Modality T/w: Dv, Murder

modality t/w: dv, murder

Harry was not sure what happened.

One minute, Harry was absentmindedly folding laundry, tucking and stacking his relatives’ clothing into three neat piles. He was daydreaming, imagining escaping the Dursley household. He would leap onto his broom, would fly off into the great unknown by himself and never ever have to see their miserable faces again. Then again, it was his last summer at No. Four Privet Drive; the building anticipation of finally getting to leave this forsaken place was becoming near painful.

The next minute, without warning, Vernon Dursley flew into the laundry, flesh puce and spittle spraying, crowding Harry against the wall and lurching forward to grab Harry’s biceps with punishing strength.

“You stupid, stupid boy,” Vernon hissed, nails digging through fabric, hands bruising.

“W-what?” Harry stammered, eyes wide, alarmed at having been yanked from his daydream so abruptly. Harry’s mind raced over the last few days – he hadn’t done anything!

“You told your little friends to watch you, didn’t you?” Vernon raged, his grip tightening as he yanked Harry's smaller frame too close for comfort. “I saw them! Standing out there! As if they had a right to be on my driveway, on my private property! You think you can intimidate me? You think I’m scared of your lot?” Vernon screamed, shaking Harry harshly.

Harry gaped at Vernon, eyes wide with astonishment and horror. He could smell it now – the hint of whisky on the furious man’s breath, the crazed whites of his eyes rolling. Vernon did not drink often, and it was for good reason. He was a terrible drunk.

“Uncle Vernon,” Harry answered lowly, desperately attempting to remain calm, staring up through his eyelashes at the hysterical man. “I didn’t ask them to be there, but they are. For everyone’s protection, including yours.”

“How fucking dare you, you ingrate,” Vernon roared in Harry’s face. Vernon slammed Harry against the wall as Harry choked on an inhale, the breath struck out of him. Harry frantically, fearfully recalled what had happened the last time Vernon was drunk, remembered the loud slapping of flesh, snapping of bone –

Harry felt panic swell as a knot in his throat, felt his nerves tingle painfully up his spine. If this were anyone else, Harry would have squirmed until he had shoved them off or cast wandlessly, but there was something so… So oddly terrifying about Vernon, something instinctive and cowering that had been beaten into him from a young age. Harry knew he should fight back, and yet he froze - don’t fight back it will make it worse just stay still don’t move don’t move - and Harry felt the bones in his arms now beginning to creak with the pressure of Vernon’s grip. Harry’s lips parted on a wordless, silent cry, rational thought telling him to call out for help but a childhood of experience and instinct keeping him silent - don’t move don’t move stay small and quiet -

“I’m going to kill you, you miserable little snot, you ruined everything, everything!” Vernon was babbling, one hand yanking off Harry’s arm and wrapping around Harry’s neck with unrestrained strength as he pinned Harry to the wall. “Your whore mother getting herself knocked up, that stupid bitch, and your fucking useless father – ”

Harry felt a loud keening whine of panic and horror well up in his chest, Vernon’s purpling grip sealing off his throat and his weight crushing Harry’s chest.

Shit, Harry thought dazedly, realising that his Uncle was actually going to suffocate him. After all this time, it wasn’t going to be Voldemort who got to him – it was going to be muggle Drill Salesman of 1994 Vernon Dursley who murdered The Chosen One. If Harry could breathe, he would have laughed in hysterical disbelief. The world was beginning to blacken a bit at the edges.

Are you going to let him kill you? A voice hissed in Harry’s mind, surprising Harry out of his numb, detached shock. Harry stared at Vernon through unseeing eyes, mind burning as the oxygen in his blood evaporated. A muggle. How pathetic, the voice continued, laconic and lazily amused.

It was as if a bolt of energy revitalised Harry - what on earth was he doing, why was he not fighting back -

Voldemort, Harry recognised distantly, struggling against his uncle’s tight hold.

He will kill you, Voldemort replied, somehow sounding so very far away despite being in Harry’s own head. Harry didn’t reply, weakly struggling against his uncle. Harry realized he was very close to death – he hadn’t breathed for too long.

Help, Harry felt himself think weakly, not even sure to who he was calling out. Harry knows Voldemort won’t help, the idea near laughable, but he’s hoping that the guards outside the house might hear his magic’s weak cry for aid.

Disgusting. I will help, if only because my supposed equal dying by muggle hands is too pathetic an ending to bear, Voldemort replied dryly.

In the moments between a heartbeat, Vernon seized as if electrocuted and jerked back from Harry. Vernon turned a horrid pale shade, choked loudly once, and fell over backward like a stiff plank of wood, a loud slapping thump vibrating the floor as he collapsed. And then Harry was gasping for breath, barely holding himself up against the wall as his weak knees bore the brunt of his weight with abruptness. Harry blinked the spots out of his eyes, tears tracking down his cheeks, inhaling in rough gasps through his bruised throat.

Harry’s gaze flickered down dazedly to Vernon Dursley on the cold tile of the laundry, Vernon’s eyes glazed and expression muted in half-horror.

Harry shuddered as he looked down at the dead man at his feet, a strange and shameful feeling of overwhelming relief coursing through his veins. Vernon was dead. The bully of his childhood was nothing more than a cooling, hollow shell of a corpse.

Dumbledore left you with these people? Voldemort hissed through Harry’s mind, a monster lurking and pacing in the shadow of his consciousness. The voice turned amused, victorious, Ah, but I know where you are, Harry Potter.

Harry pushed against the wall and leapt over Vernon’s body, racing for his bedroom. He could feel it, the enchantment breaking down around him. His mother’s love no longer protected him here; it finally recognized that despite his blood coursing through his relatives’ veins, there was no love here.

I am coming, Harry Potter, Voldemort warned, a cold, high-pitched laugh echoing endlessly in Harry's head, and then Voldemort was gone from Harry’s mind.