Chapter 2
Harry wakes up with a face full of gravel and his body on fire.
It takes him a few tries to push himself up to a sitting position. His right arm is a dead weight at his side, full of shards of glass that poke and jab him from the inside out with every slight movement. His shoulder is stiff and burning, throbbing in nauseating tandem with his heartbeat. There’s blood drenched down his shirt and a matching puddle on the ground.
He has to breathe through his mouth for a while until the nausea stops roiling through him, and slowly the empty street stops swimming in front of his eyes, settling into place, though blurry. He finds his glasses, frames bent, on the ground a few feet away. He slips them on with a wince. It’s dawn, now, a few hours before anyone will be poking their noses out the door, and there’s no sign of the wolf.
Harry doesn’t know much about wolves. He doesn’t think they usually leave their prey alive, though.
He scrubs a shaky hand across his face. Flakes of dried blood fall loose into his lap, feeling tacky on his cheek. Pain is radiating out from his shoulder, bad enough that he feels light-headed, and the rest of his body is cold and aching from the night spent sprawled on the frozen ground.
He wants to go back to sleep, preferably in bed under his blankets and behind the safety of his cupboard door. He wants someone to tut over his wounds and bandage him up like Aunt Petunia did when Dudley scraped his knees after falling off Victor’s skateboard. He wants someone to walk him home and make sure no other animal comes to take a chunk out of him.
Laboriously, Harry finds his way to his feet. His legs wobble and threaten not to hold his weight, but he locks his knees stubbornly and blinks the stars from his eyes. He’s too old to cry, but the pain is washing through him in waves, his arm feels like it’s going to fall off, and his head is screaming. At least any tears will help wash the blood off his face.
The trek to Privet Drive is much longer than it had seemed last night.
By the time he reaches Number 4, the neighbourhood is stirring with signs of life. Aunt Petunia is an early riser, if only to make sure Harry’s up and about in time to cook breakfast for Vernon and Diddydums, and Harry almost cries in relief when she answers his knock at the door.
“Where have you been all night?” she asks before he even steps a foot inside. “Causing all sorts of trouble, I imagine, ruining our good name. Get inside before the neighbours see you.” He tries to slip past her, but he’s slow and dizzy, and the blood staining his clothes is hard to miss. “Absolutely not!” she screeches. “Trailing filth and blood into my home, how dare you! What did you do?”
She snags a claw around his elbow to spin him around, but it’s his bad one, sending a jolt of white-hot pain up his arm and causing him to yelp. She drops his arm like she’s been scalded.
“What happened?” Aunt Petunia has never been sympathetic, not to Harry, not ever, but her voice is suddenly hushed and tight. She’s gone pale as a sheet, as if she’s the one whose blood is tracking all over Privet Drive.
“I’m fine,” Harry says. It hurts to talk, like his throat is scraped raw, like he spent all night screaming. He can’t have, though. Surely a neighbour would have heard, would have come out to investigate. “It was an animal, bit me last night.”
Aunt Petunia pins him with her narrowed eyes, watching him sway unsteadily.
“Into your cupboard,” she says eventually. “I’ll not have you scaring Dudley. Once he and Vernon are out of the house, you’ll get cleaned up.”
“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” he mumbles.
She shoos him under the stairs, quickly clicking the door shut behind him.
Harry loses strength quite abruptly, dropping to his bed. The impact jars his arm, but he’s too far gone to do more than whimper, getting sucked into the darkness that’s been creeping at the edges of his vision since he first forced his way upright. He’s unconscious in seconds.
Aunt Petunia wakes him with a sharp poke some undetermined amount of time later. He startles awake disorientated, still exhausted.
“Get up, boy,” Aunt Petunia hisses at him. “We have to get that blood cleaned up before it gets all over the house.”
Harry stumbles out of the cupboard, wincing at the sting of the lights. His arm is throbbing and he’s trembling despite the sweat sticking his clothes to his skin.
Aunt Petunia looks disgusted by the sight of him, but she’s oddly gentle as she guides him to the bathroom. She even helps him get the shirt over his head, since trying to lift his arm almost brings him to his knees.
The bite wound on his shoulder feels hot and irritated, and it’s still bleeding, albeit sluggishly. Harry squints into the mirror through the pounding of his head and sees that the entire area is red and angry, covered in blood and dirt. The bite itself looks awful, with distinctive teeth marks and torn skin that make bile rise in his throat.
“Clean yourself up,” Aunt Petunia says faintly, shoving the first aid kit into his hands. She eyes the bite mark dubiously but doesn’t suggest a doctor, so Harry assumes she doesn’t think it’ll need stitches or shots. The Dursleys don’t like to take him to doctors, but they’d taken him when his hand was smashed in the car door and he needed a splint, so Aunt Petunia would probably take him now if she thought it necessary.
He hopes it won’t leave a nasty scar. He already has one and isn’t eager for another, even if he thinks the one arching down from his forehead and cutting across his eyebrow kind of looks cool, like splinters of lightning.
Harry sips water from the tap and takes several fortifying breaths before he tackles the wound. The water helps clear his head, and slowly, he manages to control the shakiness of his hands.
He washes the blood off first, sacrificing one of Aunt Petunia’s towels. He thinks about taking a shower to get the blood out from his hair, but the thought of the water hitting his shoulder makes him woozy, so he settles for getting as much of it out with the damp towel as he can.
The first aid kit provides some sterile wipes and bandages, so he fixes himself up as best he can. He has to sit on the floor for a break in the middle of it when the unfairness of it all hits him (Dudley would have gotten a full escort to the hospital, no doubt, and been pampered for weeks after), but he rallies quickly.
With the bandage wrapped awkwardly around his swollen shoulder, and two of Petunia’s headache pills hastily washed down with water from the tap, he feels a bit better. He still looks grey and ill in the mirror, his eyes a little too wide and wild, and with deep bruises forming on his side and his collarbone, but he feels more human, more like himself.
Aunt Petunia’s waiting for him outside the bathroom door. Her nostrils flare when she sees the towel balled up in his hand, ruined beyond any hope of saving, but she doesn’t say anything about it. Harry reckons he must have scared her something awful, coming in drenched in blood like that. He imagines it might be difficult to explain to the police if your nephew bleeds out in your doorway, known delinquent or not.
“Better?” Aunt Petunia asks briskly.
Harry nods.
“Good. I won’t give you chores, as I have no interest in hearing you whine all day. You’ll stay out of the way and go straight to the cupboard when Dudley gets home.”
“Yes, Aunt Petunia. Thank you.”
Her face pinches like it always does when he says something she doesn’t like, but he’s too tired to think what he might have said wrong, and she doesn’t scold him. She sniffs at him and turns away with one last order to get rid of the towel away from prying eyes.
He doesn’t know how to do that without maybe tearing it into pieces and shoving them deep into the rubbish bins outside, but he doesn’t want to do that right now, not before getting a few more hours’ sleep while he’s been granted the opportunity. Instead, he brings the towel down to his cupboard with him and stows it in the corner, making a note to take care of it as soon as he’s up and about again.
For now, he crawls back onto his mattress and goes back to sleep.
He wrestles with bad dreams. Most of it is just disjointed pictures, flashes of colours and impressions, green and red clashing and swallowing each other, but he sees the wolf, too, in bits and pieces. The yellow of its eyes, its gaping mouth, the lolling tongue. The sounds of its paws on the gravel. A laugh, high and cruel. The impossibly loud roaring of an engine.
There’s never a clear picture of the danger, just parts of a whole, a feeling of dread sinking in his stomach and the points of fire on his shoulder as the teeth sink into his skin again and again.
He tosses and turns and wakes up with a gasp, drenched in sweat and his heart racing. His fingers are clawed into his mattress, so tense it’s painful, and his shoulder is burning again, although it’s not the agony it was this morning.
He focuses on getting his breathing under control before he’s sick, listening carefully to the noises outside his cupboard. Irrational thoughts of the wolf sneaking its way inside and finding him again send him shivering, even though he knows it’s stupid.
The tiny numbers on the beat-up alarm clock Harry had snuck out of Dudley’s second bedroom over the summer tell him it’s a little past eight at night. He’s surprised he slept so long; he must have lost more blood than he thought. It explains the cramping of his stomach, at least—he hasn’t eaten in over a day.
Harry wonders if Aunt Petunia thought to leave him a little dinner for when he woke up. He might as well check.
“Aunt Petunia?” he calls softly as he creeps out of the cupboard. The house feels still and quiet around him, even though it’s a bit early for the Dursleys to have turned in for the night.
As he slips quietly down the hall, he sees light spilling out from under the kitchen door. He slows down as he approaches, hearing the low murmur of voices. Interrupting his aunt and uncle won’t grant him any favours if he hopes to beg food off them, so he hesitates.
“—under our watch, they might come asking questions,” his aunt’s voice says anxiously.
“Rubbish,” says Uncle Vernon. “Left us with the boy for nine years without a peep, no use bothering us now. If any of those freaks do show up, I won’t stand for their—”
“Not so loud, Vernon, I don’t want Dudley to hear.”
“The boy’ll be fine, Pet. It’s his own ruddy fault for wandering about at all hours, attracting all sorts of trouble. Serves him right to get attacked like that; might teach him a lesson. He’ll be healed up in no time and none of them will know anything about it, you mark my words.”
Harry wonders who ‘they’ are, and why his aunt and uncle are so worried they’ll find out about the wolf attack. Maybe they mean those child welfare people Dudley always threatens will come to take Harry away to an orphanage, where he’ll be lost and forgotten. Harry sort of hopes they do take him away; even an orphanage must be better than here, where the adults in his life let him get mauled by a wild animal and then make him bandage himself up afterwards.
Petunia and Vernon have stopped talking now, so Harry dares to crack the door open.
“Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon,” he says, slipping inside. “May I have something to eat?”
Aunt Petunia jumps at the sight of him, wild-eyed, like she’s panicked at the thought of his eavesdropping. He doesn’t know why, though. Hearing them complain about child services is hardly interesting enough to worry about.
“Haven’t been much use today, boy,” Uncle Vernon says, eyes narrowed.
Harry straightens his back, ignoring the way his shoulder twinges warningly. “No, sir,” he says levelly. “I’ve been ill. Perhaps some food will help me build my strength back up.” He meets Vernon’s eyes challengingly, sees the displeased squint of his watery blue eyes.
“Hmph,” Uncle Vernon says. “Fine. Petunia’s gone to the trouble of making you up a plate in the fridge. Eat it quickly and then off to bed with you. I want you up early, ready to catch up on chores, do you hear me?”
Considering Uncle Vernon usually sleeps in until past ten on Saturdays, Harry isn’t too worried. Aunt Petunia will be up earlier, but she’s been strangely lenient all day, so maybe it’ll continue into tomorrow.
“Yes, Uncle Vernon.” Not wasting time, Harry darts to the fridge. He finds a cellophaned plate of sausages, mashed potatoes, and peas waiting for him.
He doesn’t bother to heat it up, heeding Vernon’s warning to be fast. He hovers at the counter and shovels the food into his mouth as eagerly as Dudley, suddenly ravenous. He polishes off his plate in record time, under the distasteful watch of his relatives.
Having food in his stomach fortifies him, settling the last of his jangled nerves. He still aches all over and feels uncomfortably warm, but at least the pain in his stomach has subsided. He rinses the dishes, clears away his mess, and ducks out of the kitchen before Uncle Vernon can find something else to be angry about.
Harry retreats back to his cupboard, but after sleeping the day away, he isn’t nearly tired enough to go back to sleep. Instead, he idly tests the range of motion for his arm. It twinges painfully when he raises it above shoulder-level, but he can’t feel his heartbeat in the wound anymore, and he hasn’t bled through the bandages, so he thinks it’s starting to heal, despite the tight, swollen feeling creeping from his neck to his elbow. In all, he thinks he was probably very lucky to get away with only the injuries he did. Next time he’ll just risk braving Dudley and Piers.
He settles in to finish Mr Alden’s book for the rest of the night.
*
Dudley throws one of his trademark tantrums in the morning.
Harry misses the first half, since he’s busy giving the garden its last big weeding before the winter. He thinks Aunt Petunia probably just wanted him out of the house as much as possible for the day, but he doesn’t mind, because chores outside get him away from his relatives.
He’s even more grateful for the distance when Dudley’s voice starts to carry out through the backdoor. It’s the familiar whining pitch that means he’s putting on a great show for Aunt Petunia, likely with fake tears and everything. Harry’s played audience to the performance many times, and it’s not a pretty sight. Dudley knows how to make himself turn an alarming fire engine red, and to screw up his face in just the right way to make it look like he’s crying without actually shedding a tear. Aunt Petunia falls for it every time.
“I had to go to school, while he got to stay home,” Dudley wails. “It isn’t fair! He always gets what he wants.”
“Oh, Diddy Duddums,” Aunt Petunia simpers. “Don’t let the nasty boy upset you. I’m sorry about yesterday, darling, you’re always Mummy’s top priority. How about this—we’ll have a family day, hm? Whatever you want to do, just say!”
“Will he get to come?” Dudley asks suspiciously. All signs of crying are gone from his tone, and once again Harry is struck by how blind Aunt Petunia can be.
“No! Not at all. Just the three of us, Dudders, I promise.”
“Alright, then,” Dudley says, sounding satisfied. “I want to go to the cinema.”
Aunt Petunia starts cooing, so Harry ducks his head and gets back to work to tune her out.
When he finishes weeding the garden, he starts on the attic. There are boxes Uncle Vernon wants stored away, most of them containing toys Dudley’s forgotten or broken, ones that are too large or just don’t fit in the overflowing second bedroom. The boxes aren’t too heavy, but there are a lot of them, and it’s difficult to find space for them in the already full attic. Harry also has to contend with his bum shoulder, which protests angrily every time he moves too vigorously or tackles a too-big box. His bruises aren’t too happy, either.
He’s sweating by the time he carries the last box up, head starting to feel fuzzy, and he takes a break to lean against one of the stacks of old scrapbooking supplies Aunt Petunia’s long since abandoned. He pants and sweats and tries not to choke on the dust, hugging his right arm to his chest. His shoulder feels warm and sticky, red seeping through his shirt. He thinks about the rest of his chore list, full of items he’s sure Uncle Vernon picked out specifically to punish him for yesterday.
“Boy!”
As if summoned by his mutinous thoughts, Uncle Vernon’s lumbering steps start heading towards the attic ladder. Harry quickly wipes his brow and scurries down.
“We’re going out for the afternoon,” Uncle Vernon says. “You will be staying with Mrs Figg while we’re gone. I don’t want to hear about any funny business.”
Harry is dismayed by this. Mrs Figg isn’t so bad, as far as babysitters go, but her house smells like cabbages and her cats always leave their fur all over his clothes. He puts up with it once a year for Dudley’s birthday because he has to, and he’s been perfectly happy not to see any more of her for the rest of the time.
“You can leave me here,” Harry says hurriedly. “I can look after myself.”
“And give you free run of the house?” Uncle Vernon scoffs. “Come back to find the place in ruins? Absolutely not. You’re going to Figg’s, and I won’t hear anymore belly-aching about it.” He eyes Harry’s shoulder with distaste. “Clean yourself up, boy. Don’t make us late.”
Harry scowls at the man’s retreating back. He doesn’t know what his uncle thinks he’ll get up to with them out of the house, but he’s hardly going to explode the place, is he? He knows how to clean up after himself.
Still, at least Mrs Figg usually gives him dinner. It will be some off-tasting soup she digs out of her freezer, maybe with some stale crackers if she thinks he’s looking a bit peaky, but it’ll be warm, so he can’t complain too much. She might even let him watch something on the television and give him something for the sickly fever he feels building.
Knowing better than to keep his relatives waiting, Harry runs to change his shirt and wash the dust and sweat from his face.