Death Cradled Child

by Queen1e_D

Summary:

When Harry Potter dies in the Forbidden Forest, it isn’t Dumbledore who greets him. Instead, Harry meets something so much more.

He meets Death.

But Death doesn’t take him, so he falls into Life's arms once again—this time under the watchful eyes of beings older than existence. He dies. He lives. Over and Over. Again and again. And each time, he strays further from mortality, fed by magic, and reshaped by the universe.

Chapter 1

Notes:

Hi lovelies!

I know, I know. "What are you doing, Queenie? You've posted another work?" But y'all I just couldn't help myself. The idea came to me and my hands just started moving oopsies. I still have barely any idea where this story is going so let's figure it out together.

Another HP fic but maybe I'll post more of this one than the other T_T I really should update that one too though :/

Enjoy!

Tap or click this to see content warnings.

CW: non-graphic canon major character death.

Harry Potter walks to his death with steady feet.

The chill of the Forbidden Forest clings to his skin, the fog thick with the scent of loam and blood. The moon filters through the branches in broken slivers, casting pale bars of light across his path. Each step sinks softly into mulch and earth, muffling the sound of his passing like the world itself is holding its breath. Somewhere behind him, the world is still burning—his friends are fighting, bleeding, falling—and he is walking away from them.

Towards the end.

Grief, like static, buzzes beneath his skin. Fred. Lavender. Colin. Remus. Tonks. Snape. The aching, dizzying pain of losing so much, and knowing that more will follow. That he will be next.

Harry doesn’t feel brave. He feels... quiet. Hollowed out, like a shell. The resurrection stone in his palm feels heavier than it should, cold and flat and heavy as memory. He’d turned it three times when he entered and they’d come, as pale echoes. Just enough to soothe him. Just enough to steady his steps. But even now their presence has faded, drifting away like fog in sunlight with the drop of the stone.

Still. They had given him courage. Enough, anyway.

He had told them he was ready.

He had lied.

He doesn’t think accepting death is ever something anyone is fully ready for.

The clearing opens like a wound. Voldemort stands waiting, wand in hand, eyes cruel and expectant. He’s flanked by Death Eaters who watch with hidden expressions. Nagini coils and shifts in her protective bubble, tongue flicking. He doesn’t run.

He simply stops, heart thudding like thunder in his chest, and meets Voldemort’s eyes. The man who has taken everything. The man who has to finish this.

And still, Harry can’t bring himself to hate him. Not now. Not here. Hate is for the living. All Harry has left is surrender.

“I’m ready,” he whispers to the stillness. Maybe to his parents. Maybe to himself.

The green light surges. He closes his eyes.

The world snaps.

For a moment, there is nothing.

No sky. No heartbeat. No pain. No breath. No body.

Just—absence.

Nothing.

No pearly gates or heavenly light.

No loved ones to greet him.

Only darkness.

A weightless dark, thick and eternal. Not cold, not cruel, but ancient. Endless. It pulses around him like the space between stars, like a silence so deep it has a weight. It’s full in a way the human mind isn’t meant to comprehend—like standing at the edge of the universe and feeling it breathe.

Harry is not standing. He is not lying down. At least he doesn’t think so. He simply is. Here, there is no movement or existence. Only Memory and Void. Only the sense that something else has arrived with him. Or had been waiting all along.

An awareness presses against the edges of his being. Like a thought just out of reach. Like eyes watching from beyond the horizon.

Then a voice comes, soft as twilight.

“Hello, child.”

He turns—if such a thing can be done in this place—and sees it.

The figure before him is not cloaked. It does not wear bone or shadow. The being before him shimmers like starlight over deep water, shifting between shapes too large and too small to hold onto. With some blinks it looks human, in others, it does not. Its face holds no features, but its presence looks at him. Sees him. Knows him. It simply is—a shape of stillness, pale as moonlight, with eyes like the edge of reality. Not male, not female. Not cruel or kind.

It is not comforting. But it is not fear.

It is Death.

He knows it with the certainty of a soul laid bare.

“Are you—?” he begins, but the words feel thin in this place.

“Yes,” Death says, voice ringing through him. “But not as you may fear.”

Harry blinks. Or maybe not. There are no eyes here, no lashes, no breath misting on the air. Harry stares, his heart fluttering even though it doesn’t beat. “So this is it,” Harry whispers. “The end.”

Death tilts its head. “For many, yes. But not for you.”

Harry thinks his fingers curl, but he’s unsure whether he still has them. “Why not?”

Death does not move, but the space around it seems to shift like a tide turning. “Because you have walked the edge of my domain more times than many souls I have seen. Because you have held all my Hallows,” Death says, moving closer, “and not once have you tried to conquer me. You came to your death willingly. You let go of power. You accepted loss. You were not trying to cheat Fate. You were fulfilling it.”

Harry’s throat tightens. “I didn’t want to die.”

“Not many do,” Death says gently. “But you chose it. That matters.”

A pause. The dark seems to thrum, alive with something just outside of understanding.

“The Master of Death,” Harry whispers in quiet realisation.

“Not master,” Death corrects gently. “Not ruler. That title is a misunderstanding. You are... my equal. My kin. The child of your choices. And now, I offer you another.”

The void stirs. Something warmer brushes against his awareness—bright, humming, alive. Golden and boundless, like spring after endless winter. Like breath after drowning. Life. He can feel it like sunlight breaking over deep water. Death remains still, but Harry knows instinctively, Life is watching, too.

It does not speak. But it sings through the space in colour and light.

Harry trembles. “What... what happens now?”

“You may rest,” Death says. “Or you may return. Not as you were, but... changed. You have skimmed the boundary so many times, My Child. Cross it now, and you will not return untouched.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, voice catching. “I’ll be alive again?”

The stars shift again, and Harry sees them—threads of being, strands of existence winding through Time and Space. And in the centre of it all, his soul, glowing and fraying at the edges, woven with starlight and shadow.

“You may live again,” Death says. “Reborn, not remembered. But watched. Nurtured. You will not belong to the world as you once did. Not as a saviour. Not as a sacrifice. As something new and old. A child of mine. You will be born to the world... within it... but not of it.”

The words lodge deep in his soul, strange and sacred. Harry’s soul throbs with fear and longing.

“Why?”

“Because you are mine. And theirs.” A pulse of golden light. “Because you can become something more.”

“I’m not a god,” Harry whispers.

“No,” Death says. “Something older. Something newer. You will be raised by those who remember the first dawns and the last collapses.”

The stillness was deafening.

Harry feels adrift on a cosmic tide, battered by truths his mind can barely hold.

“Will I remember?”

“With Time,” Death says. “As much as you are meant to. But know that you will not belong only to the world. The universe will recognise you. Its eldest powers will watch you. And when you die again, as you surely will, you will not come here. Not yet. Not until you choose.”

Harry’s mind reels.

“I won’t age? Won’t die properly?”

“You will live. And die. Again and again. Or maybe it’s that you already have and already are,” Death says. “But either way my domain can not claim you. Not unless you ask it to.”

It should feel like a gift. It only feels like a sentence.

Harry hesitates. “Won’t I be lonely?”

Death does not lie. “Yes. Sometimes. But you will not be alone. Others will guide you. Friends and family met again. Beings older than gods. Concepts given form. They will help you find yourself.”

Harry doesn’t understand it. Not fully. But his heart does.

Harry closes his eyes. He thinks of his mother’s laugh. Of Ron’s terrible chess metaphors. Of Hermione’s hand in his. Of quiet afternoons he’d never get back. Of flying through the sky like he belonged there.

Of living.

All gone. All unreachable.

And yet—

Somewhere, someone could call him son again.

Somewhere, he could live once more.

And maybe—maybe—he can find peace not through death, but through a second chance to live.

He opens his eyes.

“I want to go back,” he says, voice steady. “I want to try.”

Death inclines its head and steps aside, revealing the void now flooded with colour. Stars swirl. Light rushes in. And somewhere, beneath it all, he can feel hands—ancient and kind—cradling what he is.

“Then go, My Dear. Live again. Die again. Find yourself in the space between. I will be watching.”

The light swallows him.

And Harry falls—

Not into darkness.

But into dawn.

Notes:

Short chapter, I know. It's more of a prologue. Trust me the others are much longer :D

Will we ever be sick of Master of Death Harry fics? Probably not.

If you have any feedback or see any mistakes I’m all ears! Feedback helps me improve my writing so you all can have a better experience :3

Chapter 2

Summary:

Petunia receives a not-so-lovely surprise gift and doesn't know what to do with it.

Notes:

This fic is un-beta'd and this chapter has had minimal editing.

Enjoy!

Tap or click this to see content warnings.

CW: child abuse and neglect, disillusioned justification of child abuse.

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, are proud to say that they are perfectly normal, thank you very much—though if you ask Petunia directly, she will insist it is mostly her doing.

It is her standards the neighbours copy, her flower beds that have won the garden club prize three years running, and her son who has never once thrown a tantrum in public. Vernon likes to puff himself up about promotions and breakfast bacon, but Petunia is the one who makes the house run smoothly as a showroom.

It is important to be proper. To be predictable. No one likes a surprise, and nothing causes trouble quite like an unexpected knock at the door. Petunia arranges her days like clockwork and keeps her home the same. She vacuums in straight lines. She irons underwear. She saves her receipts. She turns the house lights off promptly at ten. She monitors the street from behind her best lace curtains and takes great care to know which neighbours are worth inviting for tea and which leave their bins out for too long.

Her house is orderly. Her son is orderly. Her life is a well-timed clock, ticking precisely the way it ought to.

Which is exactly why she rises at 5:45 a.m. sharp every morning—before Dudders can cry over his teething, before Vernon can shout down for breakfast, before the neighbourhood even stirs. She likes to be ahead. She likes to catch the world before it has a chance to go wrong.

This Tuesday morning is no different.

She slips on her housecoat, hair still in tight curlers, and tiptoes past her sleeping son’s nursery with the lightest care. The hallway is dim, hushed with that watery blue that comes just before dawn. A faint chill clings to the air as she unlocks the front door and pulls it open with her usual brisk efficiency.

The street is quiet. Still. Privet Drive lies blanketed under a thin autumn fog, the hedges glistening with dew. Somewhere a bird chirps once, then goes silent.

She reaches down to collect the milk bottles and morning paper from the step.

And freezes.

Because there, nestled beside the clinking glass, is a bundle. A blanket. A baby.

At first, her brain refuses to name it. She simply stares, her hand half-extended, as if the universe has misplaced something on her porch.

Then the baby shifts.

Lets out a small, rasping breath.

And Petunia Dursley screams.

It isn’t a loud scream. Not the kind you make when a car nearly clips you at the curb or when Dudley faceplants into his toy blocks. Not the kind of scream that would wake the neighbours. No, this is different. A sudden, choked, guttural sound that tears out of her as if something has clawed its way from her spine to her throat.

She stumbles backwards, her slipper catching on the edge of the doormat. For a moment, she cannot breathe, her eyes fixed on the black tuft of hair poking out from the blanket.

Her heart hammers wildly.

A child. Left outside. On her doorstep. At this hour. No note in sight—

No, wait.

There is something. A letter. Ivory parchment tucked securely beneath the blanket, addressed in curling ink.

Mrs. Petunia Dursley.

For a long second she doesn’t move. Can’t. The fog swirls faintly around her ankles. A cat yowls in the distance. The baby’s chest rises and falls.

Then, with the same horrified precision she might use to pick up a live mouse, Petunia bends down and snatches the envelope.

Her hands shake.

The handwriting is unnatural. Ornate. And there is a seal—red wax, pressed with a symbol she does not recognise but feels, instinctively, like she should. She breaks it with a snap.

Her eyes skim the first lines. Then stop.

Her sister, Lily, is dead. Along with that awful husband of hers.

Petunia’s throat closes around a rising wave of something hot and shameful.

She’s gone. Lily, who’s always been a little too bright for the room. Lily, who had written one last letter after Dudley’s birth that Petunia had torn in half without reading. Lily, who had chosen them—that world—over her own blood.

Petunia thinks she might vomit.

The baby stirs.

Bright green eyes blink open—eyes so clear and familiar they split her heart and pride in equal measure.

For a single, splintering moment, Petunia feels something she can not name. Not grief. Not love. A grief-shaped shadow of it, perhaps, hollow and full of rot.

Then the moment passes.

Her mouth is dry. Her pulse thunders in her ears. She clenches her jaw and stands quickly, as if burned, as if the weight of that gaze might hollow her out.

She looks down again at the bundle on the step. Her throat works around a tight ball of rage and panic and something uglier beneath.

Lily.

Lily had done this.

Even in death, her sister has found a way to dump her freakish mess into Petunia’s perfectly ordinary life. And now this—this wide-eyed, silent thing—is here, wrapped up in a cream blanket like some cursed parcel, like the very air around him doesn’t know how to behave.

If she leaves him there, someone will see. Neighbours will ask questions. That letter says people are watching. That’s what they do, isn’t it? They watch. They send owls. They turn teacups into frogs and meddle in lives they have no right to touch.

No. She will not be made a spectacle of.

Back inside. The boy must be brought inside. That much is clear. If anyone sees—if anyone asks—

Petunia reaches out, hesitating just before she touches him. His skin feels colder than the milk bottles that have sat on the front steps in the autumn night air. She hates the feel of the fabric—cold, unnatural. She hates the baby’s silence. Most of all, she hates how his gaze doesn’t look at her. It looks through her.

She snatches up the whole bundle, hard enough to jostle him, with rigid arms—arms that do not want to hold him, arms that hold out of fear, not fondness. She picks up the milk basket and newspaper with her free hand, far more gently than she does with the child, and steps back into her spotless home. The door clicks shut behind her.

Her breathing comes short and fast. Her cheeks are flushed.

The boy does not cry. He only looks at her. Unblinking.

She walks down the hall shakily and puts the milk and the baby on the kitchen table as if they are of equal consequence.

The letter, creased now from her grip, flutters back open. She forces herself to read it properly this time, every word burning colder than the last.

Dear Mrs. Dursley,

It is with great sorrow that I inform you of the deaths of your sister, Lily Josephine Potter, and her husband, James Fleamont Potter, late in the evening on October 31st. They died at the hands of a dark wizard known to the magical world as Lord Voldemort who has wrought war on our community for many years.

Their son, Harry James Potter, survived.

As Lily’s blood relative, you are the only one who can offer Harry the ancient protection tied to her sacrifice. Should you take him into your home and raise him as your own, strong wards will be woven into the very walls of your household—wards that will keep Harry and your family safe from those who seek to harm him until he comes of age on his seventeenth birthday.

It reads like a story from one of those odd little books Lily used to hide under her bed. Old magic. Sacrifices. Wards. Petunia doesn’t like the sound of those words. It feels like something that might crawl.

She rubs her thumb over the corner of the parchment, and the texture prickles oddly—too thick, too smooth. It is imperative that Harry remain with you until he is of age. Should he live elsewhere—without this bond of blood and protection—the wards will fail. And should the remnants of Voldemort’s power return, as we fear he may, Harry would be in grave danger. So too might anyone who shelters him without protection.

You must understand, Mrs. Dursley, that to refuse Harry is to put yourself and your family at risk.

The magical community will not interfere with your lives otherwise though you will be checked upon occasionally. Harry need not know anything until the time is right. I trust in your judgment to care for him as you would your own.

With deepest thanks,

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

Order of Merlin [First Class] Grand Sorc., D. Wiz., X.J.(sorc.), S. of Mag.Q., Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry., Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards., Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot.

No request. No apology. Just a placement. Like some orphaned stray sent to a kennel.

Petunia reads the letter twice, then a third time, sitting there at the kitchen table with cold fingers and colder skin. And—though she won’t admit it, even to herself—there is fear.

You know what they’re like, a voice whispers in her head, low and sharp and remembering. They don’t take kindly to disobedience. You heard what they did to that boy who squawked about secrets. Vanished, never to be seen again, his entire family holding no memory of him…

The letter hasn’t said anything about refusing.

It doesn’t need to.

She finally sets the letter down beside the empty fruit bowl and stares at the child again.

The baby does not cry. He hasn’t moved. Still watching her with that horrible, too-bright green that has always made her feel small. Watching her like he knows something she doesn’t.

Her spine stiffens. No. She won’t be read by a baby. She won’t feel something over this… intrusion.

From upstairs comes the thump of Dudley shifting in his cot, followed by a soft, pitiful whine. Then silence again. Not quite awake yet.

Petunia lets out a shaky breath. She needs to keep moving. If she stops, she’ll start thinking. And if she thinks—

She stands up and moves the milk bottles into the fridge. And then, leaving the boy on the kitchen table, she moves upstairs to dress herself.

She goes to her wardrobe, selects one of her usual skirts—the taupe one with the hem she hand-stitched last winter—and pairs it with a clean blouse. She takes her hair out of its rollers and brushes it out until it lies curled and orderly, keeping its usual twists in place with practised pins. Her makeup is light but exact. Powder, a hint of rouge, lipstick just pink enough to suggest vitality. A pearl necklace and matching earrings.

She looks at herself in the mirror, tilts her chin, and smooths her blouse with both hands.

By the time she comes back downstairs, the sky is greying properly and the baby still hasn’t made a sound.

She doesn’t check the blanket.

She does what she always does.

She fastens her apron around her waist, crosses to the cupboard and pulls out two ceramic dinner plates. She turns on the oven to low and places them inside to warm while she prepares breakfast. She lays down the bacon, sausages, and black pudding in a pan and allows them to sizzle away while she cracks four eggs, one-handed, into another skillet, the yolks landing whole. She sets out the beans and mushrooms in their usual dishes, the tomato gets halved and grilled just long enough to darken at the edges. The toast goes in at the end, two slices for each of them.

The radio had clicked on at 6:30, filling the room with soft chatter, the weather, and traffic delays on the M4.

She sets the kitchen table, ignoring the child in the middle, and prepares their daily vitamins and Dudley’s special teething biscuits. By the time the clock ticks towards seven, the kitchen smells like warmth and routine. Rich, savoury, grounding. The kind of smell that says everything is normal here.

The plates are removed carefully from the oven and dishes prepared for their meal before being placed back in the oven to keep warm. Her hands move with robotic efficiency, even as her mind pulses with static. There is a baby on her kitchen table. Her sister’s child. Magic, inside her walls.

What a horrid morning.

When Dudley begins to cry in earnest, it is almost a relief.

She moves quickly up the stairs, collecting him with cooing, practised affection. There’s my darling boy, she whispers, pressing a kiss to his pudgy cheek. He’s heavy and warm and real. She knows every inch of him—his fingernails, his little ear folds, the weight of his head when he cries too hard.

He is hers.

When she carries him back down to the kitchen, he burbles sleepily in her arms—until he spots what’s waiting on the table.

Dudley screams.

It is loud and sharp and immediate. His face contorts, red and furious, and his chubby fist points toward the other baby like it’s something monstrous.

“All right, all right,” Petunia says hastily, shushing him, bouncing him a little too hard. “He’s going, he’s going—don’t look at him, Dudders, mummy will fix it.”

She cannot bear another second of those eyes—Lily’s eyes—staring at her like a question she doesn’t want to answer. And it seems like her poor Dudley feels the same.

She yanks open the door to the cupboard under the stairs.

Inside is the hoover, the umbrella stand, and a laundry basket with clean dish towels folded inside. She shifts the towels and presses the basket flat. The baby—Harry—doesn’t make a sound as she sets him in. He fits. Tucked in like a parcel awaiting post.

She shuts the door without bothering to turn on the light.

It clicks.

Dudley calms almost instantly, his scream warping into a hiccup.

Petunia exhales. She sets him in his highchair, hands him a biscuit, and finally pulls out the kettle.

She does not look back at the cupboard. She does not think about the faint sound she thought she heard—like a baby sighing—or the way her hands are still trembling.

She instead fills up the kettle and clicks it on with a trembling finger. Their drinks always go on last—Earl Grey, steeped to the second, with no sugar for herself. A strong coffee with two sugars for Vernon. She lines up the mugs with machine precision. She will control this.

Because that’s what she does. That’s what keeps the house running.

That’s what keeps the world from falling apart.

Everything is under control.

Except, of course, for what’s behind the cupboard door.

She hasn’t looked back. She won’t. She can’t.

Vernon stomps in right on cue at seven sharp, tying his tie with one hand and scratching his chest with the other.

“Mmm, smells brilliant, Pet,” he grunts, kissing her cheek as he flops into his chair. “Is it Thursday already?”

“Tuesday,” she says, setting his full plate in front of him with the poise of someone who hasn’t just buried a baby in her laundry basket.

“Ah. Knew that.” He tucks in, eyes glued to the morning paper. “Rum lot down at the office yesterday. Jenkins said we were merging something, but I told him—Pet? You listening?”

Petunia realises her hands have gone still on the kettle. She forces herself to pour. “Of course, dear.”

Vernon accepts the coffee, grunts again, and returns to his toast.

She watches him eat. Chews her own bite carefully like it might break her teeth. Her mind feels splintered, full of white noise.

She must say something. Must find the right words to explain what’s come crashing into their lives. Vernon hates surprises even more than she does. He’ll shout. He’ll rage. He’ll try to send the thing back—can they?—and what if they can’t?

Petunia imagines unwrapping the letter again and holding it out to him, but something in her recoils. That seal. That handwriting. Vernon will see it and know—magic.

And magic is what he fears most.

So instead, she finishes her meal, wipes her hands on her apron and says, “Vernon, I need to tell you something. Something’s… happened.”

He pauses mid-chew, blinking at her over a mouthful of sausage.

She steels herself. She’s survived Lily’s letters, Lily’s wedding, the embarrassment of Dudley’s name almost being Harry after their father until Lily had pleaded for it instead. She can do this. She has to.

“It’s my sister,” she says. “Lily. She’s—she’s dead.”

That gives him pause. He sets his fork down slowly, brow furrowing. “Is that so? Well. Hmph. Terrible business, I suppose. Strange sort, the lot of them, though.”

She swallows. Her voice is tight. “There’s more.”

“Oh?” he says, already wary.

“They’ve… they left her boy. On our doorstep. This morning. With a letter.”

Vernon’s face goes purple faster than she’s ever seen.

“They what?”

“He’s in the cupboard,” she says quietly, eyes fixed on the far wall. “I didn’t know what else to do. The neighbours—there was a letter. They’re watching.”

“Watching? Petunia, are you mad? We’re not keeping some little freak in our house!” His voice rises with every syllable. “That’s the sort of thing that ruins people! That kind of—freakishness—doesn’t just go away! What were they thinking, leaving him here as if he came with the milk-float?”

“I don’t know!” she snaps, then winces. Calmer, “I don’t know. But if we don’t, they’ll come. They’ll ask questions. We’ll be noticed.”

Vernon paces now, fists clenched at his sides. “We’ll send him to an orphanage, then. That’s what we’ll do. He’s not our problem. He’s their problem.”

Petunia turns back to the sink and begins rinsing plates that don’t need rinsing.

The sink water scalds her hands.

She does not correct him.

Instead she passes that damned letter and allows him to read it for himself.

He guffaws and huffs and turns a darker shade of red the further down he goes until he slaps the letter down onto the table with a grunt.

“I should ring someone,” Vernon mutters. “The police. The hospital. They can take him in—someone can take him. This isn’t our business.”

Petunia’s fingers close around the parchment before she even thinks about it. “We can’t.”

Vernon blinks. “What d’you mean, we can’t?”

She turns the letter towards him and points. “Here. ‘To refuse Harry is to put yourself and your family at risk.’ That’s not a suggestion, Vernon. That’s a threat.”

“No, it’s not—it's a load of old superstition, is what it is! This ‘Voldy-whatsit’ and their mad old man with too many names can’t tell us what to do—”

“He’s my sister’s child,” she says, tightly. “Whether we like it or not.”

Vernon sputters. “You didn’t even like your sister—!”

“I know that!” she snaps. Then softer, more bitter, “I know.”

But even she, in all her cultivated normalcy, cannot pretend to misunderstand the subtext of the letter. If they turn him away—if they call someone—someone else might come. And that someone might not be so polite.

“Fine,” Vernon growls after a long pause, rubbing at his moustache as if it personally offends him. “Fine. We keep him. But we’ll not be encouraging any of that nonsense. No talking about spells, or wands, or—or broomsticks.”

“Of course not.”

“And he’ll be raised proper,” Vernon adds. “Normal. None of that funny business.”

“Obviously.”

“I’ll not have that boy corrupting Dudley,” he growls after a moment. “Mark me, Pet. Not a word about… that nonsense. We’ll stamp it out of him.”

She nods once and returns to the dishes.

“We’ll keep him,” she says with finality. “We’ll give him a place. Food. Clothes.”

“But nothing more,” Vernon adds quickly.

Petunia’s glances towards the letter again.

“You must understand, Mrs. Dursley, that to refuse Harry is to put yourself and your family at risk.”

Her throat is dry as she says, “Nothing more.”

When Vernon leaves for work that morning it’s with an insistence that the boy stay out of sight.

---

They never call him Harry.

Not once.

He’s “boy” or “you” or, when Vernon is in a mood, “freak.” Petunia doesn’t correct him. The word suits the child better than any name. He was strange from the start—quiet, watching and cold to the touch no matter how warm the house is. He barely blinks, barely breathes. He doesn’t cry when he’s hungry or fuss when he’s ignored. Whenever she goes through the motions of dressing and feeding and cleaning him it’s always with an uncomfortable tension in her shoulders, taking care not to touch him too long lest she feel that icy chill.

It’s unnatural.

When he’s old enough to crawl, the lightbulbs in the hallway begin to hum whenever he passes beneath them. The television turns to static when he enters the living room. Dudley’s baby monitor shrieks with static if the freak comes too near.

Once, Petunia walks into the lounge and catches a glimpse of the boy in the reflection of the switched-off TV.

Only it isn’t him.

The image stares at her with a too-wide smile and eyes like shadowed mirrors. Its mouth moves when his doesn't.

She screams. Vernon thinks she imagined it.

After that, she refuses to let the boy near the electronics again.

When he starts to walk, the boy draws on scraps of junk mail with pens Petunia forgets to lock away.

She once found a page he'd scribbled on—shapes that weren’t letters, weren’t pictures. Spirals. Lines. A single eye surrounded by darkness. He’d drawn it over and over again until the paper tore.

She burns it in the sink.

But he keeps drawing it. Over and over. On napkins, envelopes, even the floorboards under his cupboard mattress.

So she gives him nothing.

No books. No shows. No paper. No pens. No toys except two battered green soldiers Dudley had thrown in distaste. Nothing, in the hopes that it might lessen whatever this is.

She tells herself it’s the magic. That’s all. He’s a freak’s brat—what else could you expect? That’s why the house shudders sometimes at night, why the air goes still when he enters a room, why Vernon’s watch stops ticking for a week after brushing the boy’s shoulder.

That’s all it is. Magic.

It is not fear she feels.

It is control.

It has to be.

By the time he’s three, the cupboard has become his world.

It’s small, and quiet and keeps him out of her sight. Petunia slips him cold cereal in a cracked bowl each morning, toast scraps from Dudley’s plate, and the occasional spoon of cold tinned peas when Vernon isn’t watching.

He doesn’t complain.

He never complains.

That only makes it worse.

The boy isn’t right. Not in a way that makes you worry about school marks or coughs. He’s wrong like a painting hung slightly askew, like a nursery rhyme sung backwards.

He whispers to the corners of the room. He reaches his arms to something invisible above him. He stares too long at shadows and once told her that the crack in the ceiling of his cupboard “weeps when it rains.” He says the lightbulb above the stairs has a name. That the bathroom tap “screams when it’s lonely.”

Petunia whacks him with the wooden spoon when he says those things. Not hard enough to mark. But enough to get the message through.

It doesn’t help.

He only tilts his head and looks through her, like he’s listening to something behind her spine.

---

Petunia doesn’t speak to him unless she has to.

And even when she does, it’s through the door.

“Stop that scratching.”

“Eat, or it goes in the bin.”

“Be quiet.”

The boy listens. Obeys. Never speaks unless spoken to.

But sometimes, when she passes the cupboard too quickly, she hears the sound of humming. A child’s voice—not tuneful like Dudley’s, not bright, but low and steady, almost like chanting. She can’t make out the words. She never tries to.

She’s learned not to look too long at the slats of the door when the light is on inside. Shadows fall wrong in there. Twist.

Once, when she opened it to set down his dinner, she found him sitting in the far corner of the cupboard, facing the wall. Perfectly still. She asked what he was doing.

He’d turned his head slowly and said, “Listening.”

She didn’t ask what for.

She doesn’t ask about it anymore.

That night, when Vernon is snoring on the couch and Dudley is asleep upstairs, she finds herself at the kitchen table, turning the letter over in her hands again. The parchment is stiff and smells faintly of wax and something older. It hasn’t yellowed. It hasn’t curled. It looks exactly as it did the day it arrived.

That unnerves her more than anything.

Her fingers linger on the signature at the bottom.

She’s heard Lily say that name before in passing—her voice reverent, her face alight. He was someone powerful. Important. Magical.

Petunia stares at the curl of ink beneath the threat, and her lip curls. Her stomach churns.

They did this. All of them. They dropped their mistake on her doorstep and walked away like it meant nothing. They didn’t ask. Didn’t warn. Didn’t offer.

They left her with him.

As if she owed them something.

She shoves the letter back into the drawer and slams it shut.

From under the stairs, a soft sound thuds once, like something heavy falling.

Then silence.

She doesn’t check.

She goes to bed.

The next morning, the cereal bowl is still full.

She knocks on the cupboard.

No response.

“Boy,” she says, sharply. “Open the door.”

Still nothing.

A flicker of alarm pulses in her throat. Not guilt—no, never guilt—but fear. If something’s happened—if he’s sick, or dead—what would they do? Would the neighbours ask questions? Would they come?

She grabs the key from the hook, fits it into the lock, and opens the door.

He’s there. Curled in the corner, eyes open and staring at the wall. His hands are tucked under his chin. His breath fogs the air. It’s cold inside, colder than it should be.

“Get up,” she snaps.

He does, slow and obedient, but there’s something off in the way he moves—languid, like he’s underwater.

She hands him the bowl.

He takes it. He doesn’t eat.

She slams the door shut.

Later, as she’s making Dudley’s lunch, she hears him humming again—soft, rhythmic. It vibrates in the floorboards. She turns the radio up to drown it out, but the static spikes. The dial won’t change. She raps it with her knuckles, curses under her breath.

The humming stops.

That night, as Vernon comes in with a fresh stack of takeout boxes and mutters about “those loonies in management,” she hears a thump from upstairs.

Dudley screams.

She drops her tea. It shatters.

They rush up the stairs. Vernon barges into Dudley’s room—

He’s in the corner, standing still as stone, eyes wide, finger pointed at the vent above his bed.

“He was in my room!” Dudley cries. “He was looking at me!”

Vernon rounds on her. “I said the freak stays in his cupboard! Didn’t I say that?”

“I locked it,” Petunia says, breath catching. “I swear I locked it.”

They check.

The lock is still turned.

The boy is already back inside. Sitting cross-legged. Silent.

When she leans down to glare at him, he’s watching her. Not with fear. Not even confusion.

With… curiosity.

Like he’s trying to figure her out.

Like she’s a puzzle he’s already mostly solved.

She shudders and slams the door.

Locks it again.

Adds a deadbolt.

---

When he turns four, Petunia stops letting him sit idle. She tells Vernon it’s to make him useful, to keep him from getting into things. But really, it’s because it unsettles her—how quiet he is. How he sits for hours without blinking, without speaking, with his hands folded in his lap like he’s waiting for something only he can hear.

So she gives him chores with the quiet intensity of someone trying to purge a stain from her life.

She doesn’t phrase it that way. She just tells him, in clipped words and narrowed eyes, that he’s “old enough to earn his keep.” That “there’s no such thing as a free ride.” That “boys like you need discipline.” She never says what kind of boy she means.

She starts with laundry—in frigid water hand-washing Dudley’s muddy pants in the bathtub. Then it’s the dishes, his small hands soaking in scalding water until the skin wrinkles and stings. He peels vegetables with a too-large knife and scrubs the grout in the kitchen floor with a rag and a chipped toothbrush. Weeds the garden with with a cracked kneepad that bites into his knees. When he asks for gloves, Petunia slaps the back of his head and tells him to stop whining. By midsummer, she has him up on a stool stirring sauces, boiling water under her watchful eye.

His knuckles split and bleed. He walks around as if there’s a constant twinge in his knees. The skin under his fingernails stays stained with soil.

Still, he doesn’t complain. He nods, mouth closed, eyes low. The Dursleys call it obedience. It’s not.

It’s resignation. It’s a boy who knows exactly how far kindness stretches in a house like this—and how quickly it vanishes.

He doesn’t complain.

Not even when he slices his hand on a rusted garden trowel and keeps weeding anyway. Not when she forgets he’s outside and he spends the night in the rain. Not when she makes him scrub Dudley’s muddy shoes clean with his own toothbrush.

The boy just nods and does as he’s told. It’s almost worse than if he protested. He moves like he’s always been waiting for this.

Then one day, it happens.

He’s standing on the step-stool, trying to reach the top shelf for a can of soup. She’s told him three times to stay out of that cupboard, but Dudley is howling for lunch, Petunia is on the phone and Vernon’s shouting about the telly again, and—

The stool wobbles.

She turns just in time to see him fall—

—and not hit the floor.

He hovers there, inches above the linoleum, suspended midair like a puppet on invisible strings. A wide-eyed, breathless second passes.

Then gravity remembers him.

He hits the ground hard, elbows cracking against the linoleum. The can clatters beside him, dented.

Petunia freezes, and her face drains of colour.

For one awful moment, the memory is so sharp it nearly blinds her—Lily at nine, laughing as flower petals danced in the air around her, not touching the ground, her red hair bright as fire in the sun.

She stares.

He stares back.

He’s more surprised than she is.

She thinks, distantly, that it’s the most emotion he’s ever shown.

Her heart pounds in her throat. Not this. Not again. She thought if they just ignored it—if they starved it out of him, beat it out of him, smothered it—it wouldn’t happen. But there it is. Magic.

“Vernon,” she calls, voice clipped and cold. “Come here.”

“What now?” he grunts, rising from the couch.

“He did it. Just now. I saw it. He floated like one of them.”

Vernon’s expression shifts in an instant—from indifference to rage.

“That freakishness? He’s not even in school!”

“He’s doing it already,” she says. “We were supposed to have more time.”

Vernon glares at the boy. “No. Not in my house. I won’t have it.”

He stomps over and hauls the boy to his feet by the collar of his too-large shirt. Lifts him so high his toes only brush the floor. He makes a noise, something small and choked.

“You listen here, boy,” Vernon snarls, his breath thick with beer and spit. “We don’t tolerate that unnatural filth in this house. You think you can float around like a circus act? You think you can make fools out of us?”

Petunia doesn’t stop him.

She could.

But she doesn’t.

Instead, she watches Vernon drag the boy down the hall and slam the sitting room door behind them.

She doesn’t follow.

She turns back to the sink. Her hands tremble as she picks up a dish she’s already washed twice. She scrubs harder. The sponge squeaks against the porcelain. Dudley is upstairs in his room, and there’s the distant whine of whatever mechanical toy he has in his hands.

Then—faintly—she hears it. A thud. A cry. The sharp, unmistakable crack of leather on skin.

Petunia clenches the dish so hard it nearly slips.

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.

The crying starts again, weaker this time.

Good, she thinks, biting the inside of her cheek. Let him learn. Let it be driven out of him now before it ruins everything.

Because Petunia knows what magic does.

It takes and takes and changes people. It turned Lily into something untouchable. It made her parents look at Petunia like she was less—like she was only real in Lily’s shadow. It took Lily away, got her killed, and then dropped her freak of a son on their doorstep like a curse they could never return.

She stares at the dishes, her jaw tight.

It isn’t normal. None of it. Her Dudley never did things like that. Her Dudley cried when he was tired, threw fits when he was hungry, and clung to her when he was scared—just like a proper child should. This boy doesn't even act like he's alive half the time. Doesn't shout. Doesn't scream. Doesn't even cry.

And when Vernon’s voice rises, when the boy makes the wallpaper curl and the hallway lights stutter, what else is there to do?

You have to break a fever before it spreads.

She tells herself that. Tells herself Vernon’s trying to burn it out of him. That he has to be harsh because the boy is dangerous. They’re all dangerous. Lily had seemed sweet enough, once. Pretty and clever and laughing with petals in her hair. And then she’d gone off and learned how to make matches light without touching them. How to twist people’s thoughts with a word.

If Vernon has to be cruel to save what’s left of their normal lives—then so be it.

She won’t let another freak destroy their home. Not again.

When it’s over, the boy limps back to the cupboard without a word.

That night, she finds bright red feathers drifting under the crack of the cupboard door.

Not from any pillow she owns.

They smell like smoke. And lightning.

She sweeps them away. Doesn’t speak of it.

But she makes the chores harder the next day.

Longer.

Tougher.

And she watches him.

For a long time after that, he doesn’t float. Doesn’t shimmer. Doesn’t break the rules of the world.

But sometimes, when he thinks no one is listening, she still hears him humming. Low and strange and old. Like remembering something from a dream.

She doesn’t tell Vernon about the feathers.

He wouldn’t understand—not really. He sees the boy as a problem to solve, a pest to fence in and stamp out. But Petunia knows better deep down. Knows it like a taste at the back of her throat. Magic doesn’t die. It festers. It waits.

She wipes down the table twice after supper, though there’s nothing on it. The rag moves in steady, angry circles beneath her hand.

Upstairs, Dudley laughs through the walls. She listens to it for a moment, that bright, full sound. Her darling boy. Her reason. She focuses on that. On the way his arms reach for her, his fingers still sticky from dessert. On the weight of his head when he nods off on her shoulder. On the fact that he’s real. Solid. Belongs.

She doesn’t check the cupboard that night. She doesn’t want to see.

But she leaves the hallway light on.

Just in case.

The next morning, the boy is already up before her. Already sweeping the kitchen floor with slow, silent motions. His feet are bare. His eyes swollen.

The cupboard had been locked.

Petunia watches from the doorway, arms crossed.

For a moment—just one—she wonders what Lily would say if she saw him like this. If she’d scream. If she’d cry.

But Lily is dead, and screaming never did any good.

So Petunia straightens her spine, walks past the boy like he’s nothing more than dust, and starts the kettle.

Outside, clouds gather. There’s the promise of rain in the air, thick and electric.

By the time Dudley shouts for breakfast, the cupboard door is shut again. Tight as ever.

But Petunia hears it, as she wipes down the counter for the third time.

A hummed tune. Soft. Unplaceable. Something older than lullabies.

And for a second—just a second—every lightbulb in the kitchen flickers.

She turns up the radio. Loud.

And pretends she doesn’t notice.

Notes:

If you have any feedback or see any mistakes I’m all ears! Feedback helps me improve my writing so you all can have a better experience :3

Chapter 3

Summary:

Boy thinks about the strange things around him, starts school, and learns some important information.

Notes:

Harry's POV makes a return!

This fic is un-beta'd and this chapter has had minimal editing.

Enjoy!

Tap or click this to see content warnings.

CW: child abuse (physical, emotional), child neglect, dissociation, temporary child death.

Boy knows the cupboard.

He knows it like a second skin, or like the hum that lives in the wires in the walls. It is dark, and close, and it holds him like hands too small to comfort. The ceiling sags above him in a slouching curve, and the crack in the plaster watches him when he sleeps. He does not mind. The crack weeps sometimes when it rains, and he thinks it must be lonely.

He names the cupboard “Hollow.” Not out loud—he doesn't speak, not really—but in a language that writhes behind his teeth. The one he keeps shut tight. The one that hums in the floorboards and flickers in the lights when he blinks too long.

The people in the house call him Boy. Or Freak. Sometimes just a hissed “you.” He doesn't think Boy is his name, but it’s the only one they use, so he wears it like one of Dudley’s old shirts—too big, stained, and not his.

The world is made of sharp things and cold glances. The Woman is judging and dishwater. The Man is noise and red. The Fat One screams like meat gone bad when he doesn’t get his way.

Boy doesn’t scream, not even when the Not-Magic comes. Not even when the world punishes him for it.

He doesn't call it Magic. Because he knows that doesn’t exist, only something that was once mentioned in one of Dudley’s storybooks. But he knows the twist in the air when the bulb above the stairs flickers, when the door rattles without touch, when the floor breathes. He knows the way the dust sometimes dances in shapes that aren’t wind, or how sometimes, if he sings just right beneath his breath, the mold on the cupboard wall blooms in the shape of an eye.

He hums to it, sometimes. The Not-Magic.

He doesn’t remember where he learned the tune, only that it’s older than the cupboard. Older than the house. Older than the red-faced man and the tight-lipped woman, and the way his bones rattle in the cold.

But lately, it hurts to hum. Hurts to breathe.

The world has started slipping sideways.

It begins with the bruises that bloom without blooming. Things that ache without swelling. Breaths that catch like glass in his throat. Then the fever comes. Hot, then cold. Burning, then shivering. He thinks he might be melting.

The Woman doesn’t notice.

Or if she does, she doesn’t speak of it. Just shoves the cold bowl into his cupboard without looking at him, the milk inside already sour.

The Not-Magic hisses softly when he touches the bowl, like it doesn’t want him to eat it. But he does. Because Freaks don’t waste food.

Later, when the bile rises like static up his throat, he curls on his side and waits for the cupboard to stop spinning.

He’s not sure how long he sleeps. Or if he sleeps at all.

When he wakes, his hands feel wrong. Numb at the edges, like wax. His tongue is thick and dry. The Hollow breathes in slow, steady sighs.

He hums again, just once. Weak.

The bulb above the stairs shatters.

Boy flinches at the sound. Tries not to. Freaks flinch. Freaks are punished.

But the shattering draws footsteps. Heavy.

The door slams open.

And the Man is there. Red in the face. Loud in the mouth. Reeking of beer and something oily.

“What did I say about that filthy—”

The hand comes down hard.

And this time—

This time, the world breaks.

He doesn’t feel the second hit. Doesn’t feel the floor.

There’s only static.

Then nothing.

Then—

He floats. Or falls. It’s hard to tell which.

The Hollow is gone. The house is gone. The pain is gone.

He’s surrounded by cold. Not a cruel cold. Not like the frost that creeps in the walls when the heat’s off. No, this cold is clean. Like the air between stars.

And then—he is not alone.

A figure comes into view. Neither man nor woman. Neither tall nor small. A shape in the dark. A shadow crowned in light.

“Hello again, little one,” says the figure.

Boy blinks.

He has no words. But the Not-Magic whispers to him in echoes. Death.

He remembers this shape. From… before. From a place deeper than the cupboard.

“It wasn’t time yet. Rather soon for me to see you again,” the shape says. “But you called to me. You always do.”

Boy tilts his head. The humming in his chest has stopped.

“Would you like to rest, child?” Death asks.

Boy thinks of Hollow. Thinks of pain. Thinks of sour milk and red hands and names that don’t fit.

Then he thinks of the crack in the ceiling. The weeping. The flickering lights that whisper. The spirals he draws on paper and skin. The things he’s yet to understand.

He shakes his head.

Death laughs, soft and sad. “Not yet, then.”

Boy’s body begins to rebuild around him. Not with bone and blood—no, something stranger. Older.

“You will return. You always do.”

Boy opens his mouth, just a little. Just enough for breath to pass. For sound.

He says, “Who am I?”

He blinks after it passes his lips. What a strange thing to ask. And yet, for some reason, he feels it was the right question.

Death’s expression shifts.

“Not yet, My Child.”

And then the Hollow takes him back.

He wakes with a gasp.

No, not a gasp. A sound deeper than that.

It is breath and silence tangled together. Like something being born wrong.

The Hollow is dark, but not the same dark as before. Now it listens.

The crack in the ceiling is still weeping, but the tears fall backwards now, slipping up towards the plaster. The dust hangs in the air like it’s waiting. The Not-Magic—the Humming, the Flicker, the Knowing—it leans close around him like a second skin.

Boy doesn’t move at first. He’s not sure he can. His limbs feel long and wrong and lightless.

The pain is gone.

Not healed. Just… carved out. Hollowed.

He touches his chest and finds the skin cool and dry, where it had been burning before. He remembers the fever like it was years ago.

He remembers Death.

He doesn’t know what that means yet. But it’s in his bones now, deep and curling, like ivy through stone.

Outside the cupboard, the house is asleep. He can feel it in the walls. The stillness. The dream-quiet.

He pushes himself upright. The air shimmers around his fingers, slow and syrup-thick. It parts for him like it’s listening.

He whispers something.

Not in English. Not in words.

Just sound. Older than thought.

The bulb outside the cupboard sparks to life, humming low like a songbird in the dark.

He is not afraid.

Boy pulls his knees to his chest and hums back.

The cupboard breathes with him.

And when he closes his eyes, the crack in the ceiling closes too.

---

The garden is too green.

Not the bright green of books or adverts or the cartoons Dudley watches. No. The grass here is sharp. The weeds hiss when the wind stirs them. The dirt smells like iron. Sometimes it clings to his hands even after he washes.

Sometimes it clings even when he hasn’t touched it.

Boy kneels by the fence with the bucket and brush and scrubs the baseboards, just like Aunt Petunia—that’s the judging woman's name—asks of him. She doesn’t like moss. Doesn’t like mildew. Doesn’t like how the green always comes back, no matter how much bleach she pours into the cracks.

He doesn’t mind it.

The green hums when she’s not looking.

Today it hums in a different tone. Off-key. Like a warning.

He stops brushing.

A moth lands on his knuckle. Its wings shimmer in the sun. It watches him with the faceted glint of two black eyes.

“Hello,” he says. Not quite aloud. But the Not-Magic understands anyway.

The moth buzzes once. Settles.

He sits back on his heels and watches it quietly. The moth cleans its face and antennae. Boy mimics the motion. Tilts his head just so. Stretches his fingers wide.

For a moment, they’re the same.

Aunt Petunia yells from inside. The kettle, probably. Or Dudley, sticky with jam.

The moth lifts off.

Boy watches it go—and when he blinks, it’s not a moth anymore.

Just a flicker.

Just a thought.

He wonders if he imagined it.

Wonders if it imagined him.

Later, when he brings in the post, Uncle Vernon scowls at the way he hovers in the doorway, the envelopes clutched in his small fist.

“Like a bloody ghost,” he mutters, and snatches them away.

Boy stands still. He doesn’t blink.

Vernon flinches.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

And that night, the Hollow sings to him.

Not with words. Not with voice.

With understanding.

He lies on his side and traces shapes in the dust, his finger trailing cold, silvery light that fades before he can show anyone.

He’s not sure if it’s him doing it. Or Hollow. Or the Humming.

He dreams of red feathers. Of a woman made of mirrors. Of an eye too big to fit in the sky.

He wakes with his hands clean, even though he fell asleep filthy.

The next day, Aunt Petunia watches him too long when he passes her the salt.

She doesn’t speak. But he can hear it.

Not right.

Not normal.

Not safe.

He thinks she might be right.

---

The days stretch like pale cloth hung out in the sun—bleached and thin, easily torn.

Boy wakes before the kettle hisses. Always does. The cupboard grows too hot in summer, too cold in winter. He doesn't know what season it is now, only that the dust tastes different in the mornings. Damp one day, sharp the next. The spiders don't bother him anymore.

He listens to the weight of feet upstairs. Heavy ones—Uncle’s. Quick ones—Aunt’s. Dudley’s are like falling fruit. He learns to tell the mood of the house by the rhythm of their steps.

Today, Aunt’s are clipped. Sharp. Like she's already angry.

He climbs out of the cupboard and begins. Dishes first. The tap water stings where the skin has cracked on his knuckles. He washes slowly, evenly, breathing through his mouth to keep from coughing. A cough might bring footsteps. Attention. That’s worse than pain.

The plates clink, too loudly. He winces and apologises to the sink. Not because he thinks the sink is listening—but because something always is. The humming thing in the air, the one that rattles the lightbulbs and makes his skin itch if he gets too near to whatever it is he's not supposed to touch. It listens. Sometimes it sings.

He calls it Not-Quiet. Because when everything else goes still—when he hides beneath the stairs and closes his eyes—the Not-Quiet presses close and wraps around him like it wants to remember him. Sometimes, when he's too tired to walk right or see straight, the Not-Quiet whispers to him in breathless, formless almost-words.

He likes that. When it hums, it doesn't hurt.

He burns his hand on the frying pan. Doesn't cry. That earns him a grunt from Aunt Petunia and a muttered, “Clumsy thing.” No bandage. Just keep cooking. Dudley likes his bacon crispy.

Later, Dudley kicks him in the shin for looking in his direction, and Boy bites his cheek so hard it bleeds. He doesn’t push back. He never does. Uncle said if he does, he’ll go back in the dark for “a long, long time.”

Boy thinks that’s funny. The dark doesn’t scare him. Not really. The dark is where the Not-Quiet feels strongest. Where it doesn’t pretend to be gone. Where it strokes the bruises and cools the feverish skin when no one’s looking. When he lies still, it curls in close like a cat.

Sometimes, when he gets too sick to stand, he dreams. In those dreams, something watches from the walls. A shape like smoke. A voice like silence. It knows his name. He doesn’t know it.

But it knows.

Once, after a particularly bad fever, Aunt Petunia left him in the tub too long. He'd gone quiet and still, and she hadn’t noticed until Dudley complained about the sight. He thinks he spoke to someone—something—again in that Not-Place. But if he did, he doesn’t remember it. He woke to Aunt Petunia pulling him out by his wrist and saying nothing about the blood from his nose, or how he couldn’t walk right for two days.

That was when the Not-Quiet got louder.

It knocked over every picture frame in the hall. Blew out the lightbulbs. Aunt Petunia just called it a draft and had him scrub the floorboards for hours.

Boy said thank you, under his breath, to the cupboard walls. He thinks the Not-Quiet heard.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been around. He doesn’t understand time the way Dudley does.

School starts soon, he knows. Aunt said so. He’s going to go too, this year.

He doesn’t know why.

He’s not sure what school is, exactly. But he hopes the Not-Quiet comes with him.

Just in case.

---

The air tastes like metal again.

He knows what that means.

It always starts like this—dry at first, then sharp, then warm. Like breathing in through a wire. The air bends around the house when it’s about to happen. Sometimes the corners of the ceiling stretch wrong. Sometimes the floor forgets it’s supposed to be solid.

Boy sits small in the Hollow, knees pulled to his chest, hands clasped, his thumbs pressed together like a temple, middle fingers curled like wings. It’s not praying. He doesn’t know what praying is. It’s just something that makes the air calm, sometimes.

He doesn’t remember what he did.

Maybe he left too many feathers behind again. Or the spoons were bent. Or Dudley cried even though Boy never touched him. He never touches anyone. He knows better.

There are steps outside. Heavy ones. The kind that mean bruises.

His breath stills. Not stops—stills. Like the way a pond goes quiet when something large swims underneath. The Hollow is small, but he isn’t. Not really. But he knows how to make himself smaller than space, and that counts for something.

The door opens. The shape of Uncle looms—blotting out the light like a closing eye.

Words happen. Loud ones. Spit-flecked and furious, falling over themselves like teeth. Boy understands none of them. But he knows the shapes they make. The cracks they leave behind.

He’s being grabbed by the shirt and dragged across the hall into the sitting room.

Boy knows what’s happening. He’s known from the moment the air tasted like metal.

So Boy stands up, pulls up the back of his shirt and lies across the arm of the couch. The edge presses harshly into his stomach, and his shoulders cramp from where they reach back, but he doesn’t move despite it.

This is the part where the world turns upside down, tilts. Where time slows and speed quickens and skin becomes an echo.

Uncle’s belt comes off with a hiss.

It’s not the first time, but it’s the worst so far.

He tries to cover his head a bit. Tries to curl in on himself. Uncle kicks him in the knee.

The pain explodes like light behind his eyes.

“You’ll learn,” Uncle pants, his face no doubt that swollen, mottled purple. “You’ll learn to behave like a normal boy.”

The buckle catches him across the back, hot and sharp. Once. Twice. A third time. He gasps. His breath catches on something wet and thick in his throat.

But he doesn’t cry.

The world doesn’t like it when he cries.

The last time he cried, the kitchen light shattered and the table split down the middle, and Aunt Petunia didn’t speak for hours. Just stared at the wall. Just breathed like the walls were thinner than skin.

So he doesn’t cry.

Instead, he slips. Not away, not out. In.

He floats. Somewhere distantly, he knows Uncle hasn’t stopped.

Another lash. Another. Skin splits. Blood dots the back of Boy’s shirt from where he’s lost his grip on it. It seeps through the thin cotton. He bites down on a scream. The taste of iron floods his mouth.

Boy doesn’t register any of it.

And then Uncle finally stops, panting, the belt trembling in his grip. Boy is crumpled over the couch like a broken toy. He doesn’t move.

Uncle grabs him by the back of his shirt collar and drags his limp form across the room and hall back towards his Hollow.

The door is yanked open. Boy is shoved inside.

The cupboard door slams. Footsteps retreat.

Boy lies there. Bent but not ruined. The air tastes like rust and thunder. His ribs ache like hollow things. His hands are slick with something he doesn’t want to name.

He hums under his breath. A lullaby no one taught him. The shadows sway to it. The cupboard listens.

The Not-Magic curls under his bruises like a second spine.

He will not float tonight. He will not glow.

But the house remembers. The walls remember.

And so does he.

---

The world outside the car window is too loud. Too bright. Too full of colours that don’t stay in their lines. The sky keeps blinking, and the wind speaks in a language that tickles the back of his teeth. It says things like go and run and you are not theirs.

But he doesn’t run. He’s sitting in the back seat, small and still, his feet barely brushing the rubber mat beneath him. He’s never been in a car before, never left the property line, in fact. He keeps his hands folded in his lap the way Aunt Petunia likes—thumbs tucked, wrists even, fingers quiet.

She hasn’t looked at him since buckling him in.

Dudley is already running into the schoolyard, laughing too loudly, flanked by two other boys in crisp clothes. They part around Boy like he’s a puddle they don’t want to touch.

He doesn’t mind. He’s used to it.

“Don’t speak unless spoken to,” Aunt Petunia hisses under her breath. “Do not embarrass us.”

The us doesn’t include him. It never does.

He nods anyway. Small and tight.

The school smells like dust and bleach and crayons. And something else. Something thin and old and frayed at the edges. Like the skin of a book no one’s read in years.

He feels the eyes of the building. Not people. The building itself. He always knows when a place is watching. Most houses are asleep. But not this one. This one watches him with interest. With a quiet, tilting hunger.

The classroom is a sea of colours. Shapes and letters, and names in big bold letters. It smells like paper and glue.

Boy stands in the doorway, his shoulders tight, hands pressed flat against the sides of his thighs. There are other children inside—too many. Laughing, shouting, and dragging chairs across the carpet. They sit at colourful round tables and chatter brightly with neighbours. A woman smiles at him from across the room. Her hair is soft-looking. Her clothes are clean. She crouches a little once she approaches, like someone trying not to scare a bird.

“You must be one of our new ones,” she says gently. “Come in, sweetheart.”

He doesn’t move at first. Just watches her.

Then she reaches out—not grabbing, not pushing, just holding her hand open—and he steps forward. Slowly. Quietly. Like something trained to do so.

He doesn’t take her hand. Knows that he shouldn’t touch people with his dirty skin. He thinks maybe this lady hasn’t been told yet, about his freakishness.

She drops her hand, smiles, and leads him to one of the round tables near the back, where the chatter is softer.

“You can sit here for now, alright?”

He nods. Or something close to it. Slides into the chair and folds his hands in his lap. He watches the other children. Their easy movements. Their fearless voices.

They know their place here.

He doesn’t.

A few minutes later, the teacher introduces herself as Miss Eden and begins calling names. Her voice is kind but firm.

“Amelia Brunley?”

“Here!”

“Thomas Carter?”

“Here!”

She goes down the list.

The name comes somewhere in the middle.

“Harry Potter?”

Silence.

The teacher glances up, scanning the tables.

“Harry? Is there a Harry Potter here?”

He doesn’t answer. The name doesn’t fit him. Doesn’t even touch him. It rolls past like all the others. Just noise. Just a sound meant for someone else.

After a moment, she continues on.

She never calls for Boy.

Later, when they’re all colouring—fat crayons rolling off tables and being fought over—Miss Eden comes back to his seat. Kneels beside him again.

“Hi, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

He stares at her. Crayon in hand. He’s been pressing it into the paper too hard, but he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t think he’s ever held a crayon. Pens, yes. A pencil, maybe. But never a crayon.

He doesn't like to talk. He isn’t usually allowed to speak. But Aunt Petunia had only said not to speak unless spoken to. And Miss Eden is looking at him right now for an answer.

“…I dunno,” he says with a shrug, still watching her with that hollow quiet.

The woman frowns—not unkindly, but puzzled. “You don’t know your name, sweetheart?”

He shrugs again. It’s the only answer he has.

“Well,” she says gently, “that’s alright. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

He doesn’t nod. Doesn’t smile. Just returns to the paper. The green wax shatters in his fingers.

She waits like she expects more, but when it’s clear nothing else is coming, she stands and walks to her desk. He watches her sift through a pile of papers, lips moving as she scans the list again.

Her gaze flicks back to him. He ignores it and turns instead to scratching at a dent in the table, watching the flecks of paint peel like scabs.

She returns a minute later with the clipboard in her hands, and shows the page to him.

One by one, the names are ticked off.

All of them answered.

Except one.

“There’s only one little boy I haven’t checked off,” she says gently, crouching beside him. “Harry Potter. That must be you.”

He glances at her, then down at the clipboard in front of him. The name doesn’t mean anything. Not yet. But something… shifts.

Like a thread pulled tight somewhere in his chest.

Harry.

It curls strangely in his head. Unfamiliar. A taste he can’t place.

She sees his confusion. She looks just as confused. “It’s a lovely name,” she adds, smiling, but he can tell it’s forced. “Harry. Do you want me to call you that?”

He nods, small and slow.

It isn’t right. But it’s something.

She smiles again and pats his shoulder. “Alright then. Harry, it is.”

She walks away.

He keeps his eyes on the paper. The green crayon has snapped again. He presses the broken edge into the table, watching the wax smear.

Harry.

It doesn’t belong to him—not really. But no one else claimed it. And it’s the only name anyone’s ever offered.

So, for now, he holds it like he holds everything else.

Quiet. Careful. Close to the bone.

---

Harry sits at the small table near the window, legs swinging just off the floor. The sunlight through the glass warms the side of his face, and for a moment he lets himself imagine he’s somewhere else. Somewhere softer.

Miss Eden must have finally decided to let him sit by himself after the third day, when it became clear none of the other children would sit near him. They didn’t say why. They never had to. Their eyes flick to the classroom door when Dudley passes by on his way to the other Reception class. Some of them already know what Dudley Dursley’s word means on the playground.

Most of the other children are loud. Sticky with jam or chalk dust. They play in clusters that avoid the edges of the room—avoid him.

He hears them whisper, sometimes.

Freak. Creepy. Bad-luck boy.

That’s the one Dudley said bites people.

That’s the freak cousin.

Miss Eden never calls him that. She doesn’t ask him about it either. At least not yet. She just smiles and tucks his chair close to the table and makes sure his pencils are sharp. He likes her. She doesn’t grab his wrist if he makes a mistake, doesn’t sigh when he isn’t sure what letter makes what sound. She always smells like chamomile tea and lavender hand cream.

Today, Miss Eden crouches beside him again. “This one says cat, Harry,” she says gently, tapping the worksheet with her pink-painted nail. “See the ‘c’? It makes a ‘kuh’ sound. Like in cup. Want to try?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just stares at the word like it might grow teeth. Letters still look wrong to him, like tangled fence wire. They dance sometimes, if he looks too long.

He knows the word cat. She knows he knows it too. But she wants to see him read it aloud. Wants to see him write it down. He hadn’t expected it to be so difficult.

Miss Eden waits. She always does. Doesn’t sigh or tap her foot like Aunt Petunia.

“Cuh,” he mumbles, finally. “C…a…t.”

Her smile is warm and soft, like the bit of sun that hits the carpet when the blinds are open. “Yes. Good, Harry.”

He doesn’t smile back, but something flickers under his ribs. He doesn’t know what to call it. Not warmth. Not yet. But not the cold, either.

When she asks him questions, she speaks slowly and quietly like she’s not afraid he’ll break the furniture with a word.

“Can you write your name for me?”

He grips the crayon too tightly, knuckles pale. The letters come out crooked. H-A-R-Y. The second ‘R’ is missing. The ‘Y’ droops like it’s tired.

He stares at the line of loops he’s drawn—each of them just slightly wrong. The crayon in his hand feels thick and clumsy, and he doesn’t know how to make his fingers work like the others. They write so fast. Like someone’s already shown them how.

Miss Eden doesn’t scold. Just leans over, gentle and patient, and writes the missing letter beside his.

“There you go. You’re getting there.”

He nods like he understands, then tries again, staring at the page, even when the other children giggle at something across the room. His letters come out shaky, but they stay on the line this time. Miss Eden pats his shoulder, soft and warm. He tenses at first—old habits—but she doesn’t press. She just moves to the next table.

He watches her walk away and feels something he doesn’t know the word for. Something like wanting to be seen.

When recess comes, he puts his crayon away and stands up slowly. The other children file out in a noisy, bouncing rush. He trails behind, unsure where to go. The playground is full of running shapes and shouting voices. This time he sits on the curb near the fence, knees to his chest. Sometimes, he draws in the dirt with a stick. Sometimes he just watches the clouds. Today, he watches chalk drawings bleed into the pavement. He traces the lines with his eyes, and the colours twitch faintly—blue curling into yellow like oil in water. He blinks, and it stops.

Sometimes the Not-Magic sings in the wind when no one’s watching. It hums in the cracks between shadows, in the shimmer of grass, in the quiet behind Miss Eden’s words.

He thinks it likes her, too.

She calls him Harry like it matters. Like it belongs to him.

And maybe, when she says it, it does.

Miss Eden finds him after ten minutes, her skirt brushing the ground as she crouches. “Harry?” she says gently. “Don’t you want to play with the others?”

He shrugs. Doesn’t meet her eyes.

She sighs softly and brushes his fringe back from his face. “You don’t have to, you know. But you can. If you ever want to. Just tell me, and I’ll help.”

She doesn’t say he should. Just that he can.

---

At school, the Not-Quiet is gone.

Not completely—never completely—but it’s thinner here. Like a song half-remembered or a smell that fades before you can name it. Harry notices it the second he walks through the doors each morning. The world doesn't buzz in his bones the same way it does at home. The walls don’t breathe. The floors don’t listen. The wind outside the windows doesn’t hiss his name in voices that aren’t voices.

At school, the world is just a world.

Not watching. Not waiting.

It’s almost… quiet.

It’s strange, not having the Not-Quiet wrap around him like it does in the Hollow or the kitchen or behind Aunt Petunia’s garden shears. It used to scare him—used to make his skin itch and his teeth hurt, like something inside him was vibrating wrong. But over time, the Not-Quiet became normal. Became home in the same way darkness and hunger had.

But here, it isn’t. Not in the painted classrooms with coloured shapes on the walls. Not with Miss Eden, who kneels beside him instead of towering overhead. Not with books that smell like warm paper and crayons that haven’t been broken in half.

Here, things are smaller. Softer. Less sharp. Less loud on the inside.

Sometimes, at school, Harry forgets.

Just for a little while.

The Not-Quiet doesn't hum so loud in his bones when he’s here. The air feels different. Softer. Like it doesn’t have to brace for shouting.

At home, the Not-Quiet is always there. Always curling around his ears like smoke. Sometimes it gets under his skin and writhes, twisting his thoughts into knots. That’s when he knows to move slower, smaller, quieter. That’s when the world feels like it might crack open and swallow him whole.

It’s never quiet, not really. There are kids laughing and shoes squeaking and Miss Eden singing the alphabet with the ones who still mix up their B’s and D’s. But the Not-Quiet—the crawling, skin-itching, nail-on-glass feeling that lives at Number Four—doesn’t follow him here.

And the Not-Magic—his own strange thing, the one that sparks and slips loose when he’s afraid or wants too hard—that’s quieter too. The warm coil that pulses behind his ribs when he’s alone in the cupboard, or watching the rain, or thinking very hard about being somewhere else.

Maybe it’s hiding. Maybe it doesn’t know what to be, in a place where he isn’t quite afraid.

Sometimes he tries to feel for it. He closes his eyes during lunch, listening hard. Waiting.

But it doesn’t come.

Maybe it doesn’t like the school either. Maybe it can’t fit inside a place with tidy walls and painted rainbows and chairs that don’t bite. Maybe it doesn’t belong where things are safe.

Or maybe it hides when people are kind.

Miss Eden is kind. She looks at him when she talks. She never forgets his name or makes him repeat it, even when he says it too softly the first time.

He thinks maybe the Not-Quiet doesn’t know what to do with her.

He doesn’t either.

He still keeps his hands in his lap. Still ducks his head when other kids look at him too long. None of them talk to him—not after Dudley came during morning drop-off and whispered something in Ricky Turner’s ear that made him go pale. Not after the red-headed girl with the glitter shoes started crying when she sat next to Harry and wouldn't stop until the teacher moved her.

Freak. That’s what they all think.

He hears it in how they giggle behind their hands.

He hears it in how no one touches the crayons after he does.

Even Miss Eden looks puzzled sometimes. Like she doesn’t quite understand the space around him, like there’s a sound she can’t hear, but she knows something’s wrong with the quiet when he’s near.

But she still smiles.

She still calls him Harry, gently, like it’s a secret just for them. He tries to say it sometimes, low and strange on his tongue. Harry. Harry. Harry. It doesn’t sound like a name. Not yet. But it’s better than Boy. Better than Freak.

Sometimes, when he concentrates too hard on the letters she shows him, the air ripples faintly, just around the edges. Like the Not-Magic wants to help. Wants to press itself into his hands, into the pages, into the crayon tips. But he flinches and pushes it away.

Not here.

He can’t let it out here.

The Not-Quiet might come back if he does.

So he keeps it in. All of it. All the hum and heat and old-old something that lives inside his chest like a second heartbeat.

And he draws his crooked letters. And he reads as much as he can. And he listens when Miss Eden talks, because her voice never sounds like breaking.

And even though the other kids won’t sit beside him, and his shoes are too small, and he never has snacks at lunch break, he thinks he might like school.

It’s the only place in the world that doesn’t whisper.

---

It starts with rain.

Not the kind that drums loud and angry, but the kind that creeps. Soaks you slow, sinks into your shoes and bones and the tender places under your skin.

Miss Eden asks if he has a raincoat.

He doesn’t. He shakes his head.

She frowns like she’s debating whether to say something. But she keeps her lips closed and doesn’t push.

He walks home alone. The pavement gleams. Dudley’s already ahead, cackling under his yellow slicker with a gang of boys who all look like smaller, meaner copies of Uncle. Harry stays far behind, drifts in their wake, forgotten.

He takes the shortcut home.

It’s faster even if it’s not paved. Even if the grown-ups say not to take it. He knows the way. Through the fence, down the hill, along the back of the community flats, where the water drains behind the rusting skips and wild brambles claw at your socks.

Today, it’s flooding.

But he’s small. And tired. And cold.

So when he slips on the concrete lip of the drainage ditch, it doesn’t seem like a big thing.

Until it is.

Until the ground is gone, and the water’s around him, and he’s sliding—caught in a rush of brown runoff, limbs hitting hard plastic and brick. It’s shallow, but he’s smaller than most five-year-olds and the current’s faster than he expects.

Then there’s a pipe.

Just a wide black mouth of it, where the water disappears under the flats. And Harry can’t stop. Can’t grab hold. Can’t scream.

His breath goes out with a splash.

He disappears.

Inside the pipe, it’s dark and tight and cold.

It’s not deep, but it doesn’t have to be.

The current is strong. His clothes drag at him, waterlogged and heavy. He tries to scramble up the side, fingers scrabbling for purchase—but the concrete is slick, the walls curved. Too small for anyone bigger. Too much, too fast, for someone his size.

The drain curves. Narrows.

He doesn’t scream. He can’t.

His head hits the side with a crack.

Then again.

Then everything fades.

There’s a feeling that comes right before the end. Not fear. Not pain. Just quiet.

Not the Not-Quiet.

Not the warm hum he always hears beneath the world.

This is real quiet. Final quiet.

He drowns.

And wakes to silence.

Again.

He’s curled on something soft that isn't there. Dry. Barefoot. The world is colourless and slow.

There is no pain.

There is no water.

There is only silence.

For a moment, it is warm—not in temperature, but in the way heavy blankets are warm, the way a place behind your eyes can feel full of sleep and dark.

Beside him sits a child.

They’re his size, maybe smaller, wearing black clothes far too old-fashioned, like something out of a painting. Their skin is pale like salt, eyes dark enough to drink the light around them. A smile flickers at the corner of their mouth.

“Hello again,” they say.

He blinks. “I… know you?”

The child tilts their head. “You always ask that.”

“Have I really met you before?”

“Oh yes,” they say, tucking their hands into their sleeves. “You’re very good at dying.”

He swallows. “Am I… dead?”

“Yes,” they say pleasantly. “Quite. You drowned in three feet of runoff and vanished down a drain pipe. Very poetic.”

“…That doesn’t feel poetic,” he mutters.

“It’s all about perspective,” the child says, then shifts. For a moment, they blur like water, and when they come back into focus, their eyes are violet, and their mouth is older. Then they snap back to the shape of a child again.

He stares. “What… are you?”

They raise one finger. “Not what. That’s not important yet. Who? I’m Death.”

There’s no weight behind the word—no thunder, no echo. Just calm certainty.

He shivers anyway.

“You don’t look like Death,” he says.

“I don’t have one face,” they reply. “I can be a moth, or a knife, or a mother. But today… You’re small, so I am too.”

That makes something in his chest ache.

He curls in on himself a little. “I didn’t mean to die.”

“No,” Death agrees. "But you wanted to go. You were tired. You were cold. You didn't call for help. You let the water take you. Sometimes your body is just too small for all the things you carry.”

He frowns. “I don’t carry anything.”

“Don’t you?” Death reaches out, not to touch, but to point—at his chest, then his head, then the space just behind him.

He looks back and sees nothing.

Death smiles again. “You don’t have the words yet. But you will.”

“...I didn’t know my name until the other week,” he says quietly, knees drawn to his chest.

Death nods.

“I forgot it again,” he says. “When I slipped. Everything went with it.”

“You’ll remember faster now,” Death says. “Time touched you too harshly before. You haven’t been able to hold on as firmly.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that so instead he turns towards them and asks, “Have I met you more than this?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

Death considers. “Only a few. But it’s enough.”

“Why?”

A pause. “You’re different.”

He blinks.

“The world pulls at you. But you do not break,” Death continues, voice like frost tracing across glass.

He shivers, though there’s no cold. “Will I go back?” he asks.

“If you want to,” Death says, and gently taps his chest. “It’s still beating.”

He nods. Then frowns.

“What happens if I stay?”

“Then you rest,” Death says, voice gentle. “Then the world forgets you.”

He’s quiet for a long time.

“…I think I want to be remembered,” he says at last.

Death nods. “Good.”

“Why’s that good?”

“Because if you keep choosing to go back,” Death says, voice like a secret, “then the world has to keep making room for you.”

“What if it runs out of room?”

Death’s eyes gleam. “Then you make your own.”

They stand.

So does Harry.

Death looks at him once more. “Fate favours you,” they say softly. “She’s changed many things this time, so that things might be different. I’m not sure if she’s made the right choices, but only Time will tell.”

Harry doesn’t ask what that means.

They tap his forehead without a goodbye.

He wakes up gasping.

He coughs himself awake in a ditch that smells like algae and rust.

He’s freezing. Shaking. His clothes are soaked. There’s mud in his mouth.

But he’s alive.

And above him, the sky has cleared just enough for one narrow line of sunlight to spill across the world.

He breathes it in like it’s a promise.

No one’s around.

No one ever saw.

He hauls himself out of the ditch and walks home.

His knees are scraped. His lip is split. His head throbs.

But he's smiling.

Because he remembers to hold onto something this time.

His name.

Harry.

And the strange figure who always meets him when the world goes dark.

Notes:

If you have any feedback or see any mistakes I’m all ears! Feedback helps me improve my writing so you all can have a better experience :3