Companion Piece to When Voldemort Stole Pink Rabbit

"Petunia, he's got to be moved out of there."

"You don't have to tell me twice!"

"The teddy bear-"

"I know!"

"-it just flew up in the air!"

"I know, I saw it too!"

"Nothing's different about him - he's exactly like your sis-"

"Hush, Vernon, please be quiet. You don't know who could be listening."

"Quite right, Petunia, dear, sorry. He's not to be sharing a room with Dudley anymore."

"I know, but we don't have anyplace to stick him."

"I want him out of my sight."

"I know, but where ..."

...

"No, Vernon, you can't!"

"Why not? They gave him to us, didn't they?"

...

"He's crying, Vernon, let him out!"

"He'll stop soon enough if we just ignore him. I read that in a parent magazine."

"In a magazine?"

"Yes, that's right."

"I don't know ..."

"It's the only way to keep Dudley safe, Petunia! Who know what the boy might do next! We could all wake up tomorrow morning as toads!"

"I ... oh, all right."

...

"Good night, Harry."

:::::

He started out as such a tiny thing. Like a baby hatchling. He should have been fresh, and full of life and ideals and hope and dreams. But, with his desperation for love and affection and downtrodden little sleep-snore, he was anything but a hatchling.

I never saw him much by day, but I sensed him every night. Always the same. Blinking once, twice, ten times at the dark. Lying on his mattress, thumb in mouth, staring at the door as though willing someone to fling it open and take him out of there. Someone who never came. Not once. Not even when he was older and sick and throwing up.

And in the morning, that rapping at the door every day, loud enough to rattle my brains and shake the foundations of my web. The same bleary, wild hope as he stared into the darkness - dark even in the morning! - and tried to see things that were not there.

I never left safety by day, but I could still hear everything that went on in the house. A vacuum. A phone. The doorbell. The television. I heard a man's voice, and a woman's, and a little boy's. But never his. It was odd. It was almost as if he disappeared the moment he left safety. Dissolved into the air, a memory.

The first time he came into safety, he was so small. It was darkness; darkness and him. He took up the smallest fraction of space it was easy to see how he could simply get lost, and when that woman came in the morning, he'd be gone.

Then he came again and again and again and he got bigger and bigger and bigger. He took up more space and became a larger presence. He didn't mind the dark so much. He explored, checking and rechecking everything. Once he found my web with his flashlight and spent hours trying to recapture it on paper.

The third-to-last time I saw him was the first time I really saw him. The first time he had come into his own. He was angry, determined. He had a focus and a goal. It didn't last long. The man took him out, and I didn't see him after that for a long, long time.

I did catch glimpses of him, though. The door to safety opened exactly twice a year - once when the woman cleaned inside, filling the whole room with horrible fumes, and once when the man put a big box inside. He - the boy, not the man - stood behind and watched, protesting weakly. This happened twice.

Once he came back on his own, but he didn't stay. He opened the box, grabbed some books, and then ran back out. Surprising! This was the boy who had cried silently all night long, who never made a sound? Open rebellion? What was he doing when he left safety that made him so courageous?

I hoped he would come again, but I hardly dared to hope. He was already grown, he knew how to stand up to others and get his way. He didn't need to return to safety again.

But he did.

This was the absolute last time I saw him. That whole week there had been another presence in the house, a loud, grating presence. On the night he came to safety again, that presence was at its loudest and gratiest. Everything else was silent and then -

"AIIIEEEE!!!!!"

Shrieks louder than the woman's wake-up calls, louder than the vacuum on the stairs, louder than anything I'd ever heard! Everyone screaming - the man, the woman the other boy and the presence. But my boy? Where was he?

And then he was there, in front of me. The door flung open and light flooded every inch of safety. And that was when I understood - really understood what had happened to him. He was seething with rage, determined, looking out for himself.

He was everything I could have hoped he'd grow up to be. Everything I had been afraid he wasn't going to be from the moment I saw him quivering on the floor that first night. And there he was. Full-grown. Almost a man himself. He didn't need a safety anymore.

And sure enough, he never came back. Not even to bring his box back. I never saw him again.

Wherever he went when he left safety, it surely worked a miracle.