Friends and Funerals
Harry hadn´t ever been to a funeral before.
He´s thought about what it would be like to go one, once, after someone in his class mentioned that funerals were something you went to when someone close to you died. Harry foolishly thought, back then, that that applied to him too. So curiosity won over him and sometimes, Harry would seek out his aunt to ask about a funeral for his parents. Back when he hadn´t yet learned that asking questions about his parents would get him into trouble. Back when Harry used to openly wish about knowing his parents more instead of simply coming up with an image of them in his mind and clinging to that image for closure.
He used to think about it and asked Aunt Petunia once, on one of those rare days where she would sometimes sit on the couch, staring out the window with a piece of paper clasped in her hand and her gaze resolutely out the window. On those rare days, Aunt Petunia was very quiet. They used to happen more often the younger Harry was and they faded as he got older, but Harry remembers them clearly. The solemn silence coming from her and the weird expression on her face that was both longing and disgusted at the same time.
Of course, at the time he hadn´t understood. He still doesn´t, not really, if he´s being honest. All he knew about it, was that on those days Aunt Petunia was always the most willing to talk about his parents.
Never about his father.
Only about his mother.
It wasn´t anything tangible either. Nothing that would help Harry form an image in his mind. Just small, probably senseless information about his mother that Aunt Petunia would sometimes whisper out with carefully contained anger – anger? Sadness? Regret? Something else? Harry could never tell.
He knew it should have probably unnerved him back then. But Harry is rarely ever unnerved. It´s strange sometimes, watching children his age scream when there´s a snake slithering through the grass, cry when they get hurt, call for their parents when something scares them. He doesn´t feel that sort of thing, not really. It´s not that he´s braver than other kids or anything, he just – doesn´t feel it. He can´t be brave if he´s not scared in the first place, you know? He doesn´t feel whatever they feel when they´re hurt. Doesn´t have the immediate need to go run and hide behind someone bigger and stronger when anything happens that might get them hurt.
Just one more thing to add to the list of things that made him a freak, he supposed.
Anyways, he doesn´t get scared or unnerved or whatever.
Not even when on those days Aunt Petunia´s blank eyes turns to him in an almost robotic way and she would say the strangest things Harry has ever heard her say. Like something out of those really weird horror movies that Dudley always shrieks about, that he´s not actually allowed to watch.
It would be strange, hearing to that shrill voice become unnaturally hollow.
Like one instance, when he asked what her name was. What his mother was called, so that maybe he could put a name to the image in his head.
“Rose.”
Harry paused at the door, tilting his head when Aunt Petunia hadn´t even turned to speak with him, still looking out the window. His chest feels like it´s bursting and Harry desperately wants to claw at it. Tries to pause and be as silent as possible to make sure that he heard right. His mother´s name had been –
“That´s what she would have named you had you been a girl.”
Oh.
“She was obsessed with flowers and flower language. Like our mother. She wanted to continue the tradition of flower names.”
Well.
Harry still didn´t have the name of his mother, still didn´t know anything about her looks or her personality, except that she apparently loved flowers. And flower language. Whatever that is.
So the next day Harry speaks to his Biology teacher and asks for a book about flowers, because he can´t go to the library by himself. She lights up, endeared by his new interest, and Harry doesn´t correct her when she assumes he wants to pick up gardening as a new hobby.
When she gets him the book, Harry flies through the pages, skimming over the facts about the flowers and paying closer attention to their names. He pays special attention to those that sound the most like ordinary names.
Camellia, Coral, Dahlia, Daisy, Daphne, Erica, Heather, Holly, Iris, Jasmine, Lavender, Lily, Pansy, Petunia, Poppy –
There´s more, but he doesn´t get through them all before he has to hide the book from Uncle Vernon, unless he wants to give the teacher a battered version of this book back.
He doesn´t know which of these flowers it is and honestly, most of them sound strange to him either way. He doesn´t understand the great appeal behind naming your child after a literal plant, but he´s not about to question his mother´s quirks. Maybe she just really liked flowers. Harry can´t relate. Not after he had to tend to the ones in Aunt Petunia´s garden during the summer in a heat wave, causing him to pass out right into a bush of roses and waking up with thorns in his face and arms.
He doesn´t think he would have liked being named Rose.
Anyways, he´s getting off topic.
On these days, Aunt Petunia is more open about his mother than she is at any other time. So one day, Harry went and asked if there had been a funeral for his mother. If there was a grave. If people went to that funeral, if someone mourned their loss.
Harry´s not sure what he wants to accomplish with it, really. It´s not like he misses them much – he misses the idea of them. He can´t miss someone who he doesn´t know after all, but he does yearn for some sort of parental figure to get him out of here. Harry doesn´t think that´s the same type of feeling, so he can´t say he´s mourning them. And it´s not like he´s keen on going to a graveyard either. He doesn´t think that talking to a stone with names engraved on it will make him feel any better than imaging soft touches and gentle words in his mind. If he wants closure, then he can use his imagination. A cold stone with names on it that he´s never heard before just sounds so impersonal. He doesn´t understand what that´s supposed to do. Then again, he´s six years old, so he doesn´t understand a lot of things.
He supposes he just wants to know if someone else went. The girl in his class did say that you go to a funeral when you lose someone your close to, so Harry kind of wants to know how many people his parents had been close with. If maybe any of these people would be ready to be close to him too –
No.
Anyways, Petunia is silent for a few minutes after that. The sunset outside illuminates her face and somehow throws even darker shadows on it, making her seem a lot older than she actually is. The paper she holds in her hand – Harry has never seen what´s on it, he never finds it when he´s looking for it, even when he almost turned the entire house upside down looking for it when no one else had been at home – crumples slightly in her hand when she tenses.
“No,” she say, voice shaking ever so slightly, “there was no funeral. Not one for our kind, I´d assume.”
She spits those words out with a venom Harry rarely ever hears. Aunt Petunia, when she´s angry, gets loud. Shrill and insulting. She doesn´t get biting. That´s Harry´s thing. He gets loud, vicious and sarcastic when he´s angry, and Petunia usually simply gets offended and loud, like the fact that someone made her angry in the first place was a crime punishable by death.
But she never gets venomous. Not like this.
Harry also has no idea what in the world she means by our kind, but he doesn´t get to ask, because Petunia is speaking again.
“There is a grave. Has to be, if their friends had even an ounce of decency. Or they all got put six feet under before she did. I wouldn´t know.”
After that her face goes completely blank again and Harry knows his time is over. She will likely fall asleep right where she´s sitting, like she always does after one of those episodes, and then completely ignore whatever happened here the next morning. If Harry brings it up, they will end up in a screaming match loud enough that once the police got called on them by noisy neighbors.
In the end Harry knows that there wasn´t a funeral. Or maybe there was and Aunt Petunia´s kind – whoever that was – just didn´t go. But know Harry knows that they had friends, both his mother and his father, and that they were probably dead too. Maybe. Or maybe not. But there should be a grave. A stone with their names on it that´s standing in some graveyard, wasting away.
He´s not sure he likes the idea of that.
After that conversation, Harry doesn´t ask about it again. Not about his parents – about those he asks even when he gets older, until he´s eight years old and has finally realized that he won´t get any answers that don´t insult his entire bloodline – but about the funeral thing. He doesn´t think it´s important for him to know anything more about funerals, not when there is no reason that he would ever need to go one. He doesn´t have friends or family that he´s close enough to.
He´d probably go to Aunt Petunia´s funeral if she were to die though. And Dudley´s, because as much as he hates his cousin, Harry also feels kind of sorry for him. It must be hard being this dependent on someone else and therefore ending up being so incredibly stupid.
He wouldn´t go to Uncle Vernon´s though.
So, Harry asks about funerals for the last time when he´s six years old and asks about his parents for the last time when he´s eight. He´s completely shoved the topic out of his mind. There was no use in dwelling on something that Harry doesn´t understand and can´t really relate to. He´s never been really overly emotional, aside from being angry, and only that ever really happens when he´s being pushed for way too long and way too hard.
But things change.
Things change, because Harry didn´t ever think he would get close enough to anyone in his life to get a strong reaction out of him. They change, because Harry got a friend when he was seven years old, one that didn´t care about his weirdness or his freakishness and even got into a physical fight with someone who called Harry a freak. He meets this kid´s parents – the mother, who´s always really nice to him and the father, who´s a bit strange and distant, but never outright rude, at least not to Harry or to his friend. He meets the boy´s uncle, who´s super scary and rarely ever there, but when he is he takes care of both Harry and his friend. And this friend´s uncle becomes more of an uncle to him than Vernon has ever been.
Things change because now, Harry is nine years old and is attending his first funeral ever.
Things change, because three years after asking about funerals for the last time and not understanding why anyone would ever want to go to one or why anyone would ever visit a grave, Harry is the last person standing in the graveyard, soaked from the heavy rain and shivering from the cold winter air as he looks at the stone with blank eyes, right where a large casket had been buried hours before.
His body burns hot with emotions Harry can´t identify despite the feeling of ice creeping through his veins. The sound of blood rushing through his ears drowns out even the loud thuds of heavy raindrops hitting the ground all around them. Fat drops land in his hair until all the volume is gone and it sticks to his temples and his forehead in a sad display that looks similar to a drowned puppy. They roll down his cheeks and his glasses, and Harry can´t even really see the names on the gravestone anymore because of that, but that doesn´t matter because he thinks this image will be burned in his mind forever, even if he were to lose his eyesight completely.
Here lie
Beth Riley née Hall – Beloved Wife and Mother
Tom “Tommy” Riley – Beloved Husband, Father and Brother
Joseph Riley – Beloved Son and Nephew
May they Rest In Peace
Harry thinks that back then, he didn´t understand why people would like gravestones. They seem impersonal, he thought.
And things might have changed, Harry might have experienced something that he never thought he would, but his opinion on that hasn´t changed. Because even as he looks at the names of his best friend and his best friend´s parents, he still thinks it´s too impersonal. He still thinks that “Beloved best friend” or beloved “parents to a son in anything but blood” should be there too. He still thinks that like this, Harry will never get the closure again that he had when Joseph was still alive and that his memories offer greater closure than this cold piece of fuckingrock could ever give him.
But the difference between the thoughts back then and the thoughts now, as similar as they might be, was this:
Back then Harry was indifferent. He didn´t understand and didn´t care to understand either. It never made sense to him and he resigned himself to a better option, which was simply thinking of his parents. If there was a rock somewhere with their names – that was fine. A bit weird, but Harry wasn´t bothered by that idea.
But now?
Now Harry is burning with unfiltered, ugly rage, tremors running through his entire body and he doesn´t think it´s just because of the cold. Because he looks and sees a memorial to people who had meant the world to him and all that was left was a piece of polished stone. Like that was all they were worth. Like the fact that they were a husband, a wife and a son were the only things that were memorable enough about them to be written on the headstone. It was impersonal because it would never measure up to what they meant to Harry when they were still alive and that alone feels like the greatest offense Harry has ever experienced.
He wants to tear it down. Wants to rip the stone out of the ground and instead take his memories, make them tangible and put them on display for the world to see, to show that they were more than just a mother, father and son. He wants to show the world that Joseph was a friend with a heart of gold and a mouth like a sailor, who wore the bruised knuckles he gains in fights like medals with pride. Who doesn´t care what others think of him but will definitely deck someone if they dare insult his family or friends. A person who´s snarky and witty, like his uncle, but gentle in a way that Harry hasn´t ever seen anyone else be. The person who looked at Harry and told him that he had the prettiest eyes he´s ever seen, that they look like the gems his mother likes to collect, even when everyone else always told him how unnatural his eyes look. The boy who stood next to Harry like an older brother, protecting him from the kids at school, just like Harry did for him.
Joseph was so much more than just a son and a nephew, but because of the inscription on this headstone, no one will ever know how Joseph was really like, because everyone who did was dead.
Or at least, that´s what Harry thinks is the case. He knows the parents are dead, because he had been the one to find their corpses. He had been the one to discover their murder as he walked into their home, a day after Christmas, with the expectation that they would celebrate the holiday together. Harry had been the one to carefully open the shattered door of their home, to walk inside and almost heave at the intense smell of copper – of blood. He had been the one to find their bodies, to hold the gaze of the lifeless eyes staring back at him and to fall to his knees with his hands pressed against their wounds, as tough that would reverse the damage done.
Harry had been the one to stain his hands with their blood while he called the police, teeth gritted and eyes wide in horror the entire time. The police officer who arrived first on the scene had to pull him off of the corpse kicking and screaming bloody murder because he refused to let even more blood escape from Joseph´s body, even though his friend had already bled to death long before he arrived.
So he knows that everyone in Joseph´s family is dead. Knows that there is no one else who knew them like he did.
Everyone, except for Joseph´s Uncle.
Simon.
Harry doesn´t know whether or not the man is dead. He wants to think he is, because there is no other legitimate reason Harry can come up with as to why the man wasn´t at the funeral, other than the fact that he physically couldn´t be here. At the same time he hopes that that isn´t the case, because Uncle Simon, as Joseph insisted he call the man and the man himself smiled indulgently whenever he did refer to him as Uncle, would be the last person in this world that Harry had left, who he could share this grief with him. Who would be able to understand the sheer rage Harry feels when he looks at the offending gravestone carrying the names of his pseudo family.
But Simon wasn´t there. He hadn´t come to the funeral, he hadn´t been there when Harry had to give a statement to the police, and even now, as Harry stands in the heavy rain, soaking wet and shivering but not moving an inch, Uncle Simon isn´t there.
Maybe he´s dead.
Harry knows the type of job the man does. He knows that he´s in the military, which is highly dangerous and has no guarantee of survival, but he also knows that this man is probably one of the strongest he´s ever seen. He has to be, if he´s part of Joseph´s family. Joseph admired his uncle so much and constantly talked about Simon like he was his personal hero – so there was no way he would just die like that, right?
Then again, Harry didn´t think that Joseph and his family would just die like that either.
Harry´s hands clench and unclench rhythmically, matching his rapid heartbeat. He doesn´t know which of these options he wants to be true. If Simon is dead, then that means that it wasn´t his fault that he wasn´t here. If he´s dead, then Harry couldn´t be angry at him for not coming here, for leaving him and his family alone.
But if he´s not? If he´s alive, but chose not to come here? If he missed the funeral of his very own family for whatever reason?
Harry doesn´t know if he can forgive him for that.
But in the end, ultimately, it doesn´t matter. Joseph is dead and Harry had lost the only people who have ever treated him kindly.
.
Two years prior...
.
People don´t like Harry.
But that´s fine, because Harry doesn´t like people either.
Harry is seven years old and already thoroughly done with people in general. The kids in his class either don´t like him, or don´t want to risk Dudley sucker punching them in the gut for being associated with him. They find him weird, strange and different, because God forbid someone doesn´t fit in with the rest of the normal and ordinary neighborhood. He´s tiny and scrawny, shorter than even most girls in his class with brittle wrists and knobby knees. His hair is too messy, too untamable, like a black bird´s nest. His skin is too dark, tan instead of the pale white of his classmates. He stands out in crowds with his torn and too big clothes and his glasses that always sit askew on his face, because they´re not actually his size. Weird things always seem to happen around him and all the people who were mean to him too.
But mostly it´s his eyes. It´s his eyes that unnerve the kids in his class, like they´re scared a look from him will make them drop dead.
“They´re weird,” a girl once said, face pulled into a sneer and backing up into the hold of one of her friends, like she was worried Harry would bite her as soon as she insults him. The worry was justified, Harry reluctantly admits, since he did bite Dudley once hard enough to break skin after his whale of a cousin constantly kept bothering him. The story spread like wildfire through the school and for a few days everyone made sure to avoid him. “They´re so… green. Almost like they´re glowing. It´s unnatural. It´s creepy, like you´re constantly watching us.”
“Right,” the other girl had agreed, nodding her head enthusiastically. Her face reminds Harry a bit of one of Aunt Marge´s dogs. “They´re really creepy. I saw a snake once that had the exact same eye-color. All glowy and strange. I don´t like snakes.”
Harry ignored them that day, mostly because the last time he retaliated, he threw a stick at those girls and got detention for it. He had no intention of doing that again anytime soon after having been sent to his cupboard for six weeks after.
Anyway, the children at his school are horrible and the adults honestly aren´t any better. They´re a bit more subtle and backhanded about their dislike, but Harry´s not that much of an idiot, despite what everyone else seems to think of him. He notices the condescending comments Aunt Petunia´s guests give him, like he´s a dirty stray that the Dursley family had been generous enough to take in. They speak of him, not to him, like he´s a nasty bug.
“What a strange child you have, Petunia,” one woman sighed once as she sat on their couch, head shaking in faux worry, “It´s like he´s a feral cat. My Piers told me the story, you know. The one where he bit your darling son. I´m so sorry that happened. Have you thought about sending him to a doctor? I´m sure the poor child is just traumatized after that horrible car accident. Children like that – their minds are different. Fragile. You need to be careful with them, you know? They tend to lash out.”
That day, Harry almost accidentally dropped the scalding hot tea he had been serving them onto the woman´s lap to show her how well he could lash out if he wanted to, but caught himself when Aunt Petunia sent him a warning look, like she knew he was planning to do it. Which she probably did, because when Harry was five he did spill the tea on one of her guests. Alas, that time it hadn´t been on purpose, but after that Petunia had expected him to be on his best behavior when serving the adults.
What she doesn´t mention however is that he only bit them because Piers had been holding Harry´s hands behind his back and Dudley had been trying to shove dirt into his mouth to make him eat it. But Harry´s not surprised because it´s always that way. It doesn´t matter what anyone does, if Harry dares to defend himself in any sort of way then it´s always his fault. Even if he doesn´t defend himself it´s his fault.
So in short – People don´t like him and he doesn´t like people.
And honestly, Harry is completely fine with that. He doesn´t need people to like him, nor does he need any friends. It´s not like he would have the time to meet up and play with them or whatever it is that friends do with each other, since he´s always stuck in the house, forced to do chores or cook food for everyone. The few time he does get out of the house, Harry likes to enjoy his alone time at one of the playgrounds close by, the one with the rusty swing and broken slide. Hardly anyone ever goes there, so Harry enjoys being left alone with his thoughts.
He daydreams a lot, mostly because he misses the dreams he has during the night. They´re comforting, and after an entire week of collecting blisters from working at home or gaining new bruises at school, those daydreams are like a soothing balm to his wounds. He dreams of the beautiful sounding laugh from the unknown woman in his dreams, the playful banter of faceless men as they laugh and chatter. He thinks of wind that blows through his hair as he flies through the sky, sometimes on a motorcycle and sometimes on a broom, like those witches in Dudley´s storybook that Harry nicked from his second bedroom once when no one had been home. It´s not like Dudley reads the book anyway, Harry reasoned, so what´s the harm? He´s not even sure his cousin can read.
Sometimes, Harry doesn´t like to be alone though. That´s only the case when his daydreams turn cruel. Whenever they fade from happy to terrifying. When Harry feels like all he can see is a blinding green light and he hears the beautiful laughter of the woman turn into terrified screams. He can hear a name being called, though usually he doesn´t remember it. The hair on his skin stands up and Goosebumps travel all over his body, making him uncomfortably squirm to try and force those thoughts – memories? – away.
On those days, Harry would rather not be alone. But because the only other option is horrible company that would make everything worse, he´s alone nonetheless.
On those days, these really bad ones, Harry dislikes people more than ever. They prod at him and try to make fun of him when that´s the last thing he wants to have to deal with at the moment.
Harry is seven, having one of those really bad days, when his opinion on people changes however.
The day already started horribly. Harry woke up with a silent scream lodged in his throat, cold sweat soaking his rugged shirt and the screams of the woman that keeps reappearing in his dreams echoing through his head. His scar was itching uncomfortably and his hands and legs were shaking ever so slightly, enough that Harry struggled to get out of his little mattress.
Once he did manage to get up, shaking off the remains of his nightmare and bracing himself for the rest of the day, his morning didn´t get any better either.
Dudley had been particularly cruel in waking him up, slamming the door in his face when Harry tried to get out of the cupboard. His glasses flew from his face and landed on the floor with a loud clatter, promptly gaining yet another crack. Harry´s jaw ticked when he put the glasses back on and found that his sight was blurrier than before, but he took a deep breath to keep himself from throwing himself at Dudley´s retreating back as he cackled to start a fight. Harry might be scrawny, however he is pretty slippery when he tries to be and also packs a mean punch if he manages to throw his entire weight behind it, courtesy of having to defend himself more often than not.
Once Harry calmed himself enough to step out into the kitchen and start on breakfast, he saw that uncle Vernon was already seated. The man was irritated because something had happened on his job, something that his coworkers had pushed onto him so that they wouldn´t have to deal with it. Harry didn´t know exactly what it was, since he really couldn´t be bothered to listen and quite honestly couldn´t care less about what´s going on at his Uncle´s workplace, but since the man decided to be loud and make it everyone´s problem, Harry got the gist of it. Apparently, there was a new guy that had no idea how to handle any equipment, constantly misplaced important documents and who´s completely “wet behind the ears”. Secretly, Harry hopes that the new guy makes Uncle Vernon´s job as hard as possible.
Aunt Petunia comes into the kitchen with her face pulled into a scowl, harshly rubbing her temples. She was apparently sporting a headache today from her lack of sleep and was complaining that Harry was being too loud, despite the fact that it was her husband who was yelling about work and Dudley, who was watching television on full volume while Harry was simply quietly preparing food.
But that´s fine. Harry´s used to being blamed for things he has absolutely zero control over. So today, for a change, he doesn´t argue, even when he´s practically itching to tell her that maybe her darling Duddykins should turn down the TV then or her husband should stop yapping like one of Aunt Marge´s annoying bulldogs. Not when today all three occupants of this house are feeling especially nasty. Instead he pushes his growing anger down and quietly apologizes to Aunt Petunia, carefully places the prepared food in front of Uncle Vernon and takes a wide berth around Dudley, just so that he doesn´t set him off.
At school, Harry´s English teacher, the one that somehow seems to not like him at all for whatever reason, is once again picking on him. Due to the fact that Harry has another crack in his glasses, he can´t really read what the teacher wrote on the board. So when he´s asked to read the sentence out loud and tell him what word was spelled wrong, Harry couldn´t do it. Mr. Thompson sighed almost mournfully and shook his head. “Well, that´s alright. I can tell that your parents probably weren´t English, so I suppose it´s not a surprise that you´re falling behind in my class. You truly do need to put in more effort if you want to learn this language like your peers.”
Harry had been this close to yelling at him to ask how the hell he would know that his parents weren´t English just by looking at Harry. Was it because Harry was tanner than most and wasn´t blonde or brunette like the rest of his class? That didn’t mean he didn´t belong here or wasn´t born here in England. Hell, Harry speaks better than Dudley, who can barely pronounce the word “probably” without sounding like a babbling infant. Instead of pointing all of that out though, he simply glared at the teacher with as much force as he could, ignoring the snickers behind his back. Mr. Thompson scowled when he spotted Harry´s expression, telling him to quit looking like that or he would be sent outside for “overreacting when he had simply offered valuable advice”. Harry could feel something inside him snap at that and the piece of chalk in Mr. Thompson´s hand exploded, leaving the with white powdered chalk covering his face and on his clothes.
He has no idea how, but Harry´s pretty sure that that was somehow his fault. He stopped questioning the weird things happening around him though, knowing he wouldn´t get an answer as to how they happened anyway, so he simply leaned back in his chair with a sour expression on his face as the teacher spluttered, confused by the situation.
During break, one of Dudley´s friends tries to dump his lunch over Harry´s head, but Harry, being quick on his feet and having better reflexes than most kids his age, slips away and rushes through the crowd of students. That however ends with Dudley´s group trying to chase him and resuming their daily game of “Harry Hunting”. Personally, Harry´s already done with the day and really doesn´t have the patience to continue running, but it´s either this or he gets another bruise to add to his collection, so he simply lets his legs carry him as fast as they can until the bell rings.
The rest of the day passes and the other teachers mostly leave him alone when they sense his worsening mood. The students are busy doing their work or actively avoiding doing their work, so during class no one really pays him any attention.
As soon as the bell rings, Harry had already packed his things and slipped out of the classroom before anyone else. With quick steps, Harry leaves the school grounds as fast as possible, making his way back home. He pauses when he´s at the intersection that leads to either the Dursley´s or his favorite abandoned playground, before making the decision to not go back. He´s utterly done and really not in the mood to talk to Petunia or do any of his chores today. Harry knows this will have consequences, knows that he´s probably going to be missing out on food for the next two or three days for this, but right now he couldn´t care less. Flashes of his nightmare still plague his thoughts and with how irritated and vicious this entire family seems to be today, Harry would rather go hungry than accidentally make a mistake dusting the house and risk Uncle Vernon´s belt. The voices of Dudley and Piers, who´s apparently coming along today meaning that he was going to stay at least a few hours, only solidify Harry´s decision. He turns on his heels and goes right, promptly making his way towards the playground.
When he arrives, Harry tosses his bag aside and immediately sits down on the swing. He´ll stay here for a few hours and then sneak back at night, so he´ll only have to face them in the morning. It might get a bit cold in the late evening out here, especially due to the fact that the sweater Harry is wearing is full of tiny holes and frayed edges, too thin from having been stretched out by Dudley, but freezing is, once again, better than going back home. Besides, it wouldn´t be the first time Harry stayed out in the cold without a jacket and he´s survived it before, so whatever.
Harry zones out for a while, gently swaying back and forth on the swing. He isn´t paying any attention to his surroundings, since he knows no one is going to come here, much less anyone who might be looking for him.
That´s probably why he doesn´t notice that there actually is someone approaching.
“Hello!”
Harry startles, eyes shooting open and zoning in on where the voice came from. There, standing at the entrance of the playground, watching him, is a young boy, probably a year or two older than Harry. He can´t really tell.
The boy is taller than Harry, with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes. He´s wearing simple black trousers, a dark green hoodie and a warm looking jacket. There´s a huge grin on his face and he´s waving wildly at Harry, tilting his head to the side expectantly when Harry doesn´t immediately answer. He doesn´t think he´s seen this boy before – it´s definitely not one of the kids in the neighborhood and probably not one from school. He also doesn´t seem to know who Harry is, seeing as he´s speaking to him without being outright rude.
The boy blinks when Harry´s staring for a bit too long, frowning for a second, before he shakes his head and steps closer with a determined glint in his eyes. “Did you not hear me? I said hello!”
Harry is so thrown off that he doesn´t immediately know how to answer. Typically, when people are rude to him he´s going to be rude back, but right now this kid hasn´t done anything. In fact, he doesn´t seem like he´s going to do anything either. He just looks curious, like he´s confused by Harry´s presence.
Harry blinks, deciding to be careful.
“Hello,” he answers back quietly, although not as enthusiastically as he was greeted. He´s not being defensive though, because he doesn´t think this boy deserves Harry snapping at him. Not yet.
The boy grins at the response, eyes shining brightly. He looks genuinely happy that Harry´s talking to him, which in turn makes Harry a bit uncomfortable. He squirms on the swing, leaning back a bit when the boy suddenly comes closer and stretches out his hand for Harry to take. Harry blinks, taken aback.
“I´m Joseph Riley! What´s your name?”
Carefully, Harry puts his hand into Joseph´s, letting the other boy shake it. The force with which he does it makes the swing Harry is sitting on rattle a bit.
“I´m Harry. Harry Potter,” he answers, carefully looking for a reaction on the boy´s face. His name doesn´t seem to be ringing a bell for Joseph, though.
If it was even possible, the grin on Joseph´s face widens even more at that.
“It´s nice to meet you, Harry!”
Well, that´s not something Harry has heard before, like, ever, so he´s not sure how to answer that. He´s honestly confused, but decides that the best course of action is to not question this strange boy, who by now has let go of his hand.
Harry won´t ever say it out loud, but his hand suddenly feels a bit cold. It´s an odd feeling. He wishes Joseph would shake his hand again.
The boy doesn´t seem too thrown off by the fact that Harry didn´t answer that. Instead, Joseph starts to fill the silence that fell between them.
“Say, how come no one´s here?” Joseph asks, looking left and right as though someone else was about to jump out of the bushes or from behind the slide.
Harry shrugs. “No one comes here. There´s other playgrounds and this one is run down.”
There is silence for a moment and somehow Harry feels like Joseph is studying him. His brown eyes look Harry up and down, then he looks around once more, and finally his eyes settle on Harry again. His head is tilted to the side, confusion in his eyes.
“So how come you´re here? And by yourself too?”
Harry stills. This boy really doesn´t know him, Harry slowly realizes, eyes widening. He doesn’t know that all the kids think he´s a freak. Doesn´t know that no one wants to get close to Harry because of who he is, because of how he looks and because of the threat of Dudley coming after them too. Joseph doesn´t know that most parents tell their kids to be careful around him, because “poor Harry is probably traumatized and not right in the head”.
Somehow, knowing this makes something warm bloom in Harry´s chest. An emotion that Harry can´t quite name.
It´s the same feeling he gets whenever the Dursley´s go out of the house and leave him alone for the day. That feeling that crawls through his veins and make his body feel warm, like an unspeakable weight dropped from his shoulders. The same feeling he gets whenever he knows he won´t be hit for making a mistake because Vernon feels particularly generous. The same feeling he feels on his birthday, when he sits in his cupboard and quietly smiles to himself and wishes himself a happy birthday at midnight. The same feeling he wakes up with after another wonderful dream, where warm hands cup his face and a voice whispers, “I´ll take care of you”.
Something like hope. Happiness. Relief.
He shrugs again, still slightly dazed from the warmth blooming in his chest. “I like it here,” he mutters, a flush creeping up his face when he realizes just how intensely Joseph is looking at him, “no one comes here, so I can relax. It´s quiet.”
Another moment of quiet falls over them.
There´s no answer for a few beats and Harry´s heart drops, thinking he might have said something wrong, but then Josephs speaks again, voice chipper.
“Alright, that´s cool. So you like the quiet, yeah? Would you mind if I joined you? I can be quiet, if you want me to.”
Any other day, Harry would have said that yes, he did mind. If it were anyone else, Harry would have either told them to leave or he would have left himself. But somehow, before he could even think about it, Harry was already answering –
“No!” The answer came loud and short, interrupting Joseph. Harry and Joseph blink, both of them surprised by Harry´s outburst. He flails when he notices Joseph starting to pout, clearly disappointed by Harry´s answer. “I mean yes! I mean – You can join. I don´t mind. It´s fine.”
God, he really is making a fool out of himself. Even if Joseph doesn´t know about him, he will surely think that Harry´s weird. A freak. Because at the end of the day, everyone does.
But Joseph does none of that. Instead the pout disappears just as fast as it came and he´s grinning again. “Thanks!” Joseph exclaims, before skipping towards the other swing, the one on Harry´s left, and happily jumping up to sit down on it as well.
Once seated, Joseph actually sticks to his word and keeps to himself. He´s swinging back and forth, humming a happy tune to himself, but isn´t speaking to Harry. He´s not even looking at Harry either. He thinks it´s because he mentioned liking the quiet and for some reason, Joseph was considerate enough to listen to him. The silence somehow isn´t forced though. Harry feels comfortable as he watches Joseph swing and listens to the happy song he´s humming under his breath.
This entire situation is really bizarre.
Somehow, things get weirder though. Because for some reason, instead of keeping to himself, like Harry would have done if it were anyone else, he opens his mouth to break the silence and start a conversation.
“I haven´t seen you here before.”
Joseph immediately stops humming and his legs stop swinging as well. The momentum is still carrying him however, so Harry´s eyes follow him back and forth as Josephs tries to look back at him, evidently surprised that Harry said something despite having been silent before.
“Well,” Joseph says, abruptly stopping the swinging by digging his feet into the sand below him so that he can hold eye contact better, “That´s probably because we´re new in this neighborhood. Mum, Dad and I moved here because Dad boss said he had a job for him here in London. We´re actually from Manchester. We arrived only a few hours ago.”
That make sense. It explains the weird accent. It would also explain why Joseph hasn´t heard anything about him yet.
“Did you move into number 19, Privet Drive?” Harry asks, because he remembers Aunt Petunia talking about how glad she was that the lady who previously lived in that house finally moved out after her and her boyfriend got together. Joseph lights up and nods, seemingly excited that Harry knew.
“Yeah, that´s the one! How do you know?”
“I live in number 4,” Harry admits, watching Joseph´s eyes widen in surprise. “Number 19 has been standing empty for a few months. I thought you might have moved in there, then.”
“That´s –“
Whatever Joseph was going to say was interrupted by a loud voice calling through the streets, sounding slightly frantic and a bit worried. “Joseph? Joseph! Where are you, honey?”
Both Joseph and Harry turns to the where the shouting came from, the former looking sheepish while the latter looks confused. The woman shouts again, this time with even more worry seeping into her voice. Joseph sighs, rubbing the back of his neck and hopping off the swing.
“Ah, that´s my Mum,” Joseph explains, looking at Harry apologetically, “I wasn´t supposed to go exploring yet. Mum worries a lot, you know. Thought I could sneak away for a bit to look around the neighborhood, but, well.” He shrugs in a gesture that says “what can you do” and turns to look into the direction of where his mother probably was.
Harry watches as he shuffles, looking unsure whether or not to go just yet, but when he lets out a resigned sigh Harry knows the boy made a decision.
“I better get back before she gets mad. You know how Mums get, yeah? Always nagging to make sure you´re back home on time and stuff.”
No, actually, Harry doesn´t, because his own mother died before he could get to know her and his Aunt never worried about him. But he´s not going to tell Joseph that.
Joseph hesitates for another moment, before he lights up again and turns to Harry with a grin on his face. “Say, tomorrow’s Saturday, yeah? So you don´t have school, right? Want to meet up again during lunchtime tomorrow here?”
Probably not, because I´m most likely going to be locked into my cupboard, so I won´t be able to go out, Harry wants to explain, but knows that that´s probably a weird thing to say. The last time he told someone that he had to stay in a cupboard, they looked at him weird and when Aunt Petunia heard about it she´d yelled at him the entire day, saying that it was no one´s business what was going on inside their house.
Moreover, Harry should definitely tell him no because he´s already going to be in trouble. If he sneaks out tomorrow as well, he´s as good as dead. Uncle Vernon would for sure kill him if he does it two days in a row.
However, apparently Harry´s stupid mouth didn´t think to listen to his brain, because before he knew it he was already agreeing to it.
“Sure. I´ll be back here tomorrow.”
Completely oblivious to Harry dying inside because of his very stupid decision, Joseph lights up once more and almost starts to vibrate with how excited he looks. “Awesome! I´ll see you tomorrow then, Harry!”
Harry is still reeling from his own answer, surprised by his own utter stupidity, as Joseph starts to leave. He doesn´t move, even as he hears the footsteps that had previously been leaving come closer once more. Only when something is suddenly thrust into his chest, causing him to almost fall off the swing, does he snap back to attention. The blonde is standing in front of him, eyes wide and eyebrows slightly creased in worry. He had just thrust his warm looking jacket at Harry and was now only wearing his hoodie.
“Before I go, you look like you´ll be here for a bit, yeah? You don´t have a jacket with you, so take mine! You can just give it back to me tomorrow! Now I really have to go, see you!”
Dear God, Harry thinks he´s going to get a whiplash just by listening to Joseph spew those words out all in one breath. How is anyone actually able to talk this quickly? He wants to look up, ask Joseph what he was doing, why he gave him the jacket when it´s obviously his and also feels like he should get him to take it back, but before he can do any of that, Joseph is already gone and his jacket lying in Harry´s lap. Wide green eyes look at where Joseph had ran to. If Harry listens closely, he can still hear the boy calling out to his mum, telling her that he was on the way.
He looks down at his lap, silently contemplating what to do now, before finally deciding to put the jacket on. It´s bigger on Harry than it was on Joseph and it´s also really comfortable and warm. Harry automatically nuzzles into the warmth and lets out an involuntary sigh of relief when the cold air doesn´t get past the holes in his sweater, freezing his skin.
He´ll give it back tomorrow, Harry promises to himself, like Joseph said. There´s no use in not wearing it if he already left it here tough, so Harry figures Joseph really doesn´t mind.
Later, when the sun is slowly setting and the air is starting to get colder, Harry realizes that he should really get back to the Dursleys. In fact, he´ll be in so much trouble if he doesn´t. But then he thinks about it – about the fact that he already promised Joseph that he´s going to meet him here and that he won´t be able to keep his promise to his friend – no, the first person to treat him nicely, not his friend, not yet – if the Dursleys lock him in. How it´s likely that as soon as he gets home and any of them notice this nice jacket, they might take it away. How he´s going to lose something that doesn´t even belong to him, and if Joseph didn´t dislike him up until now, he´s definitely going to hate him for losing the jacket.
Harry gently fumbles with the sleeves of the jacket, big enough to swallow him whole, but not like Dudley´s clothes do. He then looks up at the darkening sky that now has a slight reddish tint to it, tilting his head to the side, contemplating. It doesn´t look like it´s going to rain any time soon since the sky is clear of clouds and now even the cold doesn´t bother him all that much, not when he sinks into the warmth of Joseph´s jacket.
“I´ll stay,” Harry thinks resolutely, resuming his gentle swinging. He´ll stay until tomorrow, meet Joseph here and then go back once Joseph´s mum calls him back home again. He´ll stay, so that they won´t be able to lock him in and so that Harry can give the jacket back in one piece. They won´t come looking for him, Harry knows this. There might be consequences once he does get back, but Harry can push them off until later, when Joseph isn´t involved in it.
It´s not the first time he´s tried to stay away for longer periods of time. When he was six, Harry heard about a runaway in the news and decided to try and leave too, because anywhere would be better than with the Dursley´s. But then he was lost and didn´t have any money for food, which wouldn´t have been that much of a problem if he hadn´t already been starved for three days before that. Harry relented in the end, not because he lacked the stubbornness to starve to death if he had to, but because one of the neighbors, the strange cat lady, Ms. Figg Harry thinks her name is, ushered him back and nagged at him not to go out alone because it was dangerous for “little boys like him”. How she found him, Harry had no idea.
They all know that he can´t leave. Harry´s too young to live on his own and for some reason, no matter how much Dudley used to beg about sending Harry off to some orphanage, Petunia never once allowed it. Harry always found that a bit weird, because Aunt Petunia had always given Dudley all he asked for, but she had never shipped Harry away, no matter how much his cousin pleaded and whined about it.
Well. Not that it mattered in the end.
Right now Harry wasn´t there and they couldn´t nag at him. He could use this time to think more about this strange encounter with the new boy and push the thoughts of tomorrow´s doom aside for now.
Late in the evening, when even the red tint has left the sky and stars were now painting it in bright constellations, Harry hops off from the swing and grabs his backpack, before settling with his back against a tree. The grass is a bit cold, but it´s dry so that´s a plus. He drapes Joseph´s jacket over him like a blanket and then tucks his backpack behind his head so that he doesn´t have to directly lean against the trunk of the tree.
By the time Harry´s eyes start to fall closed, he doesn’t even register how horrible the day had been, not when he goes to sleep with his mind stuck on a boy with the widest smile he´s ever seen and dark eyes the color of hazel, smiling at him like no other had ever done.