When Harry Left Dursley...

When Harry Left Dursley...

An almost girlish shriek of glee from what was actually a masculine voice rattled the windows of the little house on Privet Drive. Despite the fact that Dumbledore and Sirius were gone, freedom was tasting pretty good to Harry Potter. He grabbed his wand from the bedside table and sat up facing his door. He knew that any moment Vernon Dursley would burst in to his room, forehead vein throbbing, with a threatening glower on his face. He was not disappointed.

Dursley's look of anger slowly turned all the more sinister when he saw Harry's wand pointed at him. "You can't pull any of those tricks boy and you know it."

"I knew you'd forget it was my birthday," Harry grinned, the smile on his face bringing an odd glow to the pre-dawn room.

"What in the buggery does that have to do with anything you ungrate--" Harry's uncle's face went slowly dead as the realization of what Harry's seventeenth birthday meant. He was finally facing retribution for years of treating Harry in the worst way he possibly could without going to jail for it.

"But I'm just happy that I will be leaving this house forever at some point in the next few hours. I--"

Petunia Dursley had pushed her husband aside to burst into the room. "I think that you will be staying right here until you go to school young man. After all we--"

"Langlock!!" Harry had whispered, but in the resulting stillness of the room it seemed like the roar of a lion. Petunia Dursley scrabbled furiously at her strangely constricted mouth and goggled in horror at the cheerful look on Harry's face.

"I can't say that I will ever forgive you for the ten years of lies or the sixteen years of torture, but I am leaving here without so much as giving the pig a tail."

Vernon Dursley could not bear the idea of having his wife muzzled or his son called a pig and started to charge towards Harry. Harry decided that now was the time to practice some non-verbal spells, as he did not plan to go back to Hogwarts this year and he knew that the skill would be a useful one. A few deft flicks of his wand later and he was reclining on his bed giving the Dursley's (who were hanging by their ankles looking petulantly indifferent to the fact that he was speaking to them) the lecture he'd been planning since he found out that he would be free of them on this day.

"In conclusion," Harry said about a half-hour later, wrapping up a lecture on the fine points of manners, the nature of dementors, and the fact that they were now going to be sitting ducks for the wizard who'd killed his parents. "I have taken the liberty of putting your chimney on the floo network, and will turn the electric heater back into a real fireplace in order to take my leave of you. Before I leave, I will give you a way to contact me if Voldemort ever shows up here--it is possibly the only way I will be able to find out in time to save your life--so don't abuse it. I am telling you this so you know the bare facts--I don't like you and will not miss you. If he attacks however, my protection is yours by right, and I will do what I can to help you."

Vernon grunted, the vein in his head looking more like one of those balloons he had seen someone on television twist into funny shapes than something that belonged in the head of a middle aged man--no matter what kind of a horse's posterior he was. Petunia looked grateful, frightened, and disgusted at the same time, nodding her assent. Harry levitated the whole party into the living room, along with his luggage. He waved his wand, glancing back only twice to enjoy the horrified looks on the Dursley's faces as he turned their fireplace into a real fireplace.

"Don't worry you silly gits, you can put in another electric fire, not that it will matter, I'm taking my apparition test later today." He looked at them all for a minute, satisfied with himself for finally having been able to take out his revenge, and then, remembering something, he waved his wand and shouted, "ACCIO!"

Harry sprouted a silly grin as he saw what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had done with the Hungarian Horntail figurine that represented the dragon he'd had to get past in the tri-wizard tournament. A fireproof safe came clunking up the cellar stairs and settled next to Harry with a loud clunk.

"I hope you didn't leave your papers in there, I'm not too good with reconstitution charms, and if it has been in there too long, everything in there may be ash right now."

He waved his wand a little and landed the Dursley's on the couch, realizing that the purple color in their faces meant that the majority of the blood in their bodies was now in their heads and as bad as he hated them, murder was just not his game. He decided a little argument might be fun at this point too, while the contents of the safe were still in question.

"No," grunted Vernon. "The bloody thing had already bit me and set fire to my tie twice by the time I got it down there. As if you didn't know--sicking that damned thing on me."

"If you hadn't stolen it, it would not have done either. You probably just weren't bright enough to realize that wizards protect objects against theft," Harry mused, surprised he had not got a greater reaction, but noting in satisfaction that the color that had been retreating from the Dursley's faces had doubled back intending to assert its presence in force again, "but I am glad that your papers weren't destroyed. I would hate to take you gits into my home, knowing how you treat people in your own."

Harry blasted the safe open with a flick of his wand, proud that he'd only used a few incantations out loud, managing to get all he'd been needing to do accomplished with non-verbal spells. The small dragon figurine snorted short jets of flame out of its nose in the general direction of Vernon Dursley, lit on Harry's outstretched palm and looked up at him with satisfaction.

"We protected you--" began Petunia Dursley, hoarsely and Harry realized with a suppressed chuckle that she had been trying to scream the whole time he had her jinxed.

"And now I am going to offer you protection--just as soon as Ron gets here. Believe me, I won't be forgetting you any time soon. And I don't think that you will be forgetting me either."

"You'd better--" began Vernon Dursley

"THAT IS ENOUGH OUT OF YOU!!!" roared Harry. "I have been trying to figure out how to get away from this place for a long time. I'm a free wizard now you stupid Muggle git, and I will never take orders from you again. I don't even want to offer you protection, but since you are family--whatever in Merlin's beard that means--I must, if only to try and stop Voldietwit from killing more people. Now as to the nature of this protection, if Sirius' mother liked me, I would most certainly be punishing you with her. I could have laughed for days at a time at her being stuck up here screaming about being in a house with a bunch of muggles."

"Stuck up here?" Dudley's voice was even more hoarse than either of his parents' had been.

"Her portrait, that is. You will see what I mean."

Dudley couldn't help himself anymore, he began to cry. Harry flushed happily at this, he felt it no more than right. The fireplace behind him sparked a little, drawing his attention to the freshly floo'ed in Ron Weasley. Petunia buried her face in her hands. Vernon ripped the upholstery that he'd been gripping so tightly on the couch. Dudley slipped to the floor in a dead faint as soon as he saw the red hair in the fireplace. Harry knew somehow that Dudley would stick to his diet for at least a couple of hours today.

Ron stepped out of the fireplace grinning. "Most polite I've ever seen these gits. You might say hello though. 's only polite."

"If any day were a day to excuse them, today's the one, mate. I had them levicorpused AND langlocked for the better part of an hour. Good to see you, Ron."

"I still don't know why you'd want to put this here though. If it were me..."

"Just be glad it isn't. I will have a portrait of you in my house you know, Ron." Ron grinned at this, and Harry turned with a wry smile towards the Dursleys. "This is probably confusing you. In the wizarding world pictures can move and speak. You will have a picture of me above your fireplace, flying on my firebolt. It will not come off of the wall, nor will you ever be able to paint over it."

"This is preposterous. What about my business dinners?" raged Vernon until Harry fixed him with a look that settled him back in the couch in fear.

"Fixed that with a quick charm. Any muggle 'cept you lot will only see a landscape," Ron grinned as Harry took the portrait, in which his likeness was zooming around the quidditch pitch with the snitch raised high in triumph. He fixed it above the fireplace with a permanent sticking charm, first evicting the hideous picture of dogs playing poker that had caused mysterious giggles after he first met his godfather, then later tears after his death.

"If Voldemort shows up, or any of his Death Eaters, the portrait of me in my house will alert me, or one of my helpers, at once and I will apparate here immediately."

"You evil boy--" began Petunia, still hoarse, but Harry knew better than to let her get warmed up. She could shout almost as well as Mrs. Weasley, though never as intelligently.

"Listen you stupid woman, my abilities may save your life. It wasn't only protecting me to stay here. That spell protected you too. I really hope never to return here. If I do, it will be because either you are about to be killed by a bunch of evil wizards, or you have been stupid and tried to do something to this painting."

He turned to the fireplace where Ron had just taken Harry's trunk and flooed away. He stepped into the green flames and said his address very quietly but clearly and grinned like a Cheshire cat as the Dursley's were ripped from his view, looking even more petrified than when Dumbledore had offered them a drink in their own house. It gave him the knowledge that his portrait hanging in the Dursley's house pained them much worse than the cruciatus curse had ever hurt a wizard. It gave him a warm glow as he stepped out into a housewarming party thrown by his friends at his new home. It was the house he'd once rejected until finding out that his godfather had used "reducto" on the wall where Mrs. Black's portrait had hung, obliterating it, with surprisingly little damage to the wall. Harry had heard about this by owl when he was making preparations to leave the Dursleys and steered his party towards where the portrait had hung and his smile grew at what the mysterious words in the owl Ron sent had meant. Rather than leaving a charred hole in the wall, Sirius' spell had left only two black marks that looked like animals: a big dog, and a stag.