About Forgiveness
The side of his face is hurting, and he’s limping very resolutely, although that hurts, too.
Come to think of it, everything aches quite a bit.
Vernon had managed to get a few good ones in this time. And then, an owl had flown right through the kitchen window, and Vernon had become very distracted cursing the “bloody birds”.
The letter it had carried is a crumpled piece of parchment in Harry’s left hand, and he holds his wand in a vice grip in his other. He wishes he might somehow cry. Harry begs he could, but his eyes feel as dry as his throat. After what feels like ages, he sits down in that very same spot of the park that had been a small, shaded oasis that afternoon. The evening air is blessedly cool on his skin, the grass under his fingers dry and soft. He’s been expelled. They were going to snap his wand.
His window upstairs is always cracked open, and he knows Hedwig had slept in her cage at noon. He wishes she might join him. As if she can read his thoughts, she does only a few minutes later.
Harry had been stupid to run. Certainly, Vernon would have taken him to death’s doorstep, but he doesn’t have anything of worth, and he’s in so much pain. Also, Harry sincerely wishes for a pen and maybe a piece of fresh paper. He starts rummaging through his pockets but only finds a crumpled piece of Dumbledore, which has something which resembles specks of blood on it. He also finds a very sad-looking article he’d ripped out from the Daily Prophet, which he’d only saved because it didn’t talk about the liar Harry Potter but precisely because it was about something as mundane as a quidditch match.
Harry looks over the expulsion letter again, as if willing it to come to use. He needs to get away from Surrey. Tonight.
Harry doesn’t have a clue what the time might be, as his watch had broken during the tournament, but his expulsion letter claims the time had been nine twenty-three PM when he’d cast the Patronus, so he wouldn’t be surprised if it was nearing eleven by this point. Perhaps one of the watchers Mrs Figg claimed was supposed to be stationed at Privet Drive would find him? Maybe Dumbledore could somehow know he’d left Number 4?
But no, Harry doesn’t dare make a bet on it. He needs to get a letter or something out to someone as quickly as possible.
Harry thinks long and hard, but nothing comes to him. Looking through his pockets again, he finds nothing of interest. As he glances down, something catches his eye. His shirt, which had been perfectly white this morning, is now stained a dark shade of rust from Vernon’s repeated strikes at his face earlier in the day. Harry has a sudden thought. It’s a wholeheartedly stupid, unpleasant idea. He thinks it over for another minute, thinks better of it, but then rethinks again. Yes, it will do. It will surely get someone out here. Hopefully.
Trying to rip at the collar while the shirt is still on turns out to be more work than it’s worth, so Harry shimmies out of the unbuttoned, thin plaid shirt he wears over the top of it and then wrenches the T-shirt off. He knows he’d been in pain, but he still finds himself surprised with how large the already-forming bruises appear to be.
After much difficulty, involving teeth, hands and even Hedwig’s break, he’s ripped a good size of the shirt apart. For some reason, he finds that perhaps sending the whole shirt might be overkill. Besides, he wants Hedwig to carry just one other thing and doesn’t want to risk her dropping it if the shirt starts whipping about her head.
Looking over the expulsion letter again, he rips it up into several uneven pieces until he has a little paper that says "Disciplinary he-” Folding the little piece of paper within the blood-splattered fabric, he gives it to Hedwig, who securely clasps the bundle in one of her clawed feet. Harry grabs his plaid button-up and forces it back on. His hands are shaking something terrible for some reason, and he gets through two buttons across the middle of his chest before he tires of the endeavour.
“Don’t drop it”, he says, looking at Hedwig as though she is his last definitive hope because she likely might be. “Deliver it to Sirius. You must. Do you understand? We need to get someone out to Privet Drive.” Hedwig looks at him with her undoubtedly wise, sandy eyes before she makes a swift kick-off with the help of Harry’s arm. Harry looks after her until he can no longer distinguish her bright form from the wispy clouds in the night.
—
Harry awakes in the dewy grass with a start. Someone is shaking his arm. Harry’s freezing and the hand touching him is cold through the fabric. He turns his face around from where it’d been planted in the grass and distinguishes dark curtains of hair through bleary eyes and cracked glasses. It’s Severus Snape.
“Potter, you need to get up. Half the Order’s looking for you. We need to get back.” He sounds stern. His voice carries a note that seems almost angry.
Harry instinctively recoils and then groans when the ache in his ribs spikes up through his shoulder blade. Still, he grits his teeth and manages a glower up at Snape.
“Potter, did you hear what I said?” Snape asks, but some of the bite in his voice seems to leave him as he gets a good look at Harry’s face. He’s staring at him, but the look in his eyes seems very different than the one Harry is used to. Something in his expression looks almost placating.
Harry settles for glowering.
“We’re going back. Sirius is there, and Arthur too.”
Harry has to think for a second, then remembers that Arthur is indeed the name of Mr. Weasley. Harry still doesn’t trust Snape, but as he thinks about it, he realises he doesn’t have many options. So, Harry nods absentmindedly and does his best to sit up. When Snape crouches to put a hand behind his back, Harry flinches again. A great pain goes through his neck as he does so.
“Sorry”, Snape says, and Harry stares at him. He can’t remember Snape ever saying sorry, not for as long as he’s known him. “We’re going to apparate. It might be unpleasant.”
When Snape makes a show of hauling Harry onto his feet with a hand on his upper arm, Harry doesn’t flinch.
Then, there is a crack, and Harry feels as though he is being crammed through a very tight, revolving cylinder. Just as suddenly as it’s started, it stops, and Harry lands badly on his hurting left ankle, tumbles over what he thinks might be pavement, and dry heaves to the side. When he’s finished, Snape hauls him on his feet again. He stuffs something under Harry’s nose, and as his eyes refocus, he can see it reading;
“The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is found at Grimmauld Place Number 12 in London.”
“Read it well,” Snape orders, “Put it to memory.”
Once Harry has given the tiniest of nods, which feels more like a slight jerk, Snape rips it from his hand and puts it aflame with a flick of his wand. “Let’s get going,” Snape says, grabs Harry’s arm to rest it over his shoulder and leads Harry with a slow pace up the steps that have seemingly appeared out of thin air.
What greets them on the other side of the door is a flurry of soft noise which whips about Harry as a slight wave. The dim hallway, which is long and narrow, with a tall ceiling and crumbling wallpapers, seems to fill with people who are all shout-whispering. Mrs Weasley starts shoving herself through the bottleneck of people forming in the spindly walkway and makes to stop two feet from them both.
“Oh, Harry.” She reaches out and touches a soft, blessedly warm thumb to his cheek. She looks like she might burst into tears.
“We need to clear the hallway out”, she tells the flurry of people trapping them in the doorway.
Harry can see the very top of a head far at the other end, which seems to contain a very wild, bushy mane over it, and smiles to himself. Sirius.
“I said we need to clear out”, and Harry sees Lupin standing right behind Molly, starting to usher people away into another room further down. Snape and Harry are shuffling through the foyer into a cramped, dreary room which resembles a kitchen or perhaps an informal dining room. Snape stops just in the doorway, looking back into the landing of the stairs, where a tall, slightly balding red-haired man stands.
“Arthur, send out a Patronus that we’ve located the boy. I found it prudent to get him here as soon as possible”.
“Of course, Severus.”
If Arthur does send a Patronus, Harry never sees its light, for he’d already been dumped at a chair by Snape.
Sirius and Molly are instantly upon him.
“Oh darling”, Molly croaks, looking at his neck, which had, to Harry’s chagrin at this precise moment, turned a very dark, stormy colour over the last few days. Sirius, who now crouches down, absentmindedly patting Harry gently on the knee, is looking to the side with such pain in his expression that Harry can feel his eyes start to burn.
“Lumos maxima.” Severus sends the little ball of light into the middle of the room, where it hangs like a very avant-garde chandelier. He is also looking at Harry, but he has an unreadable, calculated expression Harry finds he can bear.
“Does anything seem broken, Potter?”
“I don’t think- Don’t know, sir.”
Snape nods, then shuffles Molly over to the side. He bends down and prods hard at Harry’s hurting ankle, who responds with an undignified splutter.
“Probably a bad sprain.”
When Snape reaches up to prod at the dark bruises around his midsection, Harry feels he has to put his foot down.
“Ow! Stop that!”
“I’m just checking your injuries, Potter. Stop being so difficult!”
Harry swats at Snape again. “But I’m fine!”
“You-” Snape begins, eyes dark as he looks at a spot on his forehead, which Harry has a sneaking suspicion has something to do with this terrible headache he senses distantly. “Are not ‘fine’ as you say it.”
Harry glowers. “But why does it have to be you?! Why couldn’t it be Lupin, or Mrs Weasley, or-”
Snape takes an awfully sudden grip on his shoulder, and Harry flinches so hard he is sure he would’ve fallen off his chair if not for Sirius, whose steady hand has been testing over his lower back.
Snape lets go as if burned, a very knowing look in his eyes. It is a look that Harry decidedly does not like.
“Because, Harry,” Snape’s voice is suddenly very low, almost soft. Only Snape is never soft. And he never calls Harry by his first name, either. “I’m the best healer around. We need to look you over.”
But Snape apparently leaves the subject for now. Instead, his eyes turn to Sirius’. “We should move him to the sofa. It’d be better to examine him there.”
And so, Harry is hauled onto his feet yet again, this time by Sirius, as they hobble in a terribly awful rendition of the conga through another doorway into a dreadful sitting room, which smells faintly of mothballs and something resembling the Potions Classroom at Hogwarts. They make him lie down on the sofa in front of the crumbling hearth, and Harry is back to protesting Snape's every action.
“Please don’t fight me, Potter. It’s going to have to be done, either way.”
Harry sighs. He indeed feels a bit tired of being constantly bitter, so he resigns to looking at anything but Snape, suddenly closer to tears than ever. He decides to look back at Molly, who stands near the doorway into the room, and she nears him immediately when their eyes meet.
“Do you need anything, Harry?” She bends over the back of the sofa to brush his fringe to the side.
Harry leans into the touch. Her hand is much warmer than the room.
Harry wets his lips as he thinks. “I’m thirsty,” he says and finds himself startled by the tremor that has taken to his voice now that the fight has died within him. Molly turns on the spot, and Harry regrets having said anything because he already misses the touch of her hand.
But there is another, more calloused hand, reaching over to rub a gentle thumb into the hollow of his collarbone. Harry whips his head around, ignoring the sharp twinge, and sees Sirius seated atop the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“Sirius”, he croaks, mortified at how thick his voice suddenly is.
“Hi, pup.” Sirius’ smile is sad, and Harry thinks he knows why. “How are you feeling?”
Harry looks up at the dark ceiling. It is all intricate carvings, which flow into a circular design at the centre that frames the grimy, silver chandelier. “Cold”, he says, which is true but doesn’t seem quite like the right words to describe what he’s experiencing. “In pain.”
Harry thinks Sirius might have seen something in him at that instance because his lips turn downwards, and he says, “I know,” very, very softly.
Molly returns, carrying a tray with steaming cups and a big glass of water, gently tapping the door into the room as she passes. She starts handing the cups out to both the men, and Sirius, who has stood up, reaches behind Harry to prop his head up while Harry grabs the glass with trembling, stiff fingers. Snape, who by this point seems done with poking and prodding at Harry, takes out his wand and waves it at him. The action makes Harry nearly drop his glass and causes big pools of it to splash all over his now bare front, but he only feels a tingling warmth spread from the crown of his head through the tips of his toes at the spell Snape casts. It’s almost pleasant. A parchment curls out from the tip of Snape’s wand, the length of Harry’s leg, but Snape only gives it a passing glance, his lips in a painfully thin, strained line. It reminds Harry alarmingly of Petunia. Something unpleasant begins to curdle in his stomach at the expression.
“I need to go collect some things from my laboratory. I will be back shortly”, Snape says to Molly, who pays him no mind as she is deeply preoccupied with gently sopping up water from Harry’s front.
Snape steps around the coffee table, reaching the seriously questionable hearth, and he mumbles something that sounds like “Spinner’s end”. The light of the green flames reflects onto the walls, and Harry chases some imaginary warmth from its remnants.
Harry looks to the side at his Godfather and finds something hidden deep within himself, only for a short while. All the anger at the Weasleys, at Sirius, at Lupin and Dumbledore appears to have disappeared, at least momentarily. Instead, he finds a hollow dread at the situation and yet a longing for anything that might give him a sense of comfort.
He feels his eyes beginning to brim and turns his face around into the back of the sofa, forcing himself to stifle the sob. He doesn’t think he manages particularly well because Sirius starts rubbing his back, and Molly plants herself at the end of the sofa by his feet.
Still, he feels a small comfort at being with them instead of with the Dursleys, where he’d be stuck in the bedroom. Harry works very hard at trying to steady his breathing. Crying really wouldn’t solve anything. The scratchy fabric of the musty couch prickles against his skin, and the frame of his glasses pokes unpleasantly into a sore spot atop his cheekbone. He should be happy, and he feels a strange sort of guilt at the fact that he's not.
Sirius starts muttering in a subdued voice to Mrs Weasley. “He’s so thin, Molly. I can’t believe it was only been a little over a month since I saw him.”
Right. Sirius had visited him during his infirmary stay at the end of last year. He’d been in his dog shape. It’d been just after the third task, after the maze, after Cedric-
“He is right here”, Harry blurts out, whipping around on the sofa and forcing himself to sit, injuries be damned.
“Harry!” Mrs Weasley is trying to coax him back down. Harry ignores her.
“Didn’t I beg you to take me back the moment I got into Hogwarts? Didn’t I beg this whole month?” Harry’s anger is back in full force. Sirius doesn’t get to sit here and try to console him, pity him.
“Didn’t I? I’m not just some dog you can leave at the pound for a month and decide to take care of whenever it pleases you!”
Harry breathes. Hard. He realised he’s started crying again, and he yanks off his glasses with familiar vehemence and wipes furiously at his face with his frayed sleeve.
Then there’s a hand on his arm again, and Harry wrenches back. Any second now, he will feel a hand in his hair, pulling him back. Uncle Vernon hates it when he shouts, and any distant hope of a meal will be gone, and he’ll be forced to -
“Harry,” The voice is feminine, warm and uncertain, so small Harry isn’t sure he ever really heard it. He hunches down further. “Look at me, please.”
The voice he hears sounds right, and Harry gathers his strength and lowers his arm just the slightest. He sees a blurry figure, which he knows to be Mrs Weasley.
“I know, Harry.” She says, “We’re so sorry.”
She does indeed sound sorry. She does truly appear to be sad. That, too, makes Harry very angry.
“You don’t get to be sorry.” He feels the venom in his voice. “I hate this, hate all of this. Get out!” Harry knows he’s having a child-like tantrum, but he’s come to hate everything, and it's come with a force so immediate yet expected. He hates them for leaving him. For suddenly deciding he is worth rescuing only when they see the bloody piece of cloth that he's sent them through the desperate post. His blood. He feels angry for even having to stoop that low to begin with.
Neither of them move. “I said, get out!” It takes all of his willpower not to hit anything, not to break the cups and the glass or topple the table.
Seconds pass, and then Mrs Weasley stands up very slowly. Sirius follows after her after a long moment of deliberation.