Freedom and Captivity
A sharp crack, a cascade of glass, a wince and a nervous glance towards the living room door. That was what had started it. It was the first glass he’d smashed that summer, and yet it was the only one that Vernon hadn’t heard him smash. The most recent one had seen him confined to his new bedroom (Dudley’s second room, as his howling had reminded Harry) for three days, meals (if you could call scraps that) being posted through the flap in his door. He had at least been able to let Hedwig out, since the Weasleys had managed to pull the bars off his window that summer when they’d broken him out. And he’d had access to writing letters to his friends and Sirius, so he’d been able to ask Hermione what she thought of the fact that he’d smashed 5 glasses that summer.
She’d written back almost immediately, assuring him that it was probably just his magic going a little haywire now that he was away from the castle, which Harry thought was an odd reply but put it down to her being busy with her family. However, a letter from Gringotts later in the summer holiday put him on edge again. Written by a Goblin called Banlok, the letter was written to Harry asking him to come into the bank as soon as he could as there were a number of issues they wanted to go over with him.
Assuming he’d have to leave it until the day when his aunt and uncle dropped him back with the Weasleys to do his school shopping (which, Harry remembered morosely, wasn’t until the end of August. And although that was only a week or so away, it still felt a dreadfully long way away), he’d written back to Banlok to ask if there was a way to get him out of Privet Drive before then. The Goblins had somehow managed to reach out to someone they trusted, and Severus Snape had turned up at the door of 4 Privet Drive the next day. Petunia had screamed at him for at least 10 minutes whilst Harry scrambled to pull his things into his trunk, telling Hedwig to find him wherever Snape took him. She’d nipped his finger affectionately before flying out of the open window as he piled all of his things into the trunk, sitting on it to close it.
Snape had given him a scathing glare as he’d walked down the stairs, bashing both sides of the wall with the trunk. It, along with Hedwig’s cage, had been shrunk and Harry had pocketed them. “It was lovely to see you as ever, Tuney. He’ll be back at some point next year, I have no qualms about that.” And with that, Snape had stuck his nose in the air, grabbing Harry by the arm and slamming the door shut behind them. They’d Apparated to a street Harry hadn’t recognised and Snape had shoved a piece of parchment into his hand that read ‘12 Grimmauld Place. Commit to memory and burn.’ He’d then watched as the street had squeezed and squashed, pushing itself apart to open up a whole new house.
“You are to go straight upstairs. Do not dawdle on the stairs, do not stop to talk to your little friends. Straight upstairs. Am I understood, Potter?” Snape had sneered down at him. “Yes Professor.” Snape had shoved him through the door and Harry had started making his way upstairs as the man had swept along the corridor, his cloak billowing out behind him.
Two heads popped out of one of the doors upstairs, giving him a small heart attack, as Fred and George grinned over the bannister at him.
“Ah, Harry,”
“So lovely to see you! Now, come with us-”
“We’ve got so much to catch you up on!”
Harry groaned as each of the twins grabbed one of his arms, guiding him upstairs to a room covered in posters of people Harry assumed to be music stars.
“Now then Harry, don’t groan.”
“Yes, Harry, you of all people should know that we’re not people to be groaned at.”
“You’re not the one who’s been stuck in this-”
“This shithole, shall we say?”
“Yes, this shithole, all summer.”
“Can one of you do me a favour and unshrink my trunk and Hedwig’s cage?” The twins seemed to have some kind of silent debate and one of them (George, Harry thought vaguely) took out his wand and pointed it towards the items that Harry had placed on the floor. They unshrunk before him, and Harry took that as an opportunity to sort his things out whilst they talked at him.
“You two can carry on, I just want to sort out my stuff. Didn’t have time to properly sort it earlier, Snape just got me out the house.”
“Well then Harry, what do you want to know?”
“Where are we, what is this house, and what the hell is Dumbledore playing at leaving me with the Dursleys again? We all know that Voldemort’s back! Leaving me there was his worst possible idea!”
“Well little Harry, this is Number 12, Grimmauld Place.”
“It was Sirius’ place when he was younger, but he refuses to call it his. Says it’s only his because his precious little brother died and it therefore went to him.”
“Mum and Dad brought us here at the beginning of the summer-”
“Said Dumbledore had said it was the safest place for us-”
“Not sure why it wasn’t safe for us at home given we’re not the ones being attacked at home-”
“So here we are. The Order have their meetings here.”
“Do you even know about the Order?”
Harry shook his head. He’d been told very little by those he’d been in contact with. He’d not even thought to get in touch with the twins, although given they were seemingly about to tell him everything he’d missed, he was starting to regret that. The twins began to explain the Order to him, but all Harry could feel was the anger building up inside him, that he’d been left in the dark for the last 6 weeks by himself. Fred was in the middle of a sentence about the Order meetings when he cracked. The light fitting on the wall went first, exploding in a sharp crack that plunged the room into darkness and the bed shuddered beneath the magic that was exploding out of Harry, sparks flicking from his hands.
"SO YOU HAVEN'T BEEN IN THE ORDER MEETINGS, BIG DEAL! YOU'VE STILL BEEN HERE, HAVEN'T YOU? YOU'VE STILL BEEN TOGETHER! ME, I'VE BEEN STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS' FOR A MONTH! AND I'VE HANDLED MORE THAN ALL OF YOU HAVE EVER MANAGED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT — WHO SAVED THE SORCERER'S STONE? WHO GOT RID OF RIDDLE? WHO SAVED HERMIONE AND RON FROM THE DEMENTORS?"
“Now then Harry, you might want to keep your dulcet tones down a little-”
“Or else, we’ll have the whole Order up here-”
“And Merlin knows you don’t want Dumbledore or Snape near you like this.”
Nodding, Harry collapsed back onto the bed, his magic withdrawing into him. The light in the corner flickered, trying to turn itself back on but it spluttered and went out. One of the twins flicked their wand at it, and the light fixed itself, filling the room with a warm yellow glow that didn’t soothe Harry quite as much as he hoped it could’ve. He looked around the room, trying to take in more detail that he knew would calm his thoughts and distract him from the anger that he could still feel simmering inside him.
“Harry, is that a new thing-”
“The magical outbursts, that is.”
“Only, your hands were sparking and-”
“You made the bed wobble, too.”
Harry lifted his hands up above his face to study them. The sparking was new, or at least, it was something he’d never noticed in the last outbursts he’d had. But then again, the last outbursts had only caused minor glass breaking, not something as big as the one he’d just had.
“Gringotts sent me a letter, that’s why I’m here a week early. I wrote back to them, asking if there was a way to get me out of the Dursleys so I could go to Gringotts sooner, rather than leaving it till the last minute. Then Snape turned up at the doorstep and I swear, I thought Petunia was going to have an aneurysm. I’ve never seen her so angry. I had no idea she even knew who he was, but he called her ‘Tuney, and I’ve never heard her let anyone call her that. Although Snape did then slam the door in her face before bringing me here, which was kind of satisfying.
It’s not the first time my magic’s gone haywire this summer, no. Nothing quite as big as that one was though. The others just caused a couple of glasses to smash. I’ve got no idea what’s going on, and Hermione didn’t seem like she had any ideas when I wrote to her to ask.”
Harry saw the twins exchanging glances through his fingers, from where his hands had dropped onto his face. Sitting up slowly, he frowned at the twins. “Is there something I ought to know?”
“Well, until you’ve been to Gringotts-”
“We can’t be sure-”
“But we think we might have some idea of what’s causing the outbursts-”
“It’s nothing for you to worry about-”
“Simply just your magic coming of age!”
“But what about Hermione? Surely she’d know that?”
“Well, there is an issue there.”
“Her and little Ronniekins seem to have been told to keep you in the dark-”
“We’re not sure who by-”
“Although we do have some idea-”
“But fear not, Harry, we’re happy to keep you up to speed.”
There was a knock at the door and the twins grimaced. “See you at dinner then, Harry.” There was a sharp crack and both twins spun on the spot, disappearing from the room. Faintly, Harry heard another sharp crack and assumed that the twins had reappeared upstairs. The door was shoved open and Hermione’s bushy hair appeared around it. “Oh, Harry! We thought we’d heard you!” She was beaming at him, but all Harry could think of was what the twins had told him. “Hey Hermione, hey Ron. So nice of you to finally turn up and tell me what’s going on!”
“I’m sorry Harry! We were told it was too dangerous to tell you in letters what was happening!” Hermione’s eyes were already filling with tears. “Oh yeah? But everybody else has been able to get letters to me, Sirius included! And you seem to have spent more time with him than I’ve ever been able to! And I get that you were told that you shouldn’t send me letters, but that’s never seemed to stop either of you before? Merlin, Ron and the Twins even drove Arthur’s car to come and get me and faced no consequences!”
"You're absolutely right, Harry - I'd be furious if it was me!" Hermione’s tears were spilling down her cheeks now, and Harry threw himself backwards into the spot on the bed that he’d vacated just as the twins had left to avoid the tearful look in her eyes. Staring up at the ceiling, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on pulling down the anger that was simmering in his chest. He really didn’t want to burst the lightbulb again - not only were the three of them going to be useless in terms of fixing it, since they were all underage still, but he didn’t want to show Hermione and Ron how bad his outbursts had become since he’d written to tell them. He didn’t particularly want Dumbledore knowing, since the Headmaster was likely to send him to Snape for more Occulmency lessons.
There was a knock at the door and Remus poked his head around the door. Harry shot up from the bed and straight towards him, wrapping himself around the man. Burrowing his face into Remus’ chest, he let the tears start falling. Remus gently placed one hand on his head, the other around him and Harry faintly heard the tell-tale signs of Hermione and Ron shuffling out of the room. Hermione gently touched his arm on the way out but he ignored it, just wanting Remus’ comfort for now. Remus let him cry until there were no more tears left to cry, holding Harry in a tight squeeze that kept him grounded.
“Severus said something about a letter from Gringotts, Harry? Albus has agreed to let me take you-”
“As if he should be giving you permission, Moony.” There was a snort from the doorway and Harry looked up as Sirius locked the door behind him. “We shouldn’t need permission from that decrepit old man to take our godson out, if and when we want. We shouldn’t be stuck here not being able to look after him during the holidays but what Albus wants, Albus gets and what Sirius and Remus want, they do not get. It’s stupid!”
“Pads.” There was a warning note in Remus’ voice that made Sirius stop and flop heavily onto the bed where he turned himself into Padfoot, growling quietly. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Harry nodded into Remus. He detached himself, dropping to his knees next to his trunk and rummaging through it to find the Gringotts letter, which he’d buried with the pile of parchment and books that he’d squeezed in alongside his robes and a few other clothes. He ran his finger over the wax seal that had held the parchment together before handing the letter to Remus, who unrolled it to read the short message that Banlok had sent to Harry.
“We’ve got time to visit Gringotts now, if you’d like to get this sorted now, Harry? And no, Sirius, you cannot come with us. And you know the reasons why, but hopefully this might help start clearing your name, if this letter means what I think it does.” Padfoot woofed once, and curled himself further into Harry’s bed, closing his eyes as if to sleep. Harry nodded, checking the time on the watch that Sirius had given him as an end-of-year present, noting that the afternoon had only just started. There had been some much that had happened that it could have been dinner time, for all he knew. “Have we definitely got enough time to get to Gringotts and be back in time for dinner?” Remus nodded. That was enough of a reply for Harry, who immediately returned to sorting through his trunk to find his travelling cloak and a smarter pair of shoes than the scruffy trainers that he’d been wearing when Snape had picked him up from the Dursleys’.