Chapter 4
The nearest dumpster was a block west and half a block north of the park in the back of the school’s parking lot. Harry really hadn’t thought his little clean-up project through, but he was dedicated now. Hopefully Steve remembered what happened soon and managed to turn back into a human, because Harry was dying to know what had happened to him and why he’d found him in some overheated scrap metal. Also, Harry needed to pay more attention to the metal he carried, because he did not want to end up with tetanus or something else from slicing himself open on the broken metal. He managed to get through it without injury under the oddly cautious eye of Steve, so Harry counted that as his win for the week and went back to the park. The sun looked like it was about to set, and the ground finally had no more dangerous metal litter. Harry’s contented smile fell as he turned his feet reluctantly back towards his aunt’s house. As much as he was glad to be out of the house, he really hadn’t missed voluntarily cooking for his ungrateful family or voluntarily pulling up weeds in the garden to show how much he deeply appreciated his relatives’ generosity in taking him in. His mood only worsened as Steve flew off somewhere, though he tried to remind himself that Steve probably was going to find Harry and Hedwig food. Harry still had no clue why Steve had bothered to stay as long as he had when the bird could leave at any time, but Harry wouldn’t complain about that. It was nice to have someone to talk to who could really understand.
Steve woke up the next few mornings with new memories and slowly developing arms, though they seemed determined to separate from his wings and do their own things. He counted himself lucky that it didn’t hurt and tried to ignore his own subconscious poking fun at how hilarious and piteous he must look, a bird with baby arms and sometimes baby feet. Still, the sooner he managed to turn himself human again, the sooner he could talk to Harry and make plans with the young man about what he wanted to do in the future. The sooner he could turn human, the sooner he could ask why he remembered the 1930’s when whatever year they were in clearly was not the ‘30’s or ‘40’s, not unless there’d been aliens or something that completely changed society, technology, and the citiscape, and fixed the huge shortage of food and overpopulation of cities. He was beginning to think he was mad.
“James Buchanan Barnes,” a small boy said, holding his hand out to Steve like he hadn’t just scared off the bullies Steve had tried to scare off of another first grader only for them to turn on him.
“Steve Rodgers. Can I call you Bucky? You don’t seem like a James.”
“Sure thing, Stevie,” the brunette said with a smile and an arm looped around Steve’s shoulders.
Steve startled awake to thrashed from Harry’s bed and quiet, frantic hoots from Hedwig. Disoriented, he blinked for a moment before hopping out of his box, taking only a moment to look down at the legs that had started forming in place of his talons before shifting back to full bird. Harry needed him to do something, anything, even if Steve got the sense that the memory he’d been dreaming was one of the most important of his life. He started by draping a discarded T-shirt over Harry’s torso. Harry was too busy fighting the blankets to notice the extra weight of one of his shirts in any way other than panic. Steve looked desperately around the room. If he had strong arms and a voice, he would have gently shook the child awake, but Steve didn’t have that choice. Resigned, he flapped over to the cardboard box he’d been sleeping in and lifted it up, lifting it over to Harry and holding it in place for his hand to touch as it flailed.
Harry jerked awake to thin slivers of moonlight and a cardboard box held uncomfortably close to his face. “Wha- What happened?” Taking a look down at himself, Harry didn’t really have to guess. The twisted blankets and uncomfortable cold sweat twined around his body restrictively, and Harry frantically pulled himself out of bed, catching himself on one of his bed posts when his foot tangled in the blanket. He walked over to the window and leaned against the wall next to it, desperately wishing for a shower but knowing that he would never be allowed one in the middle of the night. After a while of observing the dark, motionless street below, Harry cleared his throat. “Thanks for the wake-up.”
Steve and Hedwig both trilled softly.
Harry smiled for a moment. “I’m glad you two are getting along.” He could almost imagine the scandalized look Steve was throwing him, as if to say he and Hedwig would never be anything but distant acquaintances. “I don’t suppose you want to know what my nightmare was about?”
Steve called out quietly. If he didn’t know what Harry’s demons were, he couldn’t help the young man fight them.
“Figured. I’m not sure whether to be glad that my mind doesn’t have to make up new horrors in the night - I see memories instead.” Harry’s mouth twisted slightly. “Tonight was a combination of the graveyard and the Chamber in a way that only a dream or a nightmare could make sense of.”
Steve didn’t love the sound of that, especially since he still didn’t really know what “the Chamber” was beyond a vague idea of a large snake in Harry’s second year. He really needed to talk to Harry, but he couldn’t.
“That’s all. Nothing too crazy.” Harry sat gingerly back on the side of his bed.
Steve wanted to disagree with that, but he didn’t exactly have words to do so. He would not risk startling the child further by calling out or getting him in more trouble by making noise in the middle of the night, so he settled on his bedpost to keep watch as Harry reluctantly tried sleeping again. He stayed awake even longer than Harry did, eye blinking closed only an hour or two before dawn graced the horizon once more. In the morning, Steve brought back an extra mouse for Hedwig and a bag of chips to go with Harry’s snatched breakfast sandwich. He’d had plenty of time to eat himself and continue stockpiling little things Harry might like in a repurposed bag before Steve knew he’d be expected back. He kept close to Harry throughout the day, trying out some of his dumber ideas for aerial stunts that managed to bring a smile to Harry’s face. For that, Steve would take the aching muscles and odd pull against his feathers from time to time. He took a little extra time to preen that night, but he considered it worth it.
Harry didn’t get in bed around ten when he usually wandered under the covers, bored but unable to sleep. Instead, he stayed up with the window flung wide open as per usual, though he checked it more and more as the hand on his battered alarm clock ticked closer and closer to midnight. At 11:55, Harry started picking out bits of debris from around the room and arranging them in a shape on the floor. Steve’s eyes got wider as he recognized the shape of a birthday cake on the floor. He thought he had another day to prepare! Harry said a week, and it had only been six days. What he had would have to be enough. Steve joined the hunt for appropriate materials and picked out a few small pieces that he dropped right where he wanted them.
Harry shot him a grateful look as he glanced back at the clock to begin his countdown. “Three, two, one, happy birthday Harry!” he cheered. Steve nudged Harry’s hand softly after he wiped the ‘flames’ off of the ‘candles’, hoping his own birthday wishes were heard. Harry hopped up and stood by the window hopefully. His friends would send presents anytime, he knew it! As the minutes ticked by with no swooping shapes appearing through the dark and no sounds of feathers other than those in the room with him, Harry slumped further and further into the windowsill. Eventually, he sat on his bed, leaning against the window, hoping that his friends hadn’t completely forgotten about him. His sleep was filled with images real and imagined of his friends’ sneering faces and whispered words of dislike.
Steve woke uneasily. He glanced immediately at the window, hoping to see a bird there waiting to greet Harry, but none showed itself. Still, he’d found a little sliver of metal that would do nicely for picking the lock on Hedwig’s cage, not that he knew how he knew that. Steve was willing to chalk that up to instinct or a skill he’d picked up later in life and just be glad he could at all. If he was particularly lucky, he might even be able to grab a book or two for Harry from under the stairs. He flew over to where he’d placed the thin metal bit, picked it up carefully, and landed on the floor in front of Hedwig’s cage. Now, Steve faced a problem. He didn’t trust his balance when shifted enough to land on top of the dress the owl’s cage was on, but he couldn’t reach the cage from where he was now sat on the ground.
Harry had been watching with interest as Steve flitted across the room. As the bird just stared up at the cage, he got the idea that he could move the cage down - as carefully as possible to avoid startling Hedwig - and see what the hawk wanted with it. Hopefully, he was going to use that sharp metal stick to let Hedwig free. Harry was a little disturbed that there was a piece of metal like that lying around his room, but he was glad for it at the moment. If Hedwig could get free without Uncle Vernon, they had one less thing to worry about when Harry eventually tried to leave himself. The cage shuddered slightly as Harry moved it down to the floor, and he shushed Hedwig softly. He didn’t love moving the bird, especially when she was trying to sleep, but hopefully it would be worth it.
With careful focus, Steve brought his arms out and wiggled his fingers carefully, testing their mobility. With a sharp nod, he decided his hands could be delicate enough for the task and moved the makeshift lock pick from his talon to his hand, being careful not to nick himself. Carefully, Steve shuffled slightly closer and extended his arms. His balance was screwed like this, but he wasn’t willing to try shifting more and knocking into the cage at this point. His child-like hands shook as the metal bar entered the keyhole, and he shifted it around carefully, listening to see when the pins in the lock aligned well enough for him to turn the lock and open the padlock. With one final click, the padlock shifted open, just enough for Harry to grab it and pull it off of the cage. The door swung open quietly, and Hedwig hooted. Steve hurried out of the way, shiting his arms back into wherever they went when they weren’t out as he went. The owl stepped out of her cage carefully, looked over Steve, and hooted. Before Steve could attempt any sort of reply, Hedwig flew up to perch on Harry’s bedpost, though she didn’t attempt standing on Steve’s.
“Looks like you’ve passed muster, huh?” Harry asked. “Thank you, Steve. Seriously.”
Steve just nodded his head and turned to fly out of the window. He had some last minute snatching - er, shopping - to do after successfully freeing Harry’s other feathery friend. Though neither knew how the magic-detecting spells over underage kids worked, both of them were glad to have been able to circumvent the lock without needing to use magic, managing to stay under the radar in the meantime too. Steve caught an updraft and headed over to one of the busier shopping streets, confident he’d be able to pick up the few things he wanted without too much trouble from the locals. He’d be back almost before Harry knew he was gone.
Harry sighed and slumped. He’d been focusing on Steve and the mystery of his metal stick to avoid thinking about how his friends had completely abandoned him. He loved them, or he loved them sometimes, but he really didn’t appreciate that not a single one of them bothered to send him presents. The Weasleys knew where he lived, so there was no way they couldn’t manage to give him something. Sirius didn’t probably didn’t know, though Harry wasn’t certain about that. The animagus had visited in his third year in dog form, and Harry wasn’t sure what was stopping him from doing the same again. Really, Harry couldn’t think of a single reason his anarchist godfather who professed to care about him above everything else would not bother to come see him, not unless he was being forced to do otherwise, but Sirius never followed the rules. He broke out of Azkaban to help him, so Harry’d thought a jaunt across London wouldn’t be too much for him to manage, even if he did have to do it as Padfoot. He shifted to stare out the window.
He’d almost managed to fall back asleep when his blurry eyes caught the shape of a bird carrying a package in the sky. His friends hadn’t forgotten him after all! Harry rubbed his eyes furiously and jumped out of bed to stand by the window. He was ready to receive his first present from his friends! As the shape got clearer, Harry slumped a little. He appreciated Steve bringing back something for him, he did, but he’d hoped for something from his friends on his birthday morning. Steve slowed down as he passed over Harry’s ducking head, dropping the grocery bag in Harry’s hasty hands. Harry, glad not to have dropped the package aimed at his head, sat carefully on his bed, looking at the birds perched on his bed, one asleep and one staring at him expectantly.
“I’m not sure what I’d do without you guys,” Harry said quietly. He shook himself. “I’m supposed to open this, right?”
Steve nodded his head. If it was possible for a hawk to smile, he would, but he physically couldn’t. Though he was only twelve in his oldest memory, the older Steve inside him knew that giving Harry a present was the right choice. The young man looked slightly conflicted, probably because his ‘friends’ hadn’t bothered giving him anything yet, but overall happy to get something, anything, even from a quasi-stranger.
Harry opened the plastic bag’s handles and pulled out a slightly mangled collection of wildflowers. He smiled at them, laid them carefully beside him on the bed, and reached back inside. With a shaky smile, he examined the few wrapped foodstuffs Steve had found. Some chocolates that looked pretty fancy, a few oat chocolate chip bars, and one precious Babybel cheese that was still cold to the touch. Harry would need to eat the cheese pretty much immediately, but the rest of it could join his meager stockpile of long-lasting food. He didn’t need to save food, not like he used to because Steve brought him food a few times a day, but it was comforting to have nevertheless. Slowly, Harry got up and approached Steve, holding his arms out to make clear to the guy what he wanted. Steve leaned into the touch as much as he could, bringing his little arms back out to hug Harry back.
“Thank you,” Harry whispered.
Steve crooned softly, holding Harry for as long as he was willing to be held. Harry needed more dairy, so Steve had taken the cheese at the last minute, glad to be able to provide him something he rarely was able to get on his birthday. Eventually, the new fifteen-year-old pulled back and went to go search for something that could hold a little water for his flowers. Steve retracted his arms as quickly as possible, not wanting to look ridiculous or fall off of his perch. He shuffled slightly until Harry’s relatives unlocked his door to let him free for the day, not bothering to mention anything about Harry’s birthday, just an order to be home in time to cook dinner. Even that couldn’t dull Harry’s brighter mood, and he and Steve spent the day playing in the park, Steve showing off his best tricks and Harry rating them. Apparently hawks couldn’t laugh, just screech, but Harry nearly fell on the ground laughing when he tried, so Steve didn’t feel too bad.
They had to return to the house as the sun went down. Harry’s smile fell as he walked through the doors and stayed gone for the rest of the night. By the time Ron and Hermione’s present - sent together so they must be somewhere together - of Hunoyduke’s chocolates came at 10:13 in the evening, Harry was well and truly hurt and angry. For it to have come so late in the day meant that they probably hadn’t sent it until after dinner. They probably had forgotten about his birthday then, about him, while they spent their time laughing or studying in the Burrow or wherever they were holed up. No contact came from Sirius, not even as the hours ticked past midnight. Harry crumpled to the bed and didn’t get up the next day, though he ate whatever food Steve pushed into his hands. He was too angry to even look at the box of chocolates from his best friends, but he wasn’t going to throw them away and waste the food.
Harry forced himself out of bed just past two in the afternoon on August 2nd. He walked slowly to the park and sat glumly on the swings, not reacting to Steve’s progressively showier and dumber stunts. He didn’t particularly care that he was hot or burning in the sun, or desperately thirsty. He didn’t care for much at all. Harry didn’t know how long he sat there before his cousin found him. Of course, Dudley seemed as determined as his friends and the sun to make him miserable, so Harry decided that ignoring him would probably be for the best. Like everything else in his life, this didn’t go the way he planned, or his way at all.
“Hey Big D,” Harry said. Ignoring him or letting Dudley start the conversations always went worse for Harry than talking to him while he was at least five feet away. Steve, circling above the park lazily, frowned. The chunky boy, Harry’s bully of a cousin Dudley had four others with him. He circled tighter. “Beat up another 10 year old?”
“This one deserved it,” Dudley said. Neither Harry nor Steve understood how a child could deserve being beat up by a gang, maybe because they had been beat up by gangs themselves, but Dudley’s miscreants were nodding along behind him and laughing.
“Five against one. Very brave,” Harry replied. He knew he was being antagonistic, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Dudley had been held up as perfect during all of Harry’s childhood, and Harry himself had been praised for being brave, not that he considered himself to be. Still, Dudley’s cowardice of only fighting with an audience or fighting people weaker than him brought back memories of the graveyard, how Voldemort waited until his followers arrived to begin his little show with an obviously injured fourteen-year-old. Harry wasn’t a saint, but he didn’t like being able to compare his no-good cousin to the snake man trying to kill him.
“Well you’re one to talk. Moaning in your sleep every night - at least I’m not afraid of my pillow.” Dudley and his gang laughed. Steve started debating the best way to attack Dudley. It wouldn’t be that weird to go for something shiny like the necklace on the lump’s fat neck, right? “Don’t kill Cedric! Who’s Cedric? Your boyfriend?” They were cackling now in the background, like a pack of pimply hyenas.
“Shut up,” Harry said quietly. He’d dealt with too much to be intimidated by this excuse of a human, but he couldn’t stop himself from getting angry either.
“He’s going to kill me, Mum! Where is your mum? Where is your mum, Potter? She dead? Is she dead? Is she dead, Pot-” The laughter changed to oohing, like they were eager to see a fight as Harry stood up and pulled his wand from his back pocket.
Steve kree’ed in approval. That was too much, even for a known bully. It was a good thing Harry was taking action so he wouldn’t have to. As much as he wanted to attack the fatty child and his delinquent friends, it’d be out of character for a random bird. Dudley knew too much about magic to consider a bird attack at such a time random.
Harry jammed his wand into the soft flesh of Dudley’s underjaw, too angry to do anything but breathe hard. Dudley’s friends burst out laughing at the sight, but Dudley at least was terrified. Harry backed away slightly as the sky darkened suddenly, angry clouds appearing from nowhere to block the sun. The laughter petered off as the gang looked around, knowing that whatever just happened could not have been normal. They called for Dudley, but their leader was too busy staring at the sky and Harry to respond. Steve, taken off guard by the sudden gale, was bashed away from the park. He hurried back towards Harry as quickly as he could, knowing that something was attacking Harry, even if he didn’t know what it was.
“What are you doing?” Dudley asked, staring Harry down and ignoring the questions from his gang.
Harry, wand at his side, stared back. “I’m not doing anything!”
“We’re getting out of here Dudley!” His little friends raced off, not bothering to check if Dudley was coming too. Great friends, Harry remarked snidely in his head before he remembered that his own friends were somewhere without them, that he too had been left behind. “C’mon Dudley, hurry up!” Still, they didn’t look back, and Harry and Dudley were left alone in the park. Harry couldn’t even see Steve anywhere. He hoped the bird was okay, because this sudden wind could not be easy for him to navigate.
As the sky darkened further and pushed down towards them, Harry took off running. Dudley followed closely behind. Harry knew what was happening now, that dementors were chasing him. He’d stashed his wand to prove to Dudley that this wasn’t his fault, but he regretted that now. Once they got under cover, he was going to draw his wand and hope that the Ministry would recognize his need for self-preservation as a good reason to cast his Patronus the way the law said it should. Rain started pouring down on them just before they made it under the shelter of the tunnel. Harry slowed down to a walk. Hopefully, they’d be out of the way enough to be relatively safe here, or at least safe from ambush by more than a few dementors at a time. Harry knew he could fend off hundreds of dementors - he’d done so before - but he’d be in far more trouble if Muggles other than his cousin who already knew about magic saw him.
The downpour was heavy enough to have already caused a puddle in the tunnel, and Harry mentally planned to stay away from it. He knew all too well that dementors could ice over water with their presence, but he didn’t have time to warn his cousin before the puddle iced over and frost patterns crept across the walls and dim lights. Hopefully, Dudley would realize that if there was thick frost on the lights, he shouldn’t expect the water to still be water and try walking on it. Harry looked in the direction the ice was creeping from, but he missed the dementor phasing in from above him. His shock that they could move through solid substances muted as the nasty thing grabbed his throat and slammed him against the wall high enough that his feet couldn’t touch the ground.
“Dudley, run!” Harry choked out, grasping desperately for his pocket that had the wand. It’d seemed like a good idea to stick in his opposite pocket at the time. Harry regretted that decision as the dementor holding him up and the one attacking his cousin - who had been either dumb enough to not think about the ice or too afraid to think and so slipped - started sucking on his soul. Harry stubbornly ignored his mom’s voice and Cedric’s face as he finally got a hand on his wand. Desperate for air, Harry stabbed the thing in the neck with the tip of his wand. As he clattered to the ground and lost hold of his wand, Harry wondered for a moment why no one had ever mentioned physically attacking the things as a way of fighting them off. He scrabbled back towards his wand as the dementor came back towards him, twice as angry. That at least explained why no one punched dementors - it just made them angrier. Harry opened his mouth to cast his Patronus when the hunting cry of a hawk cut him off.
Steve was pissed. He’d made it back just in time to see Harry fall to the ground from where a terrible spirit had been holding him up by the neck. His head ached as memories were pulled violently forward. Steve ignored the pain, the new knowledge, and focused instead on the thing he now knew to be a dementor attacking Harry. He might not have his wand with him, but Steve did have the talons of a magic-gifted form and the protective instincts of both bird and man screaming at him to save Harry. At least, he hoped this was a magic-gifted form like those described in his history books, because he was going to severely injure himself otherwise. Angry and desperate, Steve forced as much emotion and magic into transforming back as he could just before he got to the dementor. His feet landed on the floor just as his hand - miraculously equipped with talons - entered the black cape of the dementor, grabbing onto its spine. Steve used his wings to pull himself backwards as he moved his feet to brace on the thing’s back. Under his hands, Steve felt the spine crack first, then break away from the dementor’s body entirely. Everything that had once been the dementor shattered into little ice shards, purified by the bright lights of the souls it had consumed as they finally escaped from their prison. Steve looked up at the other dementor, ignoring Harry’s shocked eyes on him. The nasty thing fled before he could take even a step in its direction.
“I’ve always wondered what would happen if someone did that,” Steve said. He offered a hand up to Harry. Confused and slightly scared, Harry took it. “I can hear someone coming, but I’ll fly above you back to your place. We can talk there.”
Harry had just enough time to nod before Steve broke into a run and shifted back into his bird form, disappearing out of the other end of the tunnel. Though he really needed to talk to Steve and ask him questions about himself and the whole display he’d just seen, Dudley needed his help. As Harry knelt by his cousin’s head, he finally heard what Steve must have: a very squeaky wheel coming down the tunnel. Harry squinted at the figure while he carefully hid his wand from sight, cursing his lack of good vision and the few black dots lingering in his vision. The figure got closer, and Harry stared at it in shock and betrayal.
“Mrs. Figg?”
“Don’t put away your wand, Harry,” Arabella Figg instructed. “They might come back.” Apparently, she thought Harry had fought them off using magic. He wasn’t going to say otherwise.
Numbly, Harry did as she suggested. He hefted Dudley up and his cousin’s arm over his shoulder. Mrs. Figg apparently knew about magic, which meant that she’d known about magic every time he’d spent time with her, and that she’d undoubtedly known who he was and that he had magic. She hadn’t told him. Just another in a long line of betrayals and secrets kept from him Harry supposed, but he was really starting to hate everyone he knew in the magical world. He stayed silent. Speaking out had only hurt him so far, so he settled in to listen to her complaining. If he was particularly lucky, he could learn more about why she’d been out and about and how she knew about magic. Maybe she’d even been one of the people watching him, though she’d been completely ineffective in helping him. Harry could only hope she hadn’t seen Steve do whatever he did to that dementor.
“Dementors in Little Whinging? Whatever next? Whole world’s gone topsy turvy.”
“I don’t understand! How’d you know about -” Harry asked.
Mrs. Figg cut him off before he got further. “Dumbledore asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“Dumbledore asked you? You know Dumbledore?” Harry nearly shouted. She had been watching him then, spying on him for Dumbledore, the man that kept sending him back to a home Harry had tried to complain to him about. Dumbledore, the same man who hadn’t pushed for a trial for Sirius even though he could have. Dumbledore, the man who had good intentions but was never there for Harry when he needed him to be. Dumbledore, the man who apparently knew that Harry’s home life was bad but kept sending him back there anyway.
“After You-Know-Who killed that poor Diggory boy last year, did you expect him to let you go wandering around on your own? Good Lord, boy. They told me you were intelligent. Now, get inside and stay there. I expect someone will be in touch soon. No matter what happens, don’t leave the house!” With her part said, Mrs. Figg pushed the boys back towards the house and hobbled back down the street, ignoring the slight guilt she felt at adding more worries to that poor child’s mind. She completely ignored the guilt of lying to him for his entire life the way she had since Dumbledore placed her on Privet Drive to keep an eye on the child.