Chapter Text
It was a sweltering June day, in a branch of Sainburys supermarket in a small town in Surrey, and Petunia Dursley was in a foul mood. Her good-for-nothing nephew, Harry Potter, had arrived back from his fourth year of at that horrible, freakish school the previous day. However, as her perfect son Dudley was currently doing work-experience with his father, a senior manager at Grunnings Drills - she dragged the scruffy boy along with her. At least the ungrateful freak could put himself to some use and carry the bags for her.
Somehow, this summer the boy was even weirder than usual - almost completely silent. When her husband picked him up at Kings Cross station, complete silence - not even a thank you acknowledging the two-hour round trip he'd had to take. In fact, since the boy got home, he'd not heard anything from him except "Yes, Aunt Petunia," or "No, Aunt Petunia." since he got home. If it wasn't for that, she'd think he'd gone mute or something.
Maybe he was having some sort of goth phase - Petunia somehow managing to pronounce the italics in her own head. Did freaks have goth phases? She fervently hoped not - at least his usual freakishness wasn't actually visible to the neighbours, imagine if he started wearing make-up or something?
As she was absent-mindedly perusing a display of canteloupe melons, she jumped at a voice just behind her.
"Petunia Dursley, is that you, my dear?"
She looked up, and schooled her face into a smile when she recognised the woman and her rather put-upon looking husband - she was one of the older ladies from her church 's singing group. Hyacinth, she remembered - although she'd never caught the woman's surname.
Horrible singing voice, as far as Petunia was concerned - far worse than her own - and an overinflated opinion of herself. 'Not', thought Petunia, 'my type at all.'
However, Petunia greeted the slightly batty woman with an enthusiasm she didn't quite feel - appearances must be kept up, after all.
"Boy!" she hissed to the side, pressing a shopping list into Harry's hand. "Take the trolley and fetch everything on this list. I want you back here in ten minutes, no later!"
"Yes, Aunt Petunia." he mumbled, taking the list and pushing the trolley away. Aunt Petunia was already ignoring him, although he had to roll his eyes when he caught the older lady trilling "Is that the nephew you were talking about? He does look like a criminal sort with that scar and everything... you really are a saint for taking him in, Petunia, I wouldn't dream of having someone like that under my roof..."
---
Honestly, Harry didn't really need the ten minutes to find what was on the list, but dragging his heels earned himself a few minutes of peace from his Aunt. He'd rummaged through a couple of magazines out of a vague curiosity at what had been happening in the muggle world while he'd been gone - honestly, nothing particularly interesting. He picked up one at random, and flicked through it.
About ten words into an interview with someone called Marti Pellow, he sighed and replaced it on the rack and turned to head back to his aunt, when out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a display of padlocks. Pushing his glasses back up his nose, he realised that these were the same type that his Uncle Vernon used to lock up his possessions in the cupboard every year, and an idea formed.
He glanced from side to side, but couldn't spot any CCTV cameras in the area, and nobody seemed to be around. Harry slipped one of the padlocks into his pocket, and hurried back to his aunt. Nobody noticed anything amiss as they left - Harry was good at not standing out.
Harry snorted to himself as they stepped outside - if there was a world championships for blending into the background, nobody would even notice he was there.
---
Later that night, around 1am, Harry crept out of his room, wearing an old t-shirt that he sometimes slept in - although, given that it used to belong to his cousin, it was three sticks and some string away from being a four-person tent. He also had an old woolen scarf slung over one shoulder.
Avoiding the creaky floorboard outside his Aunt and Uncles room, he held his breath for a second. The noises coming from both other bedrooms reassured him - Vernon and Dudley were both snoring as usual. Well, either that, or they'd taken up late-night carpentry.
He tiptoed downstairs, knowing the alarm hadn't been set (it had a habit of going off - Vernon thought it had a fault, but the engineer hadn't found anything. Harry suspected it just didn't like him).
He stepped quietly towards the back room leading to the garage, and after carefully rummaging through his uncle's tools, found a set of bolt cutters. Heading back to the cupboard, he put his old scarf on the floor, stripped off his t-shirt to wrap around the padlock in an effort to muffle the noise, and cut through the lock with a dull thunk.
The lock dropped silently onto the woolen scarf, and Harry replaced it with his new one. He smiled to himself - now, every night, he could get anything he wanted from his trunk when no-one was around, and nobody would be any the wiser. Maybe Vernon would notice when his key didn't work - but hopefully that wouldn't be until the end of summer, and Vernon would probably just assume the key was getting stuck - it was quite a cheap lock, after all.
It was a small victory, but any victory made his confinement here a little bit easier to deal with. Besides, given there was a returned Dark Lord out for his blood, he'd quite like the opportunity to do a bit of research.
He grabbed a handful of books from his trunk - just enough that he could still conceal them underneath his loose floorboard - and locking the cupboard back up, he went back upstairs to bed.
---
Harry slept fitfully. His dreams were interrupted flashes of himself through another's eyes, tied to the gravestone in the Little Hangleton cemetary, furious green eyes flashing as he tried and failed to pull himself free.
Harry jolted awake just as the sun was rising, a sweat over his body. Despite the heat of the night, he felt a slight chill over him; he absent-mindedly noticed he'd kicked his duvet onto the floor while he slept. He shivered, remembering the dream - it felt real, too real. He could still feel the glee of whoever's eyes he was looking through, watching himself struggle, his bare skin shining in the moonlight-
Wait.
Hang on.
Why was he dreaming of himself, in that graveyard, naked?!
He flopped his head back on the pillow, and huffed in exasperation. He then, very quickly, realised he was laid in a pool of his own sweat, and grimacing, rolled back out of bed.
Wiping himself down with the same t-shirt-cum-tent from earlier, he stopped at his midriff, looking down at himself in surprise. Apparently his penis had decided that dreaming of himself naked was a good enough reason to spring a full stiffy.
Rolling his eyes at his teenage hormones and their appalling taste, he sat down at the small desk and started to read - putting the dream to the back of his mind, sternly telling his cock that he refused to deal with it when it was behaving like this.
---
"BOY!" a shriek woke Harry up from his sleep. Blinking awake, Harry tried to straighten up, only to realise he'd fallen asleep at his desk, and therefore had managed to stick a page of Advanced Magical Theory to his face with his own drool.
Peeling it off his face, he dragged himself to his feet, tugged on some sweatpants and the shirt from the previous night, and trudged downstairs - meeting his Aunt Petunia on the way up.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Dudley and Vernon have been up for half an hour already, they need their breakfast..." she trailed off as she looked at his face. Grimacing, she snapped "You look pale. Are you getting ill? I swear, if my Diddikins gets sick, so help me God, I'll... I'll... just get back upstairs!"
Nonplussed, Harry obediently turned around and headed back the way he'd come, wondering at his fortune. He could hear his aunt telling his cousin that they'd get breakfast at McDonalds on the way out today - he vaguely remembered that they were taking him and his friends to a theme park somewhere near Staines, as a reward for completing one whole day of work experience. Vernon said Dudley had worked very hard that day, but given Vernon's low standards for his son, he'd have probably said that even if the boy had stolen two of the drills and gone on a murderous rampage.
Still, it got the three of them out of the way for the day, and that made it as much a reward for Harry as it did Dudley.
---
One shower later, one set of sweat-logged bedsheets in the washing machine, and a distinctly-not-sick Harry Potter was sat on the sofa in a loose pair of basketball shorts, munching his way through a ham sandwich, with a new book open in his other hand. The radio was on, quietly playing Seal's Kiss from a Rose, while Harry tried to get his head around magical politics. It was almost as dull as the previous book, but he was slowly figuring it out, and and he figured he should probably get some idea how it all worked.
Honestly, the more he thought about it, Dumbledore should have been strung up for how exposed and isolated he'd left him. Who lets an 11 year old boy loose in a brand new world in which he's a celebrity, with his every move being monitored and reported on for all to see, with zero training or preparation? Hell, was that even legal? He doubted his Aunt Petunia had ever signed a waiver allowing his photos to be published in the media.
He blinked to clear his thoughts, and got back to his research.
So, technically, the Ministry of Magic was just a minor department of the British Government, due to the relatively small amount of people it served, and although the Minister was elected, the election could be vetoed without any penalty by the Muggle Prime Minister, who Harry vaguely remembered from watching the news over his uncle's shoulder. Grey haired bloke, big glasses.
The Ministry mostly did day-to-day stuff, like Mr Weasley's department. Everyone seemed to be a head-of something or other, but actually the volume of staff was pretty low, barring Aurors, which was a fancy name for the Wizarding police, or Hit Wizards, which also seemed to be a fancy name for police officers but from the name, sounded more like some sort of magical assassins.
The real power sat with the Wizengamot, which apparently took on the role of the House of Commons, House of Lords, and Supreme Court. Which, conveniently, Albus Dumbledore had been the Chief Warlock of, for quite some time.
Beyond that, was the International Confederation of Wizards, which seemed to be some kind of United Nations equivalent. Albus Dumbledore headed that up, too, as Supreme Mugwump - Harry snorted to himself. 'Who comes up with these titles?'
Thinking about it, though, Albus Dumbledore wielded a frightening amount of power in the Wizarding World. Head of two branches of government, and the principal of the only Wizarding school in the British Isles.
Harry flicked back to the section on the headmaster - yes, the man was so powerful he had his own chapter - and noted that that wasn't even accounting for the time he'd spent as a teacher prior to being headmaster. He'd worked there for nearly a century.
Harry snapped the book shut, doing a bit of arithmetic in his head. There were ten Gryffindor witches and wizards in his year. Assuming that was roughly the same for all years and houses, then Britain put out around forty people a year with magical talent. He knew wizards lived longer than muggles, and presumably worked longer than muggles - meaning that since Dumbledore started teaching in the 1910s, he'd taught around three thousand students, who'd gone on to absolutely everywhere in the British workforce. The ministry, the Daily Prophet, the lot.
Everyone one of them in the past thirty years or so knew him as their kindly headmaster with the twinkly eyes, who could probably ask any favour he liked.
'Jesus fucking Christ.' thought Harry.
He was interrupted from his reverie by the beeping of the washing machine, and taking his book back upstairs, Harry put it out of his mind and made a start on his chores for the day.
---
Later that evening, as his relatives were downstairs devouring a large chocolate gateau as a very late supper, Harry scribbled a quick note to Flourish and Blotts - the more he read and learned about the wizarding world, the more he realised he didn't know. He had a funny feeling he was going to need a lot more books.
Sending Hedwig off with the note, and leaving the window open so she could get back in later on, he decided to turn in early, following his rudely-interrupted slumber of the previous night.
---
The dream started much like the previous. Himself, a vision of pale naked skin and glaring green eyes, tied to the same stone as before. He stood back and continued to watch himself struggle for a while, smirking as those pretty, effeminate eyes threatened to spill over with tears of frustration.
Eventually, the boy slumped down, defeated, and he couldn't help but laugh in exquisite pleasure at the boy's defeated demeanour. He extended a hand, and murmured one word.
"Crucio."
The boy instantly seized up, thrashing, slamming himself against the stone in a rictus of pure agony. A scream, briefly bit down upon, escaped in earnest.
He stood, for who knows how long, revelling in the screams, the agony, the sheer blissful misery of the restrained boy who was before him. A minute? Five minutes? An hour? Who knows.
No living being had ever felt such bliss as he did at that moment, at the sight of such beautiful torment in the boy in front of him. But then the boy slumps backwards, his screams falling silent, his eyes glazed over, his mind and spirit broken, and that bliss is amplified tenfold.
His outstretched hand starts to shake - sensation begins to flood through him - pleasure flowing through his whole body, and centering on his cock, and he-
Harry jolted awake with a moan - just in time for a truly devastating orgasm to rip through him, like wildfire.
He honestly didn't know how long the spasms and aftershocks lasted, and even after he came down from his euphoric high, he was trembling and insensible for some considerable minutes. Eventually, though, his brain roared into life and the full memory of the dream flooded back in.
He huffed out a long sigh and slumped backwards into his pillow, dragging his hand through his sweaty hair, and resolved to worry about the entirely what-the-fuck dream he'd just had in the morning. Wrestling his irritatingly overactive and hormonal imagination into submission, and ignoring the rapidly cooling sticky mess up his front, he very deliberately built a nice little box in his mind called 'Do Not Even Go There', shoved the memory into that box, bolted it, padlocked it, and dug a hole and buried it.
As he slowly drifted back to sleep, there was just one rebellious thought at the back of his mind about that dream, though. He just couldn't quite escape the nagging sensation he might have... enjoyed it?