Chapter Text
2nd January 1987
Stale ash and cigarette butts are better than the musty scent of rotting cabbage and cat urine that oozes from the walls of Mrs Figg's house. That much is undeniable, Harry thinks as he sits on the pavement outside of the batty old woman's home, toeing the crumpled filters in the gutter at the side of the road. He's tucked himself behind the overgrown bushes that dominate the entirety of her front garden, meaning he can't be seen from her windows, even if she looks down from the top floor of her house.
He'd rather be out here in the miserable January cold, hunched over his knobbly knees and trying his very best to plug the ends of his gaping sleeves up with small hands, than inside, warm and well-fed on week-old turkey sandwiches. The only reason he isn't yet is because Aunt Petunia was in such a rush to take Dudley for an emergency visit to the hospital (after he stuffed himself sick on Christmas cake, plum pudding and two boxes of shortbread), that she practically kicked him out of the car on the way out of their estate as an afterthought and hadn't bothered sticking around to see her nephew inside.
('No one would want a little freak like that cluttering up A&E,' he can just imagine Uncle Vernon saying, mustache quivering and face puce. 'Bad enough we have to look at him, no need to parade him around and about in public too, Petunia. He's better off out of sight.')
Harry doesn't even know if Mrs Figg is home – only knows that he doesn't particularly care to find out. He hopes that in her desperation to get her 'poor, precious Dudders' to the doctors, Aunt Petunia dropped Harry off without any forethought or care for contacting the weird old lady.
Even if he freezes to death before he's collected (which might not be until much later tonight), the six-year-old boy is quite certain that he doesn't mind. He's got a sniffle and he's starting to worry that his nose and ears might fall off (if his fingers don't beat them to it), but that's a small price to pay. At least out here, it's quiet. Calm.
Wails of far off sirens, growl of tyres on tarmac, voices and televisions muffled by thick, warm walls. Down the street, one of Mrs Figg's neighbours is whistling Silent Night. For such a smelly, overgrown, icy place, Harry finds the bushes to be really rather a nice change of pace.
*
It's been maybe an hour since he was dropped off, when Harry hears it.
The pattering of paws, the gurgling growl of someone trying to talk with their mouth full, and then—
And then—
"Noo, ssstupid! Hurtss! Cold, kill, ow! I bite!"
The voice is high and wispy, more a hiss of expelled air than anything else. Young Harry, with every hair standing on end and a funny gallop to his heart, peeks out of the bushes to find one of Mrs Figg's dreaded cats, Snowflake (a rotund, fluffy white thing with a rather squashed face and big, bulbous green eyes), hunched over on the edge of the road. He's got something long and squiggly in his mouth. A something that is most definitely talking.
Understandably upset at the thought of Snowflake eating something that has a human voice, Harry acts on instinct, lunging forwards and grabbing the fat beast by its scruff. This is only so effective, considering that Snowflake is a very big cat, and Harry is only a very small six-year-old, but it works to startle the beast out of its chewing.
Snowflake, with a furious yowl and a hiss, lunges back to scratch at Harry's arm, dropping the squirmy, squeaky creature.
"Hurtsss," it says as it falls to the frosty asphalt and wraps itself into a knot.
"Oomph," Harry says as he lands on his bottom, the huge furball of a cat ricocheting off down the street with its tail puffed out to the same size as its body.
With only a cursory feeling of panic that he might be seen, Harry scrabbles up onto his knees to dust off his sore palms, and looks properly at whatever it is that was talking.
It's a sort of dull orangey-red, with shiny scales and a noodle body about the same length as Harry when he stands on his tiptoes. It's curled up tight, and its chest is rising and falling at a very quick rate. (Or at least, Harry guesses that's its chest. Kinda hard to tell, when it's all just one long line.)
A snake. A talking snake.
There's a nasty looking bite wound toward the end of its body, bleeding sluggishly. Snowflake really hurt it. Something in Harry's chest aches for the injured serpent.
"Are you alright?" he asks, pushing his glasses straight and blinking hard.
The creature responds to this silly question by pulling its head into a wobbly 'S' and looking Harry in the eyes. If a reptile could seem startled, then Harry thinks that would be the face this one would be making. "No, sstupid. Cold. Hurtsss." It bunches up the injury and pushes it into the air. Says rather pointedly, "Ow."
"Oh." His hands flutter closer to it, but hesitate to touch. What if it bites him? Aren't snakes venomous? Despite his worries, Harry crawls a little closer. "Um, please can I help you?"
"How? Not sssnake." The sad little creature flicks its tongue at him in a movement so fast, he barely sees it.
Raising his numb fingers to his coat zipper, Harry tugs it open, to about halfway down his chest. "So long as you swear you won't bite me, it's warmer in here? I could share my jacket, if you, y'know, wanted?"
The tongue flicking draws out, until its giving one long waggle. Is it sticking its tongue out at him?
"I promise I won't, um, hurt you. And I won't let that cat at you again, neither."
The sound of a radio being switched on in the house behind him makes Harry flinch. Tinny voices and static. His shoulders hunch. If Mrs Figg looks out the upstairs window right now, she'll see him with the snake. If Mrs Figg sees him with the snake, she might tell Aunt Petunia. If she tells Aunt Petunia…
Somehow, he manages to stay still, even as his heart races.
The snake, after a moment that seems to stretch on around the little boy like an eternity, makes an unnerving, flailing movement towards him so fast that were he not already on his bum, it would very likely have him falling over backwards in shock. Deep, dark red blood flicks across the frosty tarmac from its tail, and it makes a funny wheezy sound like Dudley does when he's done too much Harry Hunting and needs to sit down for a breather.
But the snake doesn't stop – just keeps on flailing, gripping onto Harry's knobbly knees with a strength that makes the goosebumps on his arms and legs itch. It flicks its tongue erratically and then proceeds to stuff its little head inside his coat.
Harry continues to hold very, very still. Even when its wriggling nudges him first in the ribs, and then up beneath his arms.
Aside from sort of scary, ticklish and surprisingly strong, the first thing that Harry really notices is just how bitterly cold the skinny creature is. It's a little like that time last summer, when Dudley yanked Harry's collar open and poured his icy Cola down his front – only less sticky, and way colder.
(If there wasn't a chance that he might catch hypothermia before, then there certainly is now.)
From somewhere in the vicinity of his armpit, that sibilant voice expels a whistling sigh. "Warm," it says. "Ssstupid, warm."
Harry thinks he ought to be offended, being called 'stupid' by a sentient shoelace, but he's so tangled up in shock and amazement, that he isn't at all. His stomach feels fluttery, and his hands hover for just a moment over his midsection, where his scaled companion is giving him an awkward, unintentional hug. It's the first hug Harry can ever remember receiving. He wants... he wants to return it, but flounders, worried that he might accidentally press on the snakes injury.
Instead he scrambles up onto his feet and, half tripping over the loose end of his jeans, stumbles his way back towards the bushes.
Inside his jacket, hidden from the world at large, the half-frozen snake tightens its coils around its human-shaped heater, apparently content to fall silent.
*
25th July 1998
It's going to be a bad day.
He's only been awake for twenty minutes, but the tell-tale tightness in Harry's chest is enough warning. There are maggots burrowing through his muscles, there is frozen sweat gathering in his pores. Each breath he takes is laboured, exiting his lungs in a cold rush that leaves a cloud of mist in its wake, despite the summer heat.
The sun pours through the parting in the curtains in a column of light, and through smudged glasses, he watches motes of dust swirl about in a lazy waltz. He stretches into the worn springs of his mattress, muscles drawn tight after another long night of tossing and turning, the restlessness from his everyday life that seeps into his nightmares.
When he dreams, it's usually of pale skin and eyes as red as blood – of a creature with spider-like hands and cold, slick tongue that runs down the length of his scar and presses hard into his throat, right above his pulse point. Years of painful writhing and waking in cold sweats forced him to adapt, forced him not to react to the horrors his mind made up to punish him.
Those dreams aren't real, are clearly just figments of a fucked up head, and so are easier to ignore upon waking. The thing inside of him slumbers on.
That's not the case, whenever he dreams of— of back then. Of what started it all.
(And he knows by now, that he only dreams of the past when things in his life are about to go colossally tits up.)
Harry shuts his eyes against the thoughts, focusing instead on the real world.
It's so hot, so stuffy, that the heat is a physical weight, pressing into his chilled skin like an iron brand. His chest rises and falls under the pressure, sucking in thick, muggy air and exhaling icy condensation for a long while as his core temperature struggles to return to something more human.
He's pretty sure that he's got knots the size of golf balls in his shoulders, but doesn't dare raise a hand to prod at them in case the bunched muscles twitch or convulse.
(Larvae. Worms. Fingers, eating him from the inside out.)
Behind him, the blanket is bunched up against the wall, crumpled and dirty. Shoved aside at some point during the night.
Clammy skin; laboured breathing; stinging eyes. Doing his best to ignore the thing writhing inside his chest cavity, he spends precious minutes coming to terms with the fact that this is not a typical Sunday morning.
(It is watching.)
With fuzzy teeth and a mouth tasting particularly sour, Harry eventually finds it in himself to stand. The communal toilets down the hall are out of order again, but his apartment comes with a sink. Besides, as he's not sure how much he trusts his wobbly legs, the less distance that he has to cover on them, the better.
Desperate times call for measures, he thinks, grateful beyond words that he hadn't thought to pull on boxers before going to sleep, and also that he hadn't left any dishes lying around in the basin, unwashed. (Not like he even owns dishes, since he lives on meal deals, pot noodles and cheap, greasy takeout.)
By the time he's finished with a shaky morning routine of brushing his teeth and pissing into the sink, the dull throb in his temples has sharpened itself into a knifepoint stab, centred as per usual in his forehead. Despite It having woken at some point in the night thanks to his dreams, the nausea isn't so bad this morning that he can't manage to wolf down what's left over of his Friday night pizza, but it's enough to keep him from wanting to stay in the warm, stale-aired room for any longer than absolutely necessary.
After dressing in a crumpled t-shirt (with a faded, peeling Pink Floyd logo on the front) and a pair of jeans with holes large enough to expose his bony knees, Harry grabs his wallet and the red leather jacket he found in the Tube a few months back. He may have absolutely no idea who the previous owner was (and has very little interest in knowing, thanks to the rather unpleasant sweat stains on the inner lining), but it covers his arms and, with the collar turned up, obscures the lower half of his face. At this point, that's all he cares about. His trainers aren't much better than the rest of his ensemble, off-white with a sort of squeak following every step that hints at the imminent death of the heel. The laces are frayed, and the logo emblazoned on the side is an upside-down tick - a shitty Nike knockoff he dug out of a bargain bin a year or so back, right when his last pair gave out.
He purposely doesn't look into the mirror on the back of the door as he works his way down the series of seven locks and deadbolts, feeling his nerves clamouring at each of the scraping clicks. The door opens out into a grungy grey hallway, and Harry edges out.
(Nothing ever feels safe, after seeing what magic could do. Especially not on the bad days.)
The elevator is broken (as always) and the stairwell is tacky underfoot, the stench of piss radiating off of the exposed concrete thanks to the sun blaring through the wide, grimy windows. Harry keeps his mouth shut and breathes as little as physically possible, avoiding the handrails despite the black spots flickering across his vision. He ignores his body's protestations to the fast movements.
There's a lot of noise from various corridors on his descent from his top-floor flat - thumping bass; a muffled shouting match; the slam of a closing door - but Harry pushes down the urge to look back over his shoulders, balling his shaky hands into fists at his sides as he reaches the ground floor.
As always the brown-and-yellow 'lobby' of the complex is empty, and the door of the nearest apartment hangs off its hinges. Avoiding touching the cracked glass of the front door, he turns the latch and pushes against the metal frame until it creaks open, slipping out onto the street beyond.
He doesn't study the other down-and-outs lingering in a loud group around the entrance, ducking his head and focussing solely on the trailing laces on his trainers. The stink of weed and cigarette smoke does little for his throbbing head but he makes no comment and meets no eyes, like that might help him disappear.
It's been about two years since he was last stopped, but still he hides behind a grown-out fringe, tatty clothes and hunched-in shoulders. There's only so much time before it happens again. The clock has always been on a countdown – has never stopped ticking. He feels it, in his gut. His luck has run out.
(It is awake...
And today's going to be a bad day.)
Harry manages to pass by China Palace, Tony's Plumbing and the stretch of five shuttered, blacked-out shop fronts before the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up, and the ice begins to force its way through his skin.
Eyes, eyes on the back of his neck—
An unnatural chill picks up around Harry, despite the heat of baking tarmac and exhaust fumes. His chest tightens, and he stuffs his hands into his pockets, fist clenched to a white-knuckled grip. His clothes tug lightly in the breeze, the colour draining from his thin face.
He makes it maybe two streets before he catches on to a disruption in London's midday cacophony. It's a small sound, easily lost amidst engines and shouting and sirens. Easily missed.
Hard-heeled shoes clicking against the pavement, almost in time to Harry's feet.
Footsteps, closing in behind him.
Someone's following him. Of course they are.
He picks up his pace, long strides that force the person hounding him into a slow jog in order to keep up. His legs protest, still feeling weak, but he pushes through. Just one straggler isn't a problem, even if it does mean he'll have to move on from here and find a new home somewhere else.
It's as he's contemplating an escape route, that something catches in Harry's peripheral vision. He turns his head just so, as if glancing at a passing car.
Across the road, a man wearing a long flowing black coat keeps pace with him, making no effort to hide his pointed focus.
Harry steps around a beggar and a pair of fruit stands set up outside of a greengrocer, smelling strongly of overripe melon. A couple of Indian men are yelling at one another just inside the doorway, braced over delivery boxes. On the other side of the street, the man is forced to weave between a series of vendors and milling bodies just to keep up. Harry's lucky – these idiots have chosen a busy stretch of road on which to try intercepting him.
Two of them? He's faced worse odds and survived. At least he's got the advantage here, having spent enough time in this part of the city to know his way around. All it'll take is slipping out of their sight behind a crowd, or ducking into one of the many, twisting alleys in order to throw them off his scent. He knows this part of the city like the back of his hand. Shaking them shouldn't be an issue.
Harry begins to jog, turning all his attention ahead of him, to his escape route. His vision blurs around the edges.
Two is okay, he says to himself, breathing through his mounting stress. The street opens onto a busier crossroad barely fifty feet ahead, meaning he'll have a chance to outmanoeuvre them. He should still be able to—
His steps almost falter. His stomach lurches.
On the other side of the intersection, stood still and staring down the street at him is a man framed by long, white-blonde hair and the same black cloak as Harry's other pursuers.
(They're hunting me, he thinks. And then: shit. Fuck.)
Three. There's three of them. And from the loud clacking of expensive heels, the one at his back is closing in fast.
His heart pounds so hard that the Monster that lives in the tight, stifling carapace of his chest stirs. Shifts until Its long, maggot-tipped fingers stop gnawing at Harry's bunched muscles and it can push outwards instead. The Monster presses the maggots through the cracks in his ribs, eating their way towards the surface by slow increments, bloody mouths leaving behind them a trail of ice.
For a single breath, as his pace picks up and he rounds the corner of the crossroads onto the next street, his vision blurs, turning the white of the Monster as It struggles for control.
And then a fourth man steps out from a blocked-off doorway, hand raised like he'll reach to grab him.
Four.
Ducking the outstretched hand and the sizzling burst of red light that follows, Harry picks up the pace, sucks a deep breath into his freezing lungs. Fights the instinctive urge to let up under the pressure of the Monsters clutching, writhing hands – to let his eyes roll back in their sockets and give in—
But he's in trouble, so he shares his heart and brain with It long enough that the wind rips through him; whips down the length of the street in various directions and hurtles towards the four magic users.
Hopes he tears through their limbs and leaves them breathless, broken, to bleed out and boil alive in the gutters—
The pavement bursts apart beneath his feet, gaping crevasses that rush at them—
The Monsters wide mouth clamps down around his heart, ragged, rotten teeth digging in as Its fingers break through his skin, blinding white, tearing him apart in a vengeful torrent of air.
Consciousness flickers.
Still, he holds onto himself.
Cars spin out of control, skidding across the road and colliding with screeching metal into shop fronts, into pedestrians, into one-another.
Ordinary people all around him throw themselves down to the ground, their clothing and hair thrashing. They scream and cower, despite the fact that they can't see It, eating him alive. No one can; no one but him.
Flickers.
From every angle, from all sides, he sees them. Through eyes that aren't his.
The strange men – the magic wielders hunting him – open their mouths, raise their arms. Shout threats that can't be heard over the din of the shrieking wind.
Light flashes from their hands, a rainbow of blurring colours, and the Monster lashes out again, tears the magic right from the air and sends it smashing back into them.
The man across the intersection crashes back into the building, followed by a groaning, caving lamppost, and large lumps of pavement.
Windows burst. Powerlines split. The body across the street goes flying into the path of an oncoming van.
Flickers.
Harry's so busy watching the havoc unfold, struggling to gain some kind of leverage on the Monster before It hurts too many more innocent bystanders, that at first, he misses it.
Another man, right in front of him, appearing with an earsplitting crack, into the heart of the storm. A fifth. Huge, black cloak, hand aloft. Mouth gaping in a yellow-fanged grin.
Barely ten feet away.
The Monster sees him, though – sees him and is ravenous.
It hurtles towards the fifth, invisible to all but Harry, and tears through his coat, aiming right for his heart. Somehow the stranger dodges, even as he's grazed across the side of his face by the Monster's full force.
Somehow, still breathing. Still standing. Swaying.
Fifth's hand grips at the bloody, open furrows carved into his face and chest, even though he's making to step towards him and Harry— nonono—
Harry's heart is swallowed by the Monster.
He knows the moment it happens, because the pressure of his feet on the pavement, the weight of his clothes, the smell of fumes and the blistering heat of the summer day, disappear.
With them gone, all that's left is the roaring of his fear, and a tornado of frigid air.
And with that, Harry Potter vanishes from London.
Behind him he leaves half a dozen badly injured Muggles, two unconscious wizards, and three more bleeding profusely. The street, only a few blocks away from where he'd spent the last few years living in relative peace, is ripped apart.