Always More Dishes
Harry Potter was a quiet boy. Not by nature. But by instruction.
Were he to have been nurtured by those who had given him life, he’d have been a loud boy. Rambunctious and adventurous. The sort of boy to always have a dazzling smile and searching eyes.
Instead he was raised, if one could call it that, by the last remnants of his family. An aunt who would never see anything more in him than something she would never have. An uncle who saw a freak. A threat to his picture perfect life. And a cousin who thought he was his own personal punching bag.
“Finish the lunch dishes, Boy, and then outside with you,” his Aunt Petunia orders after a particularly awful Saturday luncheon.
Harry had asked for another sausage, not realising it was the last one on the plate.
Dudley had thrown an awful temper tantrum, eaten the sausage, and kicked Harry’s leg beneath the table.
To top it all off, Uncle Vernon had clipped him round the ear.
He’d then offered to take Dudley to the arcade.
“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” Harry replies, stepping up onto the foot high stool in front of the sink.
Reaching in, he grabs up the sponge and a plate and sets to work.
Dishes are the worst part of Harry’s day. Over and over and over again. He struggles to keep the sleeves of his too-large shirt out of the water and the damp feel against his skin is awful. It makes him want to remove the offending article entirely.
Still, it is an unusually warm fall day and he does not want to spend the whole day outside, burning his skin. Perhaps he could ask Aunt Petunia if he could clean the floors instead of washing the car.
Suddenly the doorbell rings, but Harry ignores it. He watches in the reflection of the window as his aunt huffs and turns from the kitchen.
Clearly, she was not expecting anyone.
Harry runs water over the serving plate in his hand and lets the hot water warm his hands. He’s only permitted to use hot water when cleaning the dishes.
“Is he here?” A loud voice comes from the front door and Harry turns, curious.
His aunt’s high pitched voice responds but he can’t quite make out what she is saying.
Harry Potter’s curiosity gets the better of him. He switches off the water and sets down the sponge in his hand.
Climbing down, he crosses towards the door and walks around the corner, surprised to find two men still standing in the doorway.
“Harry!” The taller of the two men calls out, smiling brightly.
Shock appears on Harry’s face and he wonders how the man knows his name.
“Back in the kitchen, Boy!” Aunt Petunia shrieks, stepping between the unknown visitors and him.
Not wanting to get in any more trouble, Harry does as he is told, but he tries to remember if he’s seen either man before.
The taller one would have been unforgettable. His sandy hair and soft eyes were contrasted by long scars along his face and neck. Even still, he seemed nice.
The shorter, though not by very much, had black hair nearly the same shade as his own and perfect porcelain skin.
Not recalling either’s appearance in the past, Harry climbs back atop the stool and turns the faucet back on.
Curious still, he cranes to hear the conversation in the hall.
He gets bits and pieces but he is surprised when the tall man walks through the kitchen doorway, looking around like a mad man.
When he spots young Harry, the boy drops the sponge, splashing water up his arms and onto his chest.
“Harry,” the man repeats, softer this time.
He doesn’t know what to do.
“Hello,” he says dumbly.
The tall man comes closer and Harry has a flash of fear. Had someone reported him to the police for all the freaky stuff he’d done? Would this man hurt him?
“Why don’t you let me do that,” the man says, pointing towards the sink.
Blinking, Harry has to take a moment to figure out what the man means.
Surely he wasn’t trying to do Harry’s chores for him?
Harry nods, not wanting to oppose an adult, and steps down.
“Sirius is going to talk to your aunt for a bit. You can dry,” the man says, pointing towards the towel hanging on the stove.
Sirius? Harry had never heard of someone called that before. What a strange name.
Still, he takes the towel and does as he is told. He is excellent at following instructions.
“I’m Remus,” the stranger says, and Harry tries to decide which man’s name is stranger.
Harry doesn’t say anything, not sure what is happening.
“I was a friend of your parents,” Remus says, scrubbing in smooth circles at a plate covered in ketchup.
Dudley had squeezed out more than half of the bottle.
“My parents?” Harry says to himself more than the man.
He was never allowed to ask about them. His aunt and uncle made comments regarding them every once in a while. Nasty things Harry had no interest in hearing.
“At school,” the man nods, a soft smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
The second man, Sirius, appears in the doorway, Aunt Petunia right behind him.
“Come on, we’re leaving,” Sirius announces to the room, looking first at Remus and then Harry.
Already? Harry had so many questions. He’d already begun to hope that perhaps Remus had a picture of his mum and dad.
“What?” Remus asks, shutting off the water and setting down the plate he’d been washing in the drying rack.
Harry takes it and begins to dry it, feeling his aunt’s stare.
“He’s not staying here, Moony,” Sirius says, shooting a terrifying glare at his aunt.
Aunt Petunia merely lifts her chin a fraction, giving off her cool air of nonchalance.
“We can’t just take him, Sirius Black,” Remus scolds the other man. It very nearly makes Harry smile. He’s been scolded quite a bit, but it never had the edge of care Remus’s tone carries. Clearly he isn’t actually angry at the man called Sirius.
“He sleeps in a cupboard for Merlin’s sake!”
Harry looks at his feet, a bit embarrassed.
He didn’t like anyone to know that.
“What?” Remus asks, glancing down at the boy beside him.
Harry doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t look up either.
Remus kneels beside him.
“Harry? Do you like living with your aunt and uncle?” he asks.
It’s a trick question. He knows them very well. Except this man seems like he really wants to know. And he washed the dishes. And he called him by his name.
And he said he knew his parents.
“Mostly,” Harry shrugs, hoping the man can read more of his thoughts from the single word.
“A cupboard, Moony!”
“Padfoot, shush,” Remus lifts a hand to the other man. “Harry, Sirius and I would like to have you come live with us, if you like?”
His whole world sort of tilts. This doesn’t make any sense. He’s never met these men before. At least not that he remembers. Why would they want him to live with them?
Harry looks at his aunt, expecting her to object. To tell them that they can’t have him.
She doesn’t say a word.
Hurt, Harry looks at the drying bits of water on his shirt and then back at the man who had been so very kind to him. The man that knew his parents. It might be entirely daft, but he wants to go with him.
“Yes, please,” he nods, half sure that he’s lost his mind.
“Excellent, come on then,” Sirius waves from the door, seeming a bit impatient.
Harry wonders if perhaps this man is like Uncle Vernon. Short tempered and mean.
Though he could deal with that, so long as the nice man told him about his parents.
“Sirius,” Remus chides again and this time Harry does smile.
Remus stands up and asks Aunt Petunia more than Harry, “Where are his things?”
He then pulls a long thin stick from his pocket. It seems carved in some sort of way, but Harry can’t see much more of it before the tall man is walking away.
Harry follows them out into the hall, where all three adults are stopped in front of the cupboard. He knows there isn’t much inside, but it is the only space in the house that is entirely his.
“It’s all in there,” his aunt says.
“Harry, is there anything you’d like to take?” Remus asks, frowning at the bare shelves and thin bedding.
Before Aunt Petunia can stop him, Harry dashes into the cupboard, retrieving a small figurine of a knight on horseback, holding it to his chest. He’d taken it from Dudley’s second bedroom a few months earlier. One of the legs had broken the first time Dudley played with it and he’d discarded it. It was rubbish to everyone else but Harry. He’d spent hours in his cupboard making up tales of the brave knight and his noble steed.
After a beat, the black haired man with the temper asks, “Is that it?”
Harry nods before remembering himself and saying politely, “Yes, Sir.”
He watches in interest as Remus places the long stick back in his jacket pocket.
“He told me I had to let him live here. That his life was in danger,” Aunt Petunia says, as though mentioning the weather forecast. Harry doesn’t quite understand what it means.
“You haven’t protected him,” Sirius growls. “We will.”
“Come on,” Remus says, holding his hand out. Harry takes it and they walk out of 4 Privet Drive.
Neither Harry nor Petunia say goodbye to each other.
In fact, when Harry looks back on the moment that he left the Dursleys house, he thinks about how odd it was that he hadn’t said goodbye to any of his family. Eventually he realises that it was probably because he didn’t really believe that it was goodbye. That he really was being saved by the two men with very strange names.
When they reach the end of the drive, Remus points to a motor car, just a couple lengths down.
“That’s us, Harry.”
He walks with them, glancing up at Sirius and wondering why he’s got a silver hoop in one ear and not the other.
Remus helps Harry into the car, an old Ford of some kind, even going so far as to strapping the seatbelt across his lap.
“Thank you,” Harry says.
“You’re welcome, Harry,” Remus smiles.
Then, much to his surprise, the black haired man climbs into the backseat and straps in, right next to Harry.
“What am I, your chauffeur?” Remus asks when he gets into the driver’s seat.
“Yes, though you are lacking the proper hat,” Sirius says, now removing his own stick from his pocket and pointing it like a conductor’s stick at the man in the front seat.
Before Harry’s own eyes, a shining black cap appears on Remus’s head, like Harry had once seen on the television.
“Whoa,” he exhales, not sure what has happened.
“Oh sorry, Harry,” Sirius says. “Suppose you aren’t used to other people doing magic around you.”
“Magic?” Harry asks, though he can already remember all of the strange things he’d done. Most recently flooding the bath after his aunt had filled it with cold water instead of warm.
For a moment, Harry feels afraid of the man’s reaction.
“They didn’t tell you that either?” he asks, incredulous.
“Sirius, let’s just assume he doesn’t know anything,” Remus says, setting the car in motion.
“I know a bit,” Harry defends himself.
Sure, he didn’t have the best grades in school but that was more because he was afraid of doing better than Dudley and getting in trouble for it.
“Magic is real, Harry. Tell me, have you ever done anything out of the ordinary? Anything you couldn’t explain?”
Harry nods, thinking of the day he’d escaped Dudley’s gang.
“You have magic.”
Uncle Vernon hated that word. Hated anything freaky. Anything that was out of the ordinary. Anything to do with Harry really.
Still, a flutter erupts in Harry’s stomach as he remembers all of the times his hair had grown back overnight. All of the times his dreams had been filled with something more than a car crash.
“Magic. It killed my parents, didn’t it?” He asks.
Sirius and Remus both seem shocked by his question and for a moment he curls into himself, afraid.
He shouldn’t have asked. He should have just waited for them to finish telling them whatever they had decided he was allowed to know.
“Sort of,” Remus exhales.
Sirius sends him another glare and Harry tries to slow his heart.
Another thing that he could sometimes do.
“We can talk more about it when we get home, alright Prongslet?” Sirius asks.
Harry nods, suddenly abashed.
He shouldn’t have spoken up like that. He should keep quiet, and stay out of the way.
Remus sets the car in motion and Harry settles in, looking out the window and watching as Little Whinging rolls bye.
For the first time, he rides in the car without worrying about Dudley punching him or pushing his face into the glass.
It takes a while, but once they are on the smooth motorway, Harry falls asleep, leaning against his godfather.