He sighed again as he stood up off the floor, and wistfully stared at the bouncing door. He slowly walked over to the door with a sense of fate, and swung it open. His uncle just missed knocking onto his forehead, and only a quick save by Harry spared him. Harry knew what this was about, and he saw his uncle's hand speeding towards him a second before he was sent reeling backwards. It was more of a swipe than an actually fisted blow, but the damage felt the same because he collided with the bedpost behind him. It was metal and slightly rusted, bent towards the entrance from Harry being thrown against it from the other side before. The pole did an efficient job at clearing the wind from Harry's lungs and fazing him, and a rather loud crack resounded in the room from Harry's spine as it bent over the post. He bit his tongue, not willing to cry out and give his uncle the satisfaction of knowing he was hurt. He could move his back, so he guessed that crack hadn't meant one of his vertebrae had broken. Even through his haze he saw the empty whiskey bottle in Vernon's hand and remembered that Dudley had taken it from his uncle's private liquor cabinet. It wasn't the first time Dudley had blamed missing liquor on Harry, and also not the first time Vernon had chose to swallow his delinquent son's story over his. Harry didn't even think Vernon asked Dudley before coming straight to Harry anymore.

"Boy!" Vernon roared. His face was settling into a familiar shade that resembled moldy beef and Harry felt the larger man's strike vividly as it connected with his face. Harry fell to the floor, not deeming fighting worth what he knew was to come. Harry was quite used to these little confrontations with his uncle seeing as the happened often since his last return from Hogwarts. Harry didn't really know for sure why he had gone from being distant and cold to a dangerous and controlling man, but he often got the feeling when his uncle laid his hands on him that it was just a foolish and scared man trying to fight some unseen danger brought on by his presence. He'd even ventured the guess that his uncle was warning him in his own obscure way not to contact his wizard friends or worse would befall him. Wrapped up in his thoughts of how Dumbledore wanted him to stay here and that he wanted to stay even just a little bit alive to be able to live up to everyone's foolish dreams of him, he never once left his summer home. Eventually he had stopped fighting against his uncle and prolonging the pain, to let his uncle get his rage out on him quickly.

In the brief times of peace between both the physical and emotional battles Harry thought about how everyone always seemed to say that in fights and attacks time speeds up. They said that the world would get out of focus and all you could concentrate on was, 'away! Away! Away!' Harry thought they were wrong, he found he was able to pay attention quite well. In the beginning he had used this awareness of his surroundings to his benefit, slipping away from his uncle and dodging his blows as well as he could, never once letting any utterance of pain leave his mauled mouth. He soon after saw the error in this plan of defense though; it made the pudgy man even angrier and insistent, and when he did get to pummel him the attacks were drawn out and when a fist or foot landed a score, it hit harder. To Harry's credit, it had taken a whole month and a quarter to break him of his efforts. Harry remembered everything that happened during the fights and dwelled on how he should have reacted. He would dream up situations and come up with little strategies. It helped him to keep a sense of sanity, to be able to defeat his mental enemy, if not the one in real life. Harry's lack of resistance had seemed to satisfy Vernon, and he stopped the daily scuffles, becoming as infrequent as thrice a week. He reveled in the longer pacified moments, until his own emotional pain began barraging him. Harry both loathed the pain he suffered at his uncle's cause and longed for the forgetting he was granted from his emotional torrent.

He'd thought of just about everything when left alone. He remembered fan letters from fans that didn't really care, not past the superficial semblance of when they realized his fame. He always wanted Ron and Hermione to understand him at school but they'd always failed to fully and completely understand how Harry really worked most of the time. It made him a little bitter that they swallowed his every lie that he was fine, and wished that even though he knew he needed to stay here, that they would see right into his heart and rescue him. He ached for a part of himself that he felt he was missing. He wanted out of this house, but he knew that Voldemort wasn't lying dormant from the prickling of his scar every once in a while. He was probably just waiting for Harry to step outside the wards of ancient magic to blast him away, and then what where would he be? Dead. When he was at his lowest he often wished he was dead and all this was a dream, but then his Gryffindor side surfaced he thought of the looks on peoples faces as their own unexpected demise came over them, and realized that if he died then he would be the source of their destruction. He wanted Voldemort dead. Then he wanted out of the blasted house. Sometimes it'd become all to hard to bear, and he'd thought the most preferable way to leave the house was in death, but then he'd think that he could make some exceptions if there was no more pain for the rest of his life.

When his thoughts turned to Hogwarts his thoughts unhelpfully turned to a taunting demeaning Slytherin. What puzzled Harry about it though, were that his thoughts weren't all together spiteful when thinking of his enemy. 'Too much hate directed towards one person... I have none else to spare...' He had thought then, his thoughts jolting to his rampaging relative again. Soon his thoughts began to fit under some kind of schedule, hard memories and then harder ones. Until the dreams came.

Harry was severely inexperienced when it came to relationships, but he was sure that he had his dreams. He couldn't say how he knew, but everything in his dreams radiated romance. It was if the feelings were radiating off them and imprinting them on Harry's mind. The dreams were mindless. They were completely random segments of Harry's life that Harry hadn't lived yet, and Harry was extremely sure wouldn't happen. They focused on casual walks down the school hallways, casual glances in classes, and once or twice the dream would switch to something more overt. These segments of his dreams were always about smiles and laughter, talking endlessly in libraries over books and in a dream he had only once, he was granted a hug by the objects of his dream-self's affections. Harry felt safe in his dreams, like he had a big secret that no one would ever know, and his dream-self knew it was one so beautiful and touching to that heart that he would never give it up.

Whenever he reached that thought in his dreams he always woke up. And his heart wrenched and he would press a bruise to bring himself to reality. He always felt disgusted with himself after these dreams. It didn't even matter that they came whenever he managed to sleep, haunting him with half promises and fully manifested lies. His reaction always remained constant, if not the emotions underlying it. Those came in waves and throes each time he woke up without his uncle's interruption. Warmth came and went but it was scarce. Need and despair were common, but the need was soft and weak, while the despair more than made up for its lack of strength. Pain. Now that was a word he could use to describe the way he was feeling each day. Emotional and physical pain ripped through him like the nightmares that sometimes punctuated the softer dreams, but that was nothing compared to the utter loneliness sweeping through him after one of the dreams. There were always tears. Always. He cried for the fact that the peace in his dream was ending, he cried that he didn't feel safe anymore. He cried at the fact that he remembered all his pain now that he was back in reality and he had only the promise of a thrashing to help him forget it again. But most of all he cried over the fact that he couldn't control what, or rather whom, was in his dreams. The face that he had conjured had no possible existence in his future. When it all came down, the one he cried over, and for, was Draco Malfoy. And all Harry could do about it was to pray that his supposed rival wouldn't (and yet how he prayed that he would) enter his dreams again. And then, on schedule, his thoughts would leap to his uncle, mercilessly reminding him he may come soon. Harry's mental opponent had started appearing as his own self more often than not, reflecting his mental state perfectly.

And there he was, standing over Harry wearing the familiar sickening mask of triumph as he grabbed Harry roughly by the forearm, just below the elbow, trying to haul him up. Time stopped when they both heard the crack. Dragging all of Harry's rapidly declining weight up by bending calcium deficient bones against the normal bend of the joint had caused Harry's arm to break just above the elbow. Harry nearly screamed with pain and sorrow, but with all the power he previously had used to throw off the Imperio curse he kept himself from doing anything but to leak unstoppable tears. He clamped his lips shut and resumed biting his tongue, tightening his jaw until the wounds in his mouth and the half-sealed cuts on his tongue opened and filled his mouth with blood. He had waited for this to happen, for the barrier to one day break where he actually broke a bone under his uncle's ministrations. He knew once that happened his uncle would never stop, he would have barely anything to fear.

Vernon Dursley drank it all up. He watched Harry's face, and the tears that silently came down. It was all so powerful and wonderful, and he began to wonder why he hadn't broken bones before if he could have felt this domination over the dangerous boy. Transferring his grip to Harry's neck he twisted and pushed him hard into the wall. As Vernon's fists rained down on him, he blacked out, dimly deciding that mortal safety or not, he was going to leave this house. He could fight, and maybe even kill Voldemort, a wizard, but not a muggle, whose kind the Ministry of Magic pitied.

Vernon's POV:

Vernon had left him soon after he had passed out, but not after he fed out his anger on Harry properly. He longed for the day when the boy could go back to his disgustingly manipulative friends, so he could go back to living properly. He kissed his wife on her forehead as soon as he made it to their room, and smiled slightly as she grumbled about eggs and rolled over. His wife may turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to his disciplining of Harry, but he knew she didn't like to know her own blood was being thrashed right under her nose. Petunia had taken a keen liking to going shopping with Dudley when she knew what Vernon was about to do for a while now, and he knew it was her way of preventing the guilt and recollections of what her sister might say. He sank down into the bed sighing with content. He was pretty sure Harry had learned his lesson today- whatever lesson he had been trying to teach. He stoked his hand down Petunia's cheek sadly before letting his predominant anger for the boy down the hall claim him once more. Frowning deeply he huffed and turned onto his other side, facing away from his wife. He hated that ingrate of a nephew, and knew that tomorrow would be the opportune time to get the tweezers and pluck out the splinter that had been burrowing itself underneath his skin for nearly sixteen years now. So to speak.

Harry's POV:

When Harry was unconscious, Harry dreamed. He didn't know if he was happy or sad that Malfoy wasn't in this one, though. This one made him feel as sane and content as Malfoy's had, but this one lacked the protected and beautiful feelings emanating from it. And this one surely had no feelings of romance and care, as it was only pictures replaying over and over again. There was a break in his dream where he thought he was awake, but he knew what he was dreaming wasn't real. In this dream he felt horrible pain, although it was not from the injuries he had sustained from before. His face felt like it was melting and bubbling, and his mouth and nose stretched out to become a beak before returning back to normal human features. Each of his fingers felt like they were ripping apart and he felt himself being raised off the floor as his back burst open and something slid out of the gashes that had surely formed. He felt himself thump to the floor as whatever had protruded extracted itself into his back once more. He felt stretched all over, and he felt all his muscles contracting and loosening over and over. He slipped back into his previous dream with relief, the pain fading instantaneously as the same three pictured flitted across his vision. When Harry awoke to the excruciating pain that was the real world, he suddenly knew what he had to do.

He groaned, constricting his bruised throat so the sound didn't come out very loud. He haphazardly threw the one arm that would move over his head in despair. He choked on a gasp as his hand hit an edge of something on the above around the area of his head. He snatched at it and trembling with the effort needed to perform such a simple action he squinted at the label without even realizing he could see without the help of his glasses. Harry had grabbed his little pot of bruise salve, which he had made in potions after the start of the Dueling Club. He rested it and dug his fingers down to the bottom of the jar, trying to get the last bit out and winced at the sensation the pressure on his belly was creating, He twitched, causing the pot to fall from his stomach and eased his hand through a hole on the front of his shirt and rubbed the slave on his stomach, where he guessed the most damage would have been done. Just as Harry tried to move, he gasped with a thick rolling sense of pain rolled around his arm, one of his thighs and the top of his head. He couldn't lift himself far with his good if not tired arm because of the nausea and dizziness that soon erupted. His brain was filled with no coherent thought but for the goals he knew he needed to accomplish before he would be able to leave. His number one goal above all else was to get the small and very secret pouch of floo powder he had managed to sneak from Umbridge's office before it was cleared out by aurors, and also before coming home. Willing himself to focus on what he needed to do with his more... unresponsive limbs he somehow got his body to roll, slowly and feebly till he was on his stomach. Hissing as his stomach muscles burned with the effort he somehow pushed himself off the floor enough to bring his good leg up under him. Harry was lucky that that one limb came away unscathed, as is soon became the only thing he leant on as a wave of nausea and exhaustion brought on by his ill health. After the brunt of that attack passed he pushed against the floor as hard as he could with that leg as he made is way into an odd kneeling position. This time the nausea wasn't as bad and Harry felt a little better mentally about slowly getting his body back. Wincing with the stiffness and the incredible sensation of all of his muscles in his bad leg knotting up sensationally, he pulled the other leg up too. In a second he was going to start screaming.

The moment he opened his mouth a sudden thought gave him the strength to close it again. How could he have come that close?? He didn't want to have his uncle come and finish the job if only to shut him up. He sighed with self disgust, and tried to let his thoughts pull from how much of an idiot he was to the thought he had thought of earlier. Occlumency. Could that... possible help him? If it could be used to shut out someone else, surely it could be used to shut out his own distracting thoughts and pain as well. Then there was the fact that he'd never succeeded in clearing his mind before- but then before when he'd tried his uncle was still afraid of him and was certainly afraid to do serious harm to him. Thinking that his desperation could count for a replacement for his inexperience, he tried clearing his mind.

All the images and thought and notions seemed to stick onto his mind at once, and at every sound he mentally thought a million things it could be caused by. Examining each individual train of thoughts for its importance, he let them go one by one. He was surprised when they didn't come back but forced himself to calm down as this emotion caused more thoughts to arise. Slowly he let his thoughts flow after studying them for their facts, not their questions. He was left with only the pain then and he treated it as if it were a thought, acknowledging where he was hurt most and what he could to with any working limbs. He then let the pain seep past him, clinging only to the thoughts of what he needed to do and what was most hurt about him.

Opening his eyes he nearly cried with relief as his headache didn't pulse, his leg, while it was certainly knotted, didn't ache enough to put him over the edge anymore. He still felt tired though, and he guessed there was no way going around that, but he was happy enough- well not really happy but relieved enough- that his body wasn't one solid sensation of pain. Getting to his feet was somewhat easy when he didn't feel the pain gnawing at him. His bad leg was so stiff, that he had a fright just getting it to uncurl after he took his first step in his condition. Forcing his leg to do his will he straightened it and put it onto the ground in front of him, and sighed with disgust again when it snapped back to being painfully bent the second weight wasn't on it again. If he were anyone else he would have started to complain that it wasn't fair, that he had to fight his body and mind from exploding at the same time. But he was Harry Potter- borne into this mess and he accepted it as part of what he must do. Somewhere along the way he had gotten into his head a sense of duty, he didn't know when but then again-it was probably yesterday. He almost laughed at his own stupidity but, and almost belatedly, he remembered his uncle and forced his body over to the chest without allowing any other thoughts to creep into his conscience from his strict hold. Fumbling around, his hands clutched at his prize, bringing up and keeping his salvation safely against his chest. He went on with his plan, searching for his wand in case of an emergency happened after flooing. He highly doubted it but you never knew these days. 'Trust no one.'

Harry hadn't really trusted his uncle, but whatever shred of it had still had in his heart was torn mercilessly away when Vernon had first laid his hand on Harry. Immediately following spotting Harry in Platform 9 3/4, Vernon himself found himself with a threat to his immediate family on his shoulders. It was maybe that that drove him to originally do the unspeakable- being sixteen years in the making it came hard. Harry hadn't expected it at all. He had been hoping for a good summer thinking his family would leave him alone, but that hope was beaten out of him before too long. 'Trust no one.' It was amazing how he didn't want to reclaim it.

He wiggled his arms, maneuvering around the heavy clutter of stuff in his trunk. He never felt his hand bump against his wand, though, so he peeked around his arm into the mess. Half of his wand was under his transfiguration book from his third year, and the visible part was down in a crack between a potions book and the 'Hogwarts, A History' book Hermione had gotten him. He hefted himself up more and shoved his shoulder farther down to give his arm more length to bend. Books slipped around his arm, and one falling past his arm managed to rip a piece of glass from his arm. He gasped, although it didn't hurt, the blood falling unhindered down his arm was a little disturbing. He silently thanked the glass for keeping him from bleeding as long as it had and renewed his efforts. He felt more cuts open as his skin shoved past books, no longer being gentle. He scratched at what he knew to be the potions book underneath his fingers and started at the feel of the book actually giving way. He peeked into the trunk again and was even more surprised to see deep slashes dug far into the blood-spotted book and ribbons of torn leather and paper. He spread his fingers and looked at his ordinary-seeming fingernails numbly. It was hard to shove away the questions trying to arise in his mind, so he backed his head out again so he could concentrate solely on reaching his wand. Sliding his fingers easily past the newly-widened gap he finally was able to cross the distance he needed. His fingers grasped his wand firmly, and at first touch it sent a wave of magic bounding through him, making him shiver as his old friend vibrated in his hand. Harry stuffed it in the back pants pocket of his grubby jeans, thinking it was just reacting to the state he was in.

"Let's go then," he whispered to himself, his words less commanding than he felt, filled with the strength from touching his wand. 'Have I really gone all summer without even touching it? I wont do that again' He thought to himself. Obviously his wand had as much as told him not to go so long without it by his side again. 'Trust no one.' He was only to happy to comply, trying desperately to be quiet and he staggered to the door to the hallway. Faced with the option of stairs- he hadn't thought about that part- he was delayed for a second but soon enough he was in front of the fireplace. He took the floo powder and scattered it over the dead log that had been laying in there ever since the last winter. He didn't know what he had expected without using fire as well, but it seemed to work, green flames springing up all over the stump of wood.

Harry stepped in, and in a soft voice he clearly stated, "Number Twelve Grimmauld Place." He felt the rush of pain hit him as he lost his control in the spinning flames and once he stood in whichever fire he had managed to land in, he surrendered to the hurt. He hit the floor hard, and the last thought he had was of how his legs were feeling oddly warm.