Friends
Harry didn’t have to go to the diner, Benny’s Burgers, but Siri went every day and Harry couldn’t stay behind.
Benny’s Burgers smelled like grease - Harry didn’t know it was grease until he saw the kitchen and Benny told him it was grease. The tables were grimy no matter how much Harry scrubbed them. The customers who showed up talked and talked no matter how much Harry didn’t answer.
Siri… Siri liked it. Siri liked to walk around in the itchy clothes that Benny gave them. Siri liked to carry plates of food from the kitchen to the men who ordered them. Siri liked Benny, Harry could tell.
Harry sat in a booth in the corner of the diner and watched his sister while she carried plates and asked people what they wanted to eat. Harry would have helped, Benny didn’t want him to. Benny told Harry that he could help clean up when the diner closed in the evenings and then mostly ignored him.
It was fine, to be ignored. Harry preferred it. As long as he could see Siri, see the door to be sure They didn’t walk in, then Harry liked to be ignored.
Siri didn’t ignore Harry, she brought things over to the table where Harry spent his days. Siri would bring fruits with bursts of flavor in every bite in the mornings, cups of white milk that tasted bad and Siri told him he had to drink. Siri brought him a book one day, one that had a rocket ship blasting off on the cover.
“Garth brought it,” Siri told Harry happily as she slid him the book. Siri smiled when Harry reached for it so he smiled too, if it made Siri happy for Garth to bring a book then Harry was happy.
The book was interesting, though Harry couldn’t read it for very long at a time. It hurt his eyes, it made him tired. Harry used to stay up late at night, reading as many books as he was allowed to check out at the library. And then it took him eight days to read ten pages.
Mostly Harry sat in his booth by the window and watched Siri, made sure she was eating fruits and vegetables too and that carrying plates made her grin again. It was good, seeing her grin. Harry missed it, even if it wasn’t as bright as he thought it used to be.
She still smiled more in eight days than she did in four years, Harry counted.
Harry had his back in the corner and his legs pulled up for the book to rest on his knees on the ninth day. Siri was helping in the kitchen, Harry could hear her even if he could see her. Benny was slumped over at the register, working through a cup of coffee. He offered Harry some, one the first day in the diner, and Harry wouldn’t drink it. It smelled bad and it tasted just as bad when Siri brought him a cup with the bowl of grapes and strawberries that day.
Benny must have felt Harry staring at him over the top of his book because he lifted his head and caught Harry’s eyes across the empty diner.
“You good?” he asked Harry.
No.
“Yes, sir.” Harry pretended to look back at his book, carefully waiting until Benny went back to ignoring him. Once Benny was focused on the newspaper on the counter by the register, Harry stared at him again.
Benny… Harry didn’t understand Benny. Benny let them use his house, sleep in his bed. Benny gave them food all day at the diner. The only thing he asked was that Siri helped deliver plates and that Harry helped clean up when they closed if he ‘felt like it’. Benny gave them clothes, he gave Harry a pair of his boots that he said didn’t fit anymore.
They weren’t paying him, they weren’t doing anything. Siri had cleaned up the house, Harry washed the dishes they brought there from the diner. That was it.
When Benny made his demands, Harry wouldn’t be surprised, he just didn’t want Siri to be upset by them. They would leave, it wouldn’t bother Harry in the slightest, he just hated to think about Siri’s grins disappearing again.
Siri was talking to one of the old men who arrived that day - the same as he did every day - about fishing when something new happened. It was the same three men, who talked about the same things, in the same seats, they ordered the same food.
The door opened with a jingle of a bell and Harry’s head swiveled in that direction immediately. Benny straightened up as well, then slumped when the new person walked in the diner.
“Byers, damn, forgot to call you,” Benny said. “Why don’t you take the weekend off? I got help.”
‘Byers’ glanced at Siri, who stopped talking about fishing to watch him. Harry was beginning to stand up, his book already on the table, but then Byers looked at the ground and shrugged.
“Yeah, alright,” he said. “Mind if I just… hang for a bit?”
Benny waved a hand, Harry didn’t think he did mind. Siri shook her head at Harry and waved her hand too, Harry didn’t know what that meant. Did it mean she didn’t mind? Did it mean she wanted to leave? Did she… did she want Harry to leave?
It was dark, cold. Harry couldn’t breathe, he wasn’t meant to.
A test, another test, Harry wasn’t passing them. He didn’t know how to pass the test - either he would die or he wouldn’t and if he didn’t then he would wish he had and he couldn’t leave Siri.
“Siri?” Harry tried to move in the enclosed box he was inside of and could barely wiggle from side to side. “Siri?”
There was nothing, a crushing weight of nothing that echoed around him. It would be okay, in the dark and cold with the weight of everything crushing his chest, if Siri were there.
Except Harry shouldn’t want Siri there, he shouldn’t want her around him at all. Harry should want Siri somewhere warm and pretty and he imagined that she would would be happy, without Harry there wishing she was buried alive with him.
“Good book.”
Harry blinked, the words on the page he wasn’t reading swam back in focus, and he saw that Byers had taken the booth beside his. Byers stared at Harry and it was his turn to say something.
“Okay,” Harry said. It was, so far. It was about space, where Harry had never been. The book talked about the astronauts who were selected for the Project Mercury mission NASA started in 1958. Ten years before Harry was born, Project Mercury began.
Byers looked at Harry like he was waiting for something for a few long seconds. Harry only stared at him unblinkingly, unsure what he wanted or why he was watching him.
“Right, sorry.” Byers turned so that all Harry could see was the back of his head. When Harry stretched his neck, he could see a notebook in front of him opened up.
Why did he have a notebook? In a diner? Who was he taking notes on?
Harry couldn’t read if he tried. The words were squibbles as hard to read as Byers notebook. Harry could steal it from him, he could pull it right to him like he always wanted to do to Them, but someone would notice.
Siri was back in the kitchen, Benny was focused on the paper. Nobody seemed to care that there was a stranger taking notes in the diner, nobody cared that he would make them all do things and then write about it where nobody would ever see.
Harry’s fingers fluttered where they rested between his chest and the open book. Byers could be a spy, a test, a trap. He could have a number on his arm beneath his jacket.
Harry moved quickly, quietly. He ducked under the table and popped up on the other side, closer to Byers. Byers turned to glance at Harry, Harry was already looking at his book. When Byers turned back to his notebook, Harry turned to peer over this shoulder.
“What the fuck, man?” Byers spun around and caught Harry in the act, causing his breath to stutter.
Automatically, Harry looked for Siri. She wasn’t there, she was in the kitchen, and Harry stammered as he tried to invent an excuse to sooth Byers in case he was a spy, was someone who reported back to Them.
“I… I…” Harry shook his head, trying to get rid of the buzzing in his ears. They couldn’t go back, They would kill Siri. “I can’t read,” he blurted out. “I’m learning to read now.”
Byers’s face fell forward while his eyebrows shot up his forehead. Harry didn’t know what that meant, it he believed him, it was a decent lie though… one that he hoped would get Byers to show him his notebook.
“You can’t read?” Byers asked him, speaking slowly. When he twisted in his seat more to face Harry, Harry’s eyes flickered to his left forearm. The shirt sleeve was almost high enough, not quite.
“No,” Harry went on, still craning his neck to see the notebook. “Or, yeah, I can. I can’t read handwriting? I’m trying to learn.”
“So you’re dyslexic or something?” Byers asked. Harry’s heart jumped up and lodged in his throat when Byers snagged his notebook and held it out for Harry to read. “That’s cool, man. You want to practice, go ahead. My handwriting is shit though.”
Harry didn’t know what it meant to be dyslexic or handwriting to be shit, but the writing was small and cramped. It was clear enough though… Harry’s eyes scanned the page quickly and the tightness in his chest loosened when it was only what seemed to be notes about a book.
Shakespeare.
Byers talked while Harry quickly read the page, looking for any code words or hidden secrets in the writing. He didn’t see any and he didn’t sense any magic, it - it might have been only notes for… school, it seemed.
“You’re new here, right?” Byers asked. He put his arm across the back of his booth so that he could turn around more to talk and Harry saw the second his sleeve bundled up and right beneath the crook of his elbow…
Nothing.
Byers wasn’t a wizard, he wasn’t a test subject, and he wasn’t a very good spy if he was one.
“You go to the middle school?” Byers asked. “I haven’t seen you around.”
“I don’t,” Harry said. Harry didn’t go to school, he didn’t need to anymore. Harry went to Hogwarts, then he didn’t. Before that… before that… Harry didn’t remember, he wasn’t sure if they were his memories or stories he had memorized, but Siri said they went to school with Dudley.
Harry didn’t remember Dudley, Siri talked about him sometimes. He didn’t sound nice.
“Got it. Uh… want me to help you?” Byers gestured to the book on Harry’s lap. “I’m kind of over Julius Cesar anyway.”
Siri used to read to Harry, she would be given books and when they weren’t together, she would read them so Harry could listen. Harry liked to be read to, Siri was busy, Byers was offering.
“Okay.” Harry handed him the book that he couldn’t get through. “It’s Garth’s,” he told him.
“Got it.” Byers smiled at Harry for no reason and Harry smiled back.
“Jonathan,” he said.
“James,” Harry said.
It wasn’t a lie, not entirely.
Jonathan started showing up at the diner every day after that.
Siri would wait tables, Benny would work at the register, Harry would help clean up when the diner closed. Jonathan would show up and if there were more than a few people in the diner, Benny would tell Jonathan he could help out. When it wasn’t busy, Jonathan read Garth’s book to Harry.
Harry didn’t always listen, sometimes the lure of hiding in his mind while the stories of astronauts and outer space exploration washed over him was too much. Harry could see Jonathan, could see the door, he could see Siri. It was… quiet.
“You’ve made a new friend!” Siri said when the diner closed one night and Harry wiped down the counter where the old men always sat. Siri was happy, beaming at Harry with a smile that was almost real.
“I did?” Harry asked.
“Jonathan? Harry.” Siri laughed and that made Harry almost smile for real too. Siri didn’t laugh much, didn’t have reasons to for so long.
“HARRY!” Siri launched herself at Harry and laughed, her laugh filling up the entire Great Hall, while she did a strange hugging sort of dance. “Guess what?”
“Er… Snape’s been fired?” Harry guessed, half of a joke. “Draco’s being expelled? Oh! Are they having Treacle Tart Tuesdays?” he added wistfully.
“Even better!” Siri puffed her chest out and looked so proud of herself that Harry truly couldn’t imagine what had her looking so pleased. Shouldn’t she be upset? Have a month of detentions??
“I’m the new seeker for Gryffindor!”
“You’re - what?!” Harry’s shriek came out louder than he intended and a few girls at the nearby Hufflepuff table giggled at him. Harry resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at them and blushed instead.
“I know!” Siri jumped up and down again, the smile glued to her face seemed permanent. “McGonagall appointed me herself!”
But… but Harry wanted to play quidditch. Flying was brilliant, it was the most fun Harry had ever had in his entire life.
“This is so unfair!” Harry wailed, happy for his sister and heartbroken, truly devastated, for himself. “You broke the rules and got rewarded?”
“I did.” Siri laughed again, knowing that Harry’s pout was mostly faked. “And now we can figure out how to break the rules so you can be Slytherin’s seeker. Potter versus Potter, won’t it be so exciting?”
When Siri laughed again, Harry laughed too. He didn’t think that anything except for a lobotomy would make Professor Snape appoint him on the quidditch team, but Siri was just so happy.
“He comes here every day to hang out with you,” Siri went on, missing the way Harry’s eyes softened every time he saw her smiling. “Is he nice? He doesn’t talk to me.”
“He doesn’t talk to me either,” Harry said. “He reads.”
And sometimes he talked about his school, his classes, little comments about people Harry didn’t know. He mentioned he had a brother once, a younger brother and not a twin. It didn’t seem like he was talking to Harry then, he would just say things out loud.
“Byers is good people,” Benny said, walking in the dining room from the kitchen with his apron balled up in his hands. “Kid picks up shifts here sometimes, helps his mom out with bills.”
“See? A friend!” Siri laughed again, she wasn’t even helping clean anymore, but Harry didn’t mind. She was mostly leaning on a broom and watching Harry.
Theo Nott had been Harry’s friend, that was it. And Harry was fine with it; he could keep his memories of Theo locked away in a safe place in his mind, a place where they wouldn’t be tarnished and destroyed. Siri was the one who had a dozen people trying to be around her, drawn in by her jokes and wit and the easy way she could interact with the others. Harry had just been pleased with his one very best friend.
“Speaking of making friends…” Benny walked around the counter and hauled himself in one of the red tall seats, sending Harry to skirt around on the staff side, beside his sister.
Harry knew that Benny would have demands at some point, he wasn’t letting them sleep in his house and eat his food for free. There were going to be expectations, demands and discipline.
“You two need to get signed up for school,” Benny said. Siri went still beside Harry and he reached for her hand, reached for her, reached out.
“School?” Siri asked, her laughter gone and her voice breathless. “We can’t go to school.”
Did he mean Hogwarts? Did Benny figure it out? Did They call him? Did Siri know that Harry wouldn’t let anyone take her again?
“Legally, you have to,” Benny said. “Kids gotta be enrolled in school and I called the school today, talked to the principal. We can go in tomorrow and talk about it with him or we can call Children’s Services and let them figure it out.”
There was a sharp pain in Harry’s chest, he didn’t know if it was his or Siri’s pain. Harry liked school… he liked Hogwarts. It used to be a trick They would use, saying Harry could go back to Hogwarts if he cooperated with Them.
“We… we could be allowed to go? To school with people our age?” Siri asked Benny. Harry realized that her breathlessness was excitement and not the cold fear that settled deep in Harry’s stomach, freezing his veins and making him feel as if he were in an ice bath again.
Siri squeezed Harry’s hand, trying to give him her warmth in the way she gave him everything of hers. Harry stared at the old framed photographs on the other side of the diner and let Siri have her excitement while he slid inside his mind, away from the fear.
Jonathan told Harry about Guion Bluford. On the 30th of August, not even two months ago, Guion Bluford was the first African-American man launched into space. When Harry was 15 years old, Guion Bluford became a pioneer for ideals of embracing diversity and selecting astronauts on their merits as human beings rather than the color of their skin.
On the 30th of August, Guion Bluford went to space and Harry Potter had been unconscious for a week, recovering from the final experiment that he had been subjected to.
“This is freedom,” Siri whispered to Harry that night when he curled around her and his teeth chattered despite the heavy blankets they shared. “Going to school, Har, blending in. We can’t - we can’t be the town freaks who don’t go to school. Benny said that could lead to people asking questions, questions we can’t answer.”
Harry could hear her, Harry could hear Siri making plans and trying to keep them safe - trying to keep him safe - and he was freezing from the inside out.
“Okay,” he whispered back.
“Har… don’t be like that,” Siri said, she sounded sad. She rolled over on her back, letting Harry curl into her side with his arm over her, making sure nobody could take her.
“You love school,” Siri went on, spinning another story for Harry to try to believe in. “Jonathan will be there, he’s a year ten. And there’s going to be books… so many books, Har. Benny said we’ll learn about math and science, you’ll like science. And there are clubs, normal clubs. We - we have to try, right? We have to try to blend in, try to have a life?” Siri swallowed and Harry’s chest ached, only briefly. “If we don’t then they win, Bubby. They’ll win and we’ll be the losers.”
They already won, surely Siri knew that. They won and Harry lost and Siri lost because Harry couldn’t do anything right. When They came for them, They would prove that they were winners and Harry was nothing, no one, nowhere.
“Clubs? Like quidditch?” Harry asked, gripping Siri tight as he silently slid the safe across the floor, placing it back in front of the door. The dresser went in front of the window, it would wake Harry if it was moved.
Siri loved to play quidditch, it was her favorite thing.
“Probably not that,” Siri said, huffing a laugh in the dark that came out blue, sad, not real. “But - but I think we should. Okay?”
Not okay.
Harry wanted to go home, go to Hogwarts. Harry wanted Hedwig and Theo and his wand. Harry wanted to travel through time and never be taken, never have magic forced through him until his own magic became twisted, warped, wrong. Harry wanted the warm and quiet library full of spellbooks, he wanted his book series that Theo bought him and Harry never got to finish.
Harry didn’t want to go to a non-magical school and he didn’t want to try. Harry wanted to have won when it mattered, it didn’t matter anymore. Not to him.
“Okay,” Harry said, clenching his eyes shut hard.
It didn’t matter to him, it mattered to Siri and she mattered to him.