Embarrassing
Harry knew when he woke up that it would be a bad day. His head hurt, his eyes ached when he opened them. Everything told him it would be a bad day.
Not the worst day, but a bad one.
Siri slept in the bedroom that Hop cleared out for them and Harry was told to sleep on the couch until Hop found them ‘bunk beds’. Harry and Siri didn’t sleep apart, they never had. Maybe - maybe at Hogwarts, but Hogwarts was different - safe.
“You’re fifteen, you can’t share a bed,” Hop had said. And why did that matter? What age did Harry stop needing Siri by him to sleep? Was there a birthday they missed where lines were drawn between them?
Was it embarrassing to share a bed? Was it another thing that students would laugh about and upset Siri over?
Siri didn’t complain, so neither did Harry. He didn’t think she slept much more than he did though.
Jonathan gave them a ride to school and Harry leaned his head against the window, letting the cold glass soothe his headache. Siri was as quiet as Jonathan and Harry knew she didn’t like the silence, was probably only being quiet because he couldn’t stop his headache from hurting her.
If they were twisted together so permanently, why couldn’t they share a bed? Who could Harry ask about that? Not Siri, she would feel like she had to share a bed with Harry, had to be there. She told him she wouldn’t leave, Harry could give her a bed.
If they were in a cage during the birthday when they became too old to share a bed, did it still count? If they missed four birthdays, were they still eleven and everything was okay? If they were eleven, could they sleep in the same bed so Harry could see that Siri was there and she was alive and that had always been enough to push away the nightmares?
Or was that embarrassing?
Harry wished he knew how to not embarrass Siri, how to not embarrass himself. Harry wished someone would tell him how to sleep at night when he was alone and the house creaked and Harry saw Them in every shadow.
If it was all something they taught in school then Harry had been busy dying over and over - over and over and over and over and over - again when it had appeared on a lesson plan.
Everyone else must have known the lesson. It could have been a marker in their makeup that activated when they turned a set age, it was something they were all born with that Harry didn’t have - never had.
Had it always been like that? Had Harry always stood in a crowded parking lot and been the one that others pointed and laughed at? Would it always be?
Harry probably didn’t help himself any, by being himself. It would be easier if he could be someone else - Siri or Theo or Ron Weasley.
Siri liked Ron Weasley, they were best friends. In Harry’s quiet corner where he could curl up and hide, Siri and Ron were always there laughing.
Siri walked to where a fight was happening, Harry followed.
Theo would help a friend up from the ground, Harry gave Steve his hand and he took it.
“Oi!” Harry yelled it before he thought about it, shrank inside when he could feel them all staring. It was the one boy, the one who threw Steve on the ground and had Siri bright red in the face. Harry didn’t know he had the energy to hate someone, but he thought he hated him.
He wasn’t a wizard, he wasn’t looking for answers to questions that should never have been asked. He was someone who threw people to the ground and made others laugh at Harry’s sister.
“Don’t talk to my sister like that.”
It was something about the tone, like the boy was mocking her.
Harry had patted himself on the back, thinking it had been a normal thing to say. It wasn’t embarrassing to Siri, it wasn’t strange and unnerving. The boy had a tone, Harry didn’t want to see Siri hurt.
Then the boy called Harry a dog and he wondered if Ron Weasley said that about one of his many brothers, would someone call him a dog? Would his brothers go chasing after the boy because Ron said the wrong thing and drove them away again?
“He’s a wanker,” Harry said.
Harry, the boy, he wasn’t sure which.
He knew it was going to be a bad day.
Steve walked Harry to his class and Harry sat beside Jonathan, twisted his ankle around Siri’s empty desk. She was late, she was okay. She wasn’t fine, she was okay. She was with the boy because Harry yelled at him, embarrassed Siri, and they were too old to share a bed.
The teacher asked Harry a question he didn’t hear, didn’t know anyway. Jonathan answered instead and Harry slowly let his eyes go unfocused, let them rest while he waited for Siri.
Siri didn’t show up, the entire class.
Jonathan wasn’t in Harry’s next class and Harry settled in a table at the back by himself. Harry liked the second class - it was quiet, the teacher talked for a few minutes then gave them a prompt to write about.
It was easy to write- quiet, peaceful. Harry didn’t have to think about it, he let his hand do the work while his mind went wherever it wanted.
Harry opened his notebook and looked to his right, looked to the empty seat beside him. Harry liked the second class when Siri was there, when Harry could see her, when she would whisper to him what the teacher wrote on the chalkboard in squiggled lines that he couldn’t understand.
Siri’s empty chair. Siri leaving as soon as Harry fell asleep. Siri in another room all night, never telling Harry that it was okay if he didn’t feel old enough to sleep without her.
“Mister Hammond?”
Harry didn’t have the energy to look up at the teacher, knew it was disrespectful and couldn’t care.
“Harry?” The teacher kneeled beside Harry, kept one hand on the table, until she was right in Harry’s face. “Are you feeling alright?” she asked.
Feeling alright? No. Everything ached, he was tired inside and out.
“Yes, ma’am,” Harry said.
“You haven’t started writing yet,” she told him quietly. Nobody was staring at them yet and Harry wished she would go away - move before Harry embarrassed her, himself. “You’re a great writer, Harry. I enjoyed your piece on Tuesday.”
On… Tuesday? Did she - were the notebooks being graded? She had read what Harry wrote down? Harry didn’t know that, he should have expected it. He didn’t have privacy, except in his head.
“I look forward to seeing your take on this prompt,” she said, pushing herself back up to her feet.
“I can’t see it,” Harry blurted, pushing the words out quickly before she was another person disappointed by Harry. Theo would tell her, he wouldn’t want his grades to be hurt because of squiggly lines and sisters who kept leaving.
“You can’t see the prompt?” she asked. “Do you need to move up?”
Harry couldn’t move up because Siri’s notebook for the class was in the back and if she came back she would be in the back and Harry couldn’t be in the front.
“Or I could read it to you,” the teacher offered instead. It was a kind offer, Harry imagined that she was laughing in her head, laughing how Harry’s eyes were too tired to read and he couldn’t do anything right.
The prompt was - a child finds a secret door that leads to a new place. That was it, the entire prompt. Harry was meant to use his imagination to create a story.
Why would the child go through the door? Was the life they had so painful that they decided anything would be better? Was there something they wanted, wanted more than anything, beyond that door? Could they take a friend, their best friend? If the child was tall and the doorway was small, were they still allowed through or were they too old?
Who made the door? Who planted it there for the child to find? If it was a trap, the child shouldn’t go through it. But children didn’t know about traps, they didn’t know that some people sat around and spent their time thinking of the best ways to hurt someone. A child didn’t do that, they spent their time thinking of the best ways to live their life, then they would have a birthday that made them old enough to be cruel, truly cruel.
Harry thought about Hogwarts, he thought about how excited he had been to go there. Hogwarts hadn’t been a trap, it had been an escape. There were things Harry only remembered through Siri’s stories, things he remembered only when he slept - but he knew Hogwarts had been a doorway, then a trap, then a place to escape when everything else was too much.
The classroom door opened and Harry knew it was Siri without looking, he knew how her footsteps sounded and could hear her breathing, knew it better than his own. She sat in her seat and Harry pulled his ankle away from her chair, was grateful when she scooted her chair beside his.
If there was a doorway and the child could take their very best friend with them, they wouldn’t. They would let their friend stay where things were okay and not risk their safety, their happiness, their health, on what could possibly be a trap.
If the child was smart, he wouldn’t go through the door. If the child was Harry, he should go.
Harry went to his third hour class and put his head on his desk, closed his eyes. Nothing in that class made sense, nothing the teacher said and none of the numbers in the textbook. It didn’t want to make sense, it wanted to stay a mystery.
X could find itself, Harry wasn’t responsible for X.
People were talking again and Siri was becoming unhappy, Harry didn’t know how to make it stop. It was different, when they were at Hogwarts. They had less classes together, more time in separate groups. Siri wasn’t always as bundled with Harry, didn’t pay for his mistakes.
When people laughed at Harry at Hogwarts, it didn’t hurt her.
Harry wanted to make an effort in the next class, he told Siri he would try harder and that didn’t mean for one day. Benny was gone, Siri would leave too. She said she wouldn’t, she said she was fine, but Harry knew she was in pain and he wanted it to stop.
Siri was the best person that Harry had ever - or would ever - know. She didn’t deserve to be in pain, she deserved her own bed and a brother who didn’t hold her hand because he forgot to breathe when he got busy thinking about if she was breathing normally or not.
They were baking in their next class. Or preparing to bake, something. They were meant to make a grocery list for their recipe, listing every ingredient they would need and how much it would cost according to the papers their teacher gave them.
“Why do we have to buy a full dozen eggs when we only need two?” Siri flipped through the pages of the paper they had and rolled her eyes. “Our budget is rubbish.”
Budget? Harry must have missed that, missed the budget. He thought he could remember Siri talking about a budget before, about money she was given to buy groceries when they lived in Surrey.
“Maybe we can share shopping lists?” The girl that Siri liked, the one with the red hair and clothes Siri wanted, dragged her chair from her table to drop it at the end of Harry and Siri’s table.
Harry didn’t know if he was hoping Steve would move as well, since he was partners with the girl, or if he wanted him to stay at his table. That was how Harry felt every time he saw Steve, saw him smile and look like someone that people would love- he never knew if he wanted him to be closer or to stay away.
Steve moved his chair over to the table Harry sat at and he was close to Harry, close enough for Harry to see a part of his hair that had been flattened when he was thrown on the ground. Harry wanted to fix it, fix something he couldn’t make worse, but he didn’t.
He wanted to, but he didn’t. He wanted to, but someone knocked on the classroom door and everyone stared at them and Harry’s name was being called.
“Harry Hammond?” The woman who taught the class took a note from the boy who delivered it and made everyone stare at Harry again. “You’re needed in the nurse's office.”
There were ooohs and someone laughed and Harry tried to not trip when he stood up.
“Har?” Siri grabbed Harry’s hand when he walked past her seat and she stared up at him, just as tired as he was but filled with concern. “Are you sick?” she asked quietly.
Sick? No.
Harry shook his head, honestly having no idea why he would be called to the nurse’s office. Harry… Harry didn’t even know where it was.
Harry’s hand shook after Siri released it and he tapped his fingers on his thigh. Where was the nurse? Who was the nurse? Was it a secret door? A trap?
Everyone was staring and it made it hard to speak up, to explain that he didn’t know where the nurse was - who the nurse was - or what he was supposed to do.
Everyone was staring.
“Ms Bowman? Harry’s still new, I can show him where the nurses office is.”
“Hm? Oh, yes, thank you, Steve,” the teacher said.
Harry should say that - Siri would say thank you, Theo would say thank you, Ron would say thank you. Harry wanted to say thank you, he wanted to refuse to go.
“Everyone thinks the nurse is smoking, but she’s nice,” Steve said, his voice flowing through Harry’s head meaninglessly while they walked. Harry tried to pay attention, tried to care if a nurse smoked or not - did that make her more or less trustworthy? Madam Pomfrey didn’t smoke, Benny did. Benny was dead and Madam Pomfrey was at Hogwarts, both out of Harry’s reach.
“Okay,” Harry said.
Steve looked over at Harry and Harry could feel his eyes on him like they weighed more than he did. It wasn’t a punch, it was a heavy and consistent weight. Harry wanted to shrink away, be invisible, and he - he wanted Steve to look at him more.
If Harry wasn’t used to being mental, it would be a concerning way to feel.
“The pep rally was canceled. I guess the school figured it would be kind of morbid since - I mean, you know.”
A pep rally sounded morbid in the first place. Harry had tried to picture it when Steve described it, he tried to picture a room full of teenagers screaming and music playing.
It made his head swim even in his imagination, he didn’t want to experience it outside of there.
Harry nodded, hoping Steve wouldn’t take it personally that he was finished talking. Everything he said made things worse and made Siri walk away. She said she would never be done, but she could change her mind.
And Harry’s head was pounding, his brain was pressing against his eyes and everything ached from a night spent not sleeping on a couch that Harry was old enough to sleep on without his sister.
“I’ll… uh… see you.” Steve opened a door for Harry and there was only one person past the door, the boy from that morning. He had his head tipped back against the wall, his eyes closed.
Harry didn’t blame Steve for not wanting to be alone with him, Harry didn’t want to either. Harry didn’t have a choice, Harry had to walk through doors even if they were traps.
There were three blue plastic chairs and the boy was in the middle one, which meant… meant…
“I don’t bite,” the boy said, not opening his eyes or lifting his head.
Harry wasn’t sure that he didn’t, people lied all the time.
The boy sighed loudly and then scooted over a seat, put himself closer to the door and Harry sat on the edge of the chair by the empty desk. The room was small, crowded.
Was Harry sick? Or did they think he was? Could it be a test? Harry didn’t get the feeling there was any magic around, none of the familiar tingle like he felt in the woods the night before. If it wasn’t Them, Harry was safe enough.
A nurse without magic and a boy with blonde curls and a mocking tone couldn’t hurt Harry, not really.
“Your sister make you come here too?” the boy asked. He wasn’t staring at Harry, Harry didn’t have to answer. Except he said ‘too’ and why would Siri make the boy go to a nurses office?
“No.” Harry’s hands tapped against his legs, the air in the room was warm, uncomfortable.
“Headache?” he asked.
Harry glanced quickly at him, long enough to see the boy wasn’t looking at him. It was a good guess, a good one. Harry touched his head, wondering how he knew that.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. Nobody pushed him to the ground, he was tired and had a headache. It didn’t seem like a reason for him to be in a nurses office. Harry didn’t tell anyone, no one but Siri who wouldn’t need him to say it to know.
“Probably some teacher made a report,” the boy said. “They all think they mean well, right? They don’t know shit, don’t want to know shit.”
Harry didn’t think he knew what the boy meant, but it made his stomach swoop in a sick way, like maybe Harry was sick and didn’t know it. Harry nodded and wrapped an arm around his stomach, pressing hard when he didn’t want to crawl through his own mind, he didn’t trust it sometimes.
Sometimes it was filled with stories Siri told him and Harry didn’t know if he made up the images that flashed with them or not. Some things were solid, safely stored away for only Harry to see and remember. Other things he tried to push to the edges, hoping an earthquake would happen and take them over the edge.
“Harry Hammond?”
Harry jolted at the name that wasn’t his - he wasn’t Hammond, he was Potter, he hated being called the wrong name, it was a skin that didn’t fit him right - and blinked as he took in the woman who said it.
Tall, blonde, probably the nurse.
“Your teacher wants your eyes to be checked,” she told Harry briskly. “Are you having trouble with reading?”
Harry didn’t think so. He didn’t think he couldn’t do something as simple as read. Harry could always read, always liked to read.
Harry and Theo would spend hours and hours in the library. It had been quiet, peaceful. They could have a corner table in the back and nobody bothered them. Harry read just as quickly then as Theo, never with the stabbing headache that appeared when he read for too long lately.
He could read though, he could. He could.
“I know how to read,” Harry said, keeping his words as steady as his breathing. In and out, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t stupid, not when it came to something he had always been able to do. Harry couldn’t remember a time before he could read.
“Okay, just stand up here.” The nurse backed away from the desk, pointed at a white line beside her with the toe of her shoes. Harry shuffled over beside her slowly, unsure and wary on what he was meant to do.
“Look at that poster over there, cover your right eye, read me the line of letters beneath the red line.”
Harry - what? It was across the room, hanging on the wall beside the door. Nobody could read that with both eyes, Harry couldn’t do it with one.
The boy was watching Harry, the nurse was staring. He lifted his hand and pressed against his right eye with it.
It was nothing. It was a fuzzy black line.
“I know how to read,” Harry said again.
“Can you read the line? Take your best guess.”
Harry couldn’t read the line, he could see the boy’s mouth moving, maybe silently sounding out letters. They didn’t seem to spell anything.
“I - dog?” Harry guessed wildly, knowing as soon as he said it that the line wouldn’t spell dog. It was a long line and the other lines, the ones he could see, didn’t even spell any word. “No, I’m sorry. Er…” Four lines up there were five letters and if each line added a letter…
Harry made up nine letters at random, then did it again when she told him to switch eyes.
“Blink a few times, let your vision clear up. Now what’s the furthest line down that you can read without it being fuzzy?”
“The one with the five,” Harry said. He was failing, he knew that. It didn’t matter, Harry used to be smart, professors called him bright. Harry didn’t feel bright, hated that he couldn’t read the poster.
“I see.” The nurse bent over her desk to write something down and the boy shifted, watched her. “When’s the last time you had an eye exam?” she asked Harry.
“If he won’t keep them open, spell them open.”
Harry didn’t know how old he had been so he didn’t answer. Too old to sleep in a bed with his sister, not too old to be in a cage.
“Okay then.” The nurse didn’t seem to like Harry, she shoved him a note quickly, probably wanted him to leave. “Give this to your parents, get an eye exam,” she said.
Harry took the note, stuffed it in his pocket without looking at it. Harry didn’t have parents to give a note to, he had Siri.
“Pretty sure his parents are dead, that makes it hard to pass along notes, doesn’t it?”
Harry didn’t hear what the nurse mumbled, didn’t understand why she snapped at the boy to “Get back to class and be more careful.” Harry was only relieved when he was also pointed toward the door, told to leave.
The boy lunged for the door before Harry got to it then held it open. Harry slowed a step, he didn’t much want shoved to floor or mocked. The boy didn’t do that though, he held the door then fell in step beside Harry in the corridors that Harry hadn’t memorized the layout of.
“Bell’s about to ring, you might as well go to lunch,” the boy said. He didn’t sound as mocking then, Harry didn’t think. Harry wondered why Siri had followed him that morning, wondered if he had a reason to shove Steve to the ground or if he was just angry.
Siri must like him if she made him go to the nurse, if she left Harry behind to chase after him.
“I eat in the library,” Harry said, like Siri would. She would make herself talk, carry on a conversation. If the boy mentioned lunch, Harry mentioned lunch. It wasn’t hard, just tiring.
“Yeah?” The boy lifted an eyebrow at Harry, not the one over his bruised eye. It looked like it might have hurt, might have made him angry.
The boy seemed strong, strong enough to throw Steve around. It meant the bruise was made by someone stronger, strong enough to throw him around and hit him.
It probably wasn’t Steve, Harry didn’t think he seemed like he would punch someone in the face. And the boy had thrown Steve on the ground, flattened his hair in the back. Probably embarrassed him.
“Come sit with me,” the boy said suddenly, catching Harry off-guard.
“Why?” Harry asked, probably the wrong answer. It didn’t make sense though, they weren’t friends, Harry didn’t like him. Siri did, but - but Harry didn’t have to like everything Siri did.
“Because your sister will sit with us and it’ll piss off Steve,” the boy said.
That… wasn’t a good answer, but it was an answer. Harry didn’t want to ‘piss Steve off’, but he didn’t want Siri to leave him behind again either.
Harry followed the boy through a line in a cafeteria, heard a woman handing out trays of food call him ‘Billy’. There were a lot of tables in the room, a lot of open seats. Billy had a table in the corner, he took the seat that Harry wanted - the one that would show him the door.
Billy was quiet then, stiff. It was probably Harry making him uncomfortable, Harry who wouldn’t quit looking at the bruise on his face and feeling sick when he saw it. It probably hurt, Harry thought he could remember having a bruise on his face and it hurting.
That might have been something Siri said though because Harry didn’t see himself when he was with Them, only ever flashes in reflective surfaces.
“Quit staring at me,” Billy snapped. His voice echoed in the cafeteria and Harry looked away immediately, watched the door for his sister.
There was food on the trays they both had and Harry wasn’t hungry, though he thought he should eat. He didn’t remember the last thing he ate - couldn’t remember much of anything before he laid on a couch and never got comfortable, never enough to sneak away from his thoughts to sleep.
Harry probably could have fallen asleep at the table if Siri were there and a bell didn’t suddenly ring. Harry twitched, he hated the sharp ringing bell that ended and began each class. Billy’s pinky finger jerked on the table, tapped the tabletop.
Theo did that, he didn’t like loud noises. It was loud in his house, because of his father, that was all he had said once. He liked to read in the library where it was against the rules to be noisy and Harry felt the same way. Not Siri, Siri didn’t like quiet or dark places.
“Who bruised your face?” Harry asked Billy. He wasn’t loud, he watched the rush of students running in the cafeteria and searched through them for his sister. Siri might not know Harry was in the cafeteria, Harry couldn’t remember if they walked to the library when Jonathan wasn’t there or not.
“Have you or your sister ever tried minding your own fucking business?”
Harry had always tried to mind his own business, except Siri was his business. And Siri made Billy her business and Billy had a bruise on his face and his finger twitched. He didn’t look like Theo, not of the way Harry remembered Theo being, but he made Harry think of Theo anyway.
“Right,” Harry said. The tightness in the muscles of his chest were loosened when he saw Siri walk quickly in the cafeteria, her eyes roaming until they zeroed in on Harry.
Then Siri saw who Harry was sitting with and she tilted her head to the side, quirked her lips up in a small smile.
Because Siri liked Billy and would sit there with Billy - with Harry.
Steve and Jonathan did not. They sat at a different table, as far from where Harry was as it seemed possible.
And people stared. They stared and they yelled and Harry could see where Steve and Jonathan sat and saw that they weren’t talking and if his foot wasn’t pressed against Siri’s under the table then he might have moved to that corner of the cafeteria.
It had been a bad day and Harry didn’t think it would get any better. As soon as school ended he was meant to walk through the woods, search for Jonathan’s brother. Harry wanted to find Will, he did. Jonathan said he was Harry’s friend and his brother was missing.
Harry wanted to find Will and he wanted to not be the age where he couldn’t sleep in a bed with Siri and he wanted his headache to go away.
He knew when he woke up that it was going to be a bad day.