Sally-Anne Perks
-8-
Harry was shaking with anger and adrenaline. He was oblivious to the looks he was getting, and even the looks of surprise as people around him asked why it suddenly felt as if the air was crackling, and smelt of ozone. He just had to escape. The encounter with the Dursleys was so unexpected, so violent that Harry felt as if the foundations he had tried to rebuild had been shattered even more. When Harry had left Azkaban, he'd worked day and night with Chloe and his family's portraits helping him get mentally better.
Harry was not naive, or stupid.
He knew that he was not in a good place mentally.
He had already come close to snapping several times now; killing Voldemort and the Death Eaters had been the first, but Harry had been close to murdering Amelia Bones, Black, Dumbledore, and everyone else that was there, but he had been too tired and the prospect of his freedom being legally provided had stayed his hand; his time in St. Mungo's where he'd shoved Black away before meeting that healer who's daughter had once idolised him but had thrown out all of that stupid Harry Potter memorabilia and then wanted it back when it was shown he was innocent; his visit to Potter Manor, when he'd confronted his parent's portraits and their stupidity and the implications they'd been compelled to stay behind until they were killed because of one of Dumbledore's 'the ends, justifies the means' schemes.
And now this.
And now he felt as if one of the foundation stones had been loosened, shattered; encountering the Dursleys wasn't likely to make him snap. Oh no, it would likely be in the magical world he'd go berserk. That was one of the reasons he wanted to get mentally better, with Chloe's help, and while the Mind Healer had done great work so far, Harry would need to be stupid not to realise he was still a long way from being better off.
Harry finally calmed down enough to pay attention to his surroundings.
"Is it just me, or does it look like the air's crackling?"
Alarmed slightly, Harry looked up and saw several muggle shoppers looking around worriedly. Quickly, Harry brought his occlumency barriers back up and hurried away.
Wandering into another shop, Harry took a deep breath as he looked around, he had wandered off into another clothes shop. Harry had already done a full shop and bought enough clothes to fill 5 wardrobes, never mind one, but he decided to have a look anyway. He knew from experience doing something would take his mind off of the encounter with the Dursleys.
He had just gotten into his stride, when -
"Excuse me, do I know you?" A female voice asked.
Harry stopped and turned, looking at a willowy, well-built girl with long blonde hair and grey eyes. "No, I don't think so," Harry replied, thinking unless you're referring to someone else with white hair.
But the girl refused to leave, she stepped closer and looked into his face, his eyes. Her own eyes widened.
"It is you," she whispered. "Harry Potter."
Harry stepped back, after the Dursleys the last thing he wanted was some unexpected encounter. "How do you know that?" He asked, studying the girl closely and going through his occlumency-enhanced memory. She wasn't one of those bitches from Little Whinging who had been forced to steer clear of him, he knew that much.
The girl seemed disappointed. "Ah, of course, you don't remember me; I stayed in the background when we were in Hogwarts," she finished in a whisper.
Hogwarts.
A witch.
Oh joy, this was getting better by the minute.
"My name's Sally-Anne Perks," the girl went on, "I was sorted before you."
Sally-Anne Perks.
The name did ring a bell, but not too loudly.
"I kept to the background for that year," Sally said with a smile of remembrance. "I went into Hufflepuff, you went into Gryffindor."
"I didn't have much choice," Harry, carefully touching the handle of one of his wands brought up privacy wards, was still wishing he'd listened to the Sorting Hat, but at the time he had been determined to have a quiet life, and not cause any undue suspicion to fall on his shoulders. But if he had known what was coming, then he would have just simply not bothered.
In many ways, he guessed the Sorting Hat had been on to something, he should have been in Slytherin.
Now he didn't care. He hadn't given any thought about which House he was going to go into, and he didn't care either. If anyone bothered him, he would reveal half of the knowledge he'd taken from Voldemort and his followers, and they'd be very, very, very sorry by the time he was finished with them.
"What do you mean?" Sally-Anne asked curiously, unaware of how dark his thoughts were.
Harry wasn't about to answer any personal questions, but he was prepared to answer some questions. Anything to get this girl away from him. But at the same time, she interested him; she wasn't blubbering like mad, begging for forgiveness…and now he came to think about it, Harry could hardly remember seeing Sally-Anne anywhere in Hogwarts from year 2 up. Had she left?
"So many people were influencing me to go into Gryffindor; some claimed it would make my parents proud," he sneered at the thought, "others kept telling me all the Dark witches and wizards went into Slytherin, but I only went in Gryffindor to shut everyone up. Where were you after first year? I've got a good memory, and you were not at the school when the Chamber of Secrets was opened."
Sally-Anne blinked in curiosity and even a little surprise at his blunt question. "The what?" She asked.
That clinched it; the Hufflepuffs had been badly hit by the basilisk in the sense one of their own had been petrified by the basilisk's reflected gaze, and they had blamed him for it when it came out he could speak to snakes. If Sally-Anne had been at Hogwarts, and he was sure she was a muggle-born, then she would have remembered it. She hadn't been there.
"It's a long story, but the shortened version of it is a legendary chamber created by Slytherin's founder contained a giant snake that had the power to kill but every muggle-born had been lucky because they didn't directly look into its eyes. I was blamed for it when it came out I had the power to speak to snakes. If you were there, you would have known that," Harry said.
Sally blinked again in surprise. "Wow, I'm sorry about that," she said with such sincerity Harry was taken by surprise. "I left Hogwarts after our first year. Look," she went on looking around the store, "can we take this somewhere else? I don't like being in this store where anyone could hear us."
Harry nodded, thinking the same thing and not being in the mood to put up more wards. "Sure. Do you need to buy anything?"
Sally shook her head, and the two left the shop together. They walked along the streets, Sally began speaking. "I left Hogwarts after my first year because I couldn't take the pureblood dogma, and being away from home did not help. I told Professor Sprout, and after a while, after telling me for months and months I'd get used to being in a boarding school, she realised I was not suited to Hogwarts. I wanted to be with my family."
"I understand," Just because Harry hadn't had that problem himself and he'd actually been delighted to be away from Privet Drive, it didn't mean he didn't understand what others had gone through. "So what happened, you asked your parents to take me out?"
"Yeah. With Sprout's help, I managed to drop out of Hogwarts and go back to my normal education."
"Normal? You mean you didn't want to learn magic anymore?"
Sally-Anne shook her head. "I just didn't fit in. When you're a muggle-born, there are a lot of bullies. And Hufflepuff wasn't exempt from that. More than a few students there did discriminate, but the worst blood head is the one who says something without meaning to. I didn't want to live like that, and being away from home was a killer. That was the kicker, so I didn't go to a different country. With Sprout's help, me and my family arranged for tuition."
"That must have been pricy," Harry commented.
"Yeah, but a few people owed Sprout a few favours. Anyway, what about you? Are you still at Hogwarts?" Sally asked him curiously, noting his shoulder-length white hair and wondered if it was a statement, like a goth or something bizarrely magical.
Harry stopped and looked her straight in the eye. "Not by choice," he ground out and rubbed his chin. Seeing her confused look he said, "In my fourth year, a dangerous international magical tournament came to Hogwarts, involving two schools. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. My name came out of a magical artefact which selected the Champions, along with Cedric Diggory's. In the end, the Dark Wizard who murdered my parents came back. He had never really died. He used my blood in a ritual to restore himself to power."
Sally-Anne listened to him, shocked. She had asked Susan and Hannah why everyone had been talking endlessly about Harry Potter, so she knew the story. "I thought the Dark Lord had died," she said.
"He didn't, weren't you listening?" Harry said, angry at not being believed.
Sally-Anne stiffened and let out a gasp. The air was crackling around Harry before he realised what was going on and calmed himself visibly.
"He was determined to live forever," Harry went on as if the episode had never happened, "he ripped a few chunks of his soul out, but he realised gradually it wasn't the most ideal method of immortality, he was scared making too many would impact his skills with magic. So he decided to find another way; he wanted so much to live forever as he was scared of death. He marked his followers so then they would supply him with some of their magic, and their knowledge and even a bit of their soul. When a Death Eater is marked, they have to commit a murder, as a sacrifice, so he can tie the magic they used into his soul, keeping his soul tethered to the mortal plane. If one Death Eater survived, he would still live. It's that simple. But after his attack in 81, he was just a wraith, but he was there. And he came back.
"We fought him and me, in a graveyard. I'd known he was coming back for years, and I was counting down the days," Harry remembered the visions he'd received, how he had spent days planning, only for it to go tits up. "I found out about what was going on, and I made plans. But they failed when he came back. Anyway, he cast a curse on the portkey that took me to where he was, and when I went back to Hogwarts, it exploded when it was touched, and hundreds of people died."
Sally-Anne licked her lips. She hadn't kept in touch with anyone from Hogwarts, so she was stunned by what she was hearing. "What happened?"
Harry looked down, "I was accused of mass murder," he said simply, "the Ministry rushed a trial. I was put in one of the worst prisons on Earth where demons who sucked every drop of happiness out of the inmates guarded the prison. I spent a year there while everyone testified I was dark, evil. Nobody thought it remotely suspicious if I really had cast such a spell, I would have come back. To them I was guilty. I spent a year there."
"How did you get out?"
Harry looked down at his feet. Sally-Anne didn't seem to have any connection to the magical world, although truthfully he genuinely did not care one bit about the repercussions of him telling her. And besides according to several in the magical world, some had suspected he had taken Voldemort's knowledge.
"I had a whole year to work my way into the Dark Lord's mind, Sally," Harry said, "I used the connection between us to plunder his mind of knowledge, and I even made him send the three of his followers who were instrumental in sending me to prison get captured in a doomed raid, and confess to what they'd done. The magical world got me out, but I made sure the Dark Lord came to the prison, to get me out. After that, I killed him and his followers until neither came back. I wanted to get out of the wizarding world for good. I have family in America, but Dumbledore kept us apart. I had made plans to go there, but I have to go back to Hogwarts to finish my schooling there."
Harry was impressed he managed to say all of that without losing his composure, but it was a near thing.
One of the reasons why he was cooperating with Dumbledore, with Fudge, with the magical world here in this stupid stinking shithole of a country (why should he be loyal to Britain?) was so he could get his OWLs and then his NEWTs, and have an unassailable barrier; with the results of his examinations, Harry could prove to them all he could live by himself, and there would be no legal reason to keep him in Britain once he took his final exams at the end of the year.
At the same time, Harry would play some of their games on his own terms without giving them any hint of what he was planning; but once he did finish his final exam, Harry was out of Britain for good. He had already made plans to sell off different Potter properties in Britain to add to the family's wealth and to move the rest to America.
"I'm sorry," Sally-Anne surprised him.
"For what?" Harry asked quizzically.
"For what you've gone through. I knew the magical world was screwed, but I never knew it was this bad," Sally commented.
"Oh, you have no idea," Harry remembered how she had seen him. "How did you even know who I was?"
Sally chuckled, "I saw you looking around, just because your hair's white - what's with that, by the way? - that doesn't mean you've changed that much. I remembered what you looked like, and I remembered the colour of your eyes," she said plainly.
Harry chuckled. He had become so used to his white hair he had forgotten what he had looked like with black. "Oh, I see," he chuckled.
"Harry, why do you have white hair?"
Harry was starting to enjoy spending time with Sally-Anne, so he had no problem with answering her questions. "I told you about the demons guarding the prison, remember?" She nodded. "Well, their effect on me was so strong, and many of the Dark Lord's visions were so disgusting, traumatising, my hair turned white."
"Oh," Sally-Anne whispered, hating to bring up such a horrifying topic. "Harry, is it possible you and I could….y'know, spend time together?" She changed the subject.
Harry had no desire to give up his plans to leave for his holidays. "I don't see why not," he said, "but I am going to leave Britain for a few weeks, travel abroad. Y'know I've never left this country before, and I would like to see what is out there."
Sally-Anne sagged a little. One of her deepest regrets was never plucking up enough courage to speak to Harry Potter, who had given her so many vibes. When they had been at school for just one year, she had thought he was cute…in a cute, bad boy kind of way, but his obnoxious friends had stopped anyone speaking to him.
Harry noticed her dismay. "Listen, I will be staying here for a few days, that's more than enough time," he said, unsure of why he was being so accommodating towards Sally, but he suspected it was because she had not accused him of anything, given she hadn't been at Hogwarts long. "Okay."
"Okay," Sally-Anne gushed happily.
Harry wondered what he'd just blundered into now.