Dinner Disaster
-8-
Harry took a deep breath and struggled not to panic while preparing for dinner. He had only been in the MACUSA for a day, and the entire family was already coming to see him. Once they knew he was coming, and when it hadn't been difficult for them to organise, but for the first time ever, he would be meeting other Potters in the flesh.
No pressure, then.
Miranda and Jasper and Isaac had spent about an hour talking with him about the dinner preparations. They had wanted to know what his dislikes and likes were when it came to food and drink, so they wanted to make him feel welcome, which he appreciated completely. But he honestly didn't have a clue why he was nervous.
Actually, he did; he had only known one set of living relatives, the Dursleys, and so Harry was both nervous and terrified; while he had liked Miranda, Jasper, and Isaac the moment they'd met, he still didn't know anything about his other American relatives. As he got dressed in his smartest clothes - Miranda had offered to loan him an outfit for him to wear for tonight, but he'd refused since he'd bought himself a decent set of clothes before he had left London, just for this occasion; he had planned to visit the MACUSA when he got away, and he wanted to make a good impression - Harry could not help but reflect on everything.
It was just so hard for him to believe that only a few months ago he had been languishing in a cell as filthy as a sewer, surrounded by Dementors and the stink of the British wizarding world, and now he was here, in the MACUSA about to meet and dine with his American relatives, but as he brushed his long white hair, staring into the hard emerald green eyes he had come out of Azkaban with, Harry considered his long term plans.
He knew he would soon have to broach the subject with his relatives of course, but he only hoped they took his suggestion well. Still, there were other alternatives, which led him to consider just regressing into a baby and then removing his knowledge completely to give himself a brand new life.
Only time would tell, of course.
Finally, Harry stopped and admired his work. Usually, he preferred just wearing a shirt and trousers, preferring a more simple style, but he actually thought he had done really well. He had chosen a smart pair of black trousers topped by a royal purple shirt, and a matching black jacket while he wore smart but comfortable black shoes he had spent a few days walking in over the last few weeks of his holiday breaking in. The style was unashamedly muggle, but he didn't care since most wizards and witches, moving with the times, favoured muggle styles anyway, with only a few robes added on to remind them of their magical heritages.
If it wasn't for the white hair, he would have been reminded of the time he had taken one of the Patil sisters to the Yule Ball (it amazed him that he was able to think of those events, especially that year with nothing more than cold indifference; what that meant for his current mental state, he didn't know but this was not the time to think about it), and he turned around and walked out of the room after making certain his wand was on him.
As he left the suite, the portraits of the American Potter ancestors either critiqued him or praised him for his neat appearance, but Harry only smiled politely at them, or just outright ignored them.
It wasn't the portraits he had any interest in impressing, it was the living. Attracted to the sounds of people talking and laughing downstairs although he was too far to hear what they were saying to one another, Harry followed the sounds, and as he came down the stairs, he noticed the silence as they noticed him. He smiled at them politely, but he decided to largely say nothing and let them begin.
Miranda walked up to him. "You look amazing, Harry," she said.
"Thank you," Harry said simply, not really used to compliments, and he looked around, noticing the number of people nearby. While he was aware the American branch of the family had been large, and they had married into other families until the diversity was large, seeing it was something else.
There were relatives of varying ages all around, with white hair, grey hair, black hair, blonde hair, blond hair, dirty blond, and had varying colours of skin, showing how the Potters had spread out over the generations.
And the ages!
There were children as young as toddlers and babies there, and really old members of the family. Many of the men and women had features similar to his own; some of them had messy hair, but in varying colours, not just the traditional jet black. As he stared at them, letting him memorise them, Harry felt another hot swoop of loathing and disgust centred towards Albus Dumbledore, for not only meddling in his childhood but for denying him the right to have a proper family.
Escorted by Jasper, Issac, and Miranda, Harry was introduced to the family at large, letting his occlumency-boosted memory to help him put names to their faces and to help him remember them, and as he did he found everyone's reaction to him vary.
Some of them were openly friendly while being curious about him; more than a few children were staring at his long, white hair in curious fascination. But there were others whose friendliness was as sweet as an overripe banana, and so blatantly fake Harry didn't have any trouble picking up on it, and neither did Miranda and the others near him, if the way they moved him hastily along was any indication.
But one thing was for sure, this was going to be a long night.
-8-
Dinner was actually fairly mixed. Because of the sheer diversity of how many people there were, with their varying likes and dislikes, Miranda and the others had agreed to just host a simple buffet. There were tables made from oak covered with dishes supplying cuts of various types of meat and refilled when they emptied out, with tureens of vegetables, salads, and accompanied by potatoes and rice. There were even platters filled with what looked like potato fritters, but Miranda had told him they were actually breadfruit. Harry had tried breadfruit when he was in the Caribbean, he had tried breadfruit porridge and different dishes with the plant in, and it reminded him of potatoes or rice.
Harry had never seen anything like it; he was used to the feasts from his time at Hogwarts, and he had seen the way Dumbledore had gone to great lengths to make the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students happy by offering up traditional dishes from their countries, but this was different, more impersonal and casual.
And it was telling; he knew the MACUSA Potters had spread out across the centuries until they had holdings in Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and the Caribbean, so it made sense to see dishes from those countries here, and he had fun selecting some of them for his own pleasure.
When he sat down, Harry listened to the conversations all around him. Brothers and sisters who had grown up, gotten married or were still single, were talking about their current affairs, about their children, and on and on it went. More than once, Harry heard for himself the troubles their kids were having at school, and on and on.
Harry had decided to just let the conversations play out all around him while he ate his meal, using that to calm himself down, but he lifted his head when he heard someone talking to him.
"So, Harry," Harry tensed when he saw it was a girl who had looked at him strangely before, from his memory he knew she was named Melanie, "why have you kept your hair white?"
Conversations stilled around the room, and Harry realised they had been told not to even mention his white hair. But he didn't really have a problem with the question that much.
"I haven't changed my hair colour because I want everyone to remember they threw me into a prison against my will; I was innocent of murder, and yet I was humiliated, which made the whole thing a mockery of justice," Harry said simply.
"Yeah, but surely you would want to be normal?" Another girl, a blonde one this time that Harry's memory told him was Clarice, "I mean, wouldn't you want to be normal?"
The word reverberated around his head, and made him angry.
"What's normal?" Harry asked mildly.
"What you're not," Clarice said without knowing what kind of bombshell she had just blown up.
"Clarice, Melanie, that's enough," Miranda's voice was loud enough to be heard.
"Aw, c'mon Aunt Miranda, we're just saying he should make the effort to be normal," Clarice said, blinking in surprise as she clearly didn't have a clue what she was saying. "And from what the international news from Britain says, there are a few who think he should be locked up, and forced to see mind healers. He doesn't even look normal."
Harry looked down at his half-eaten meal, before he lifted his head, meeting the gaze of Clarice and Melanie. Harry was resisting the urge to whip out his wand, but if he did that then he would only prove them right, and he knew there was no better way of proving people right than by doing what they expected him to do. He saw that the two girls had fairly weak mind shields, and he looked into their minds. They were repeating things their parents had been spouting off. With that, he began probing the surface thoughts of all of the other Potters without really focusing on them, and he saw many of them had the same concerns. In their mind, having white hair, and rumoured to have a bad attitude, meant they were worried about his mental wellbeing, but instead of wanting to make the effort to help him, they instead wanted him to just forget Azkaban.
And he realised….
He truly didn't have a place here, with them.
"You think I'm a freak, all of you?" Harry's voice was low, quiet, and they were terrified when they saw the way his eyes glowed with barely suppressed hurt and anger.
"No, Harry, we don't," Miranda was quick to say, but he ignored her. She had nothing to say to him that he wanted to hear. Abandoning his meal and them, Harry stood up, and hurried out of the room, infusing his legs and his chest with magic so he could rush to his room.
Warding the room's door, Harry leaned his head against the door. He punched the wall, the pain from the impact didn't register. He punched the door again with both hands, slapping the hardwood, screaming at the top of his voice before he began kicking it in fury.
He had done it again.
He had gotten his hopes up, and it had blown up in his face. But this time he knew precisely what to do. After finding his wand, Harry started summoning his things.
-8-
"Harry!" Miranda knocked desperately on the door to Harry's suite. "Harry, are you in there?"
"No luck?" Isaac asked.
"None."
Isaac took a deep breath, and he withdrew his wand. He was surprised by the number of wards on the door, but he was able to dispel them quickly. They burst into the room, calling for Harry, but it was too late. On the ground, they found the remains of a familiar book to the one they had.
It was Harry's protean journal. Pages had been roughly ripped out and chucked on the ground, and there was a note on the table. As they read it, Miranda and some of the others felt a sinking feeling in their chests.
Harry was gone and he was not coming back.