Chapter 2
A Visitor in the Night
"What was that all about?" Harry wondered as he rubbed the throbbing scar on his forehead. He had a very uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as he tried to recall the dream he just had.
He sat up on the edge of his bed and attempted to grasp the fading images and emotions he had felt just moments ago. As his eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight creeping in through his bedroom window the pain in his scar lessened considerably, he wasn’t sure it had awoken him at all.
He looked at the clock on his night stand and discovered it was quite early in the night. The digital time had just changed to 2:35am. Has it really been only a few days? Harry thought incredulously. It felt like it had been months. Sure it was better at the Dursley’s now that the threat of “strange people” showing up on their doorstep at any given moment was firmly planted in their minds. He new for sure that they were more worried about what the neighbors would say than anything else.
They pretty much left him alone now, no more demands to make their breakfasts or do yard work. He wished they would have him do something though; he was starting to get a little stir crazy with the events of the past month running through his head over and over again, in fact his dreams were getting worse now that he had wasn’t physically drained from chores to put him in any kind of deep sleep like in the previous summers. He had even asked his Uncle Vernon if he could wash his car simply to be doing anything at all. If Harry were in a better mood he would have thought the expression on his Uncle’s face hilarious, the veins would bulge out of his forehead and his lips would turn an unnatural shade of blue. He would then absentmindedly pull small tufts of hair out of his mustache while staring unfocused at the lighting fixture on the ceiling, ignoring Harry until he felt uncomfortable enough to leave the living room and head back up stairs to his room.
Every now and then when he spied Dudley it looked as if he wanted to say something meaningful, but then he would get a look on his face that led Harry to believe that he would suddenly think better of it… and Aunt Petunia avoided him all together. He had tried to question her on several occasions about what had happened last year and why he has to stay with them every summer, but then she would abruptly remember something she had forgotten to pick up at the grocery store and be gone from the house for hours at a time.
Harry decided that he didn’t want anymore nightmares and he was honestly afraid of yelling anything out in his sleep as he had done in the past, so he got up and put his glasses on as he turned on the lamp next to his bed.
There were unopened letters strewn haphazardly all over the top. He could see Ron’s scribble and Hermione’s neat writing on most of them, there was even a letter from Gringotts Wizarding Bank. The only letters to which he answered were from The Order as they were to check on him every three days. They had written twice so far and were due to write again today. It was Tonks who had written the first, and Kingsley the second. They had both said pretty much the same things. “How are you doing?” and “Don’t leave the house,” being the prevailing themes.
And each time he wrote the same response.
"I’m fine."
"Harry"
He would then attach the return letter to the tawny owl that delivered it and then usher it away as quickly as he could.
In truth Harry felt far from fine. He had a lot of time to think about the prophecy and what it had meant. He quickly came to the realization that the only reason people cared for him was because he was the supposed savior of the wizarding world; he was the boy who lived and nothing more.
No one cared that Sirius had died that night. No one cared that I had just about gotten my friends killed. He reflected as he looked once again to the letters his friends had written him.
Sometimes his thoughts were very clear on this but most of the time he just seemed muddled.
He knew that if Dumbledore had trusted him in the first place and told him about the Department of Mysteries and what Voldemort wanted there, he would never have gone… "He kept everything from me. He wouldn’t tell me anything. Kept me locked up here and for what? I can’t trust him to tell me anything anymore…And now he’s doing it again! I haven’t heard a thing about what’s going on from him!"
Harry began to ball up his fists once more in aggravation as he thought again about the prophecy. How on earth was he supposed to defeat someone as powerful as Voldemort?
He remembered watching the duel between him and Dumbledore. There was no way he could do one hundredth of what those two did. He had no shot what so ever in surviving a confrontation.
He recalled what that old Charms witch said to Umbridge just before his O.W.L.s;
“... Dumbledore did things with his wand I had never seen before…”
Dumbledore was already incredibly powerful in his fifth year. His father and the other Marauders were talented and potent enough to secretly become anamagi AND create on object as intricate as the Marauders Map! Tom Riddle’s friends were all ready conceding that he was going to be a “Dark Lord” and started calling him Voldemort.
“And what can I do? At their same age…I can… I can… conjure a Patronus…” Harry whispered dejectedly.
He couldn’t help but to laugh softly at himself.
“Yeah, that’ll kill him.”
He couldn’t believe that he had the audacity to secretly teach Dumbledore’s Army last year. He couldn’t believe how incredibly brash and stupid he was to think he could protect and lead his friends into the Ministry to fight Voldemort.
He remembered the frightened look on Hermione’s face when he wanted to shake her violently as they had argued about whether the Ministry was a trap or not. She had tried desperately to force some sense into him but he wouldn’t listen. He was convinced his visions were real. She pleaded with him to see how impossible they really were.
How wrong he was - how right she was, he should have listened to her reasoning. He should have been less arrogant. But she followed him anyway; knowing he was wrong, knowing it was a trap… Dolohov’s curse could have killed her… it would have been his fault - just as Sirius’ death was his fault.
"Why did she do that? Why did she have to go? And how many potions did Madam Pomphrey give her anyway…Ten?"
Harry felt a sudden pang in his heart when he realized that he had now made targets of his friends “ and for the first time since Sirius’ death Harry began to sob uncontrollably. He brought his hands to his face to completely cover his feelings of shame and deaden the noise he was starting to make. He did not want to wake his relatives; he didn’t want then to see him in such an embarrassing state.
All of them; Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville and Luna were now marked for death. He knew Voldemort would kill them simply because they were associated with him and it would be HIS fault, Harry’s fault. He couldn’t have it. They didn’t deserve the same fate as he.
He understood from the prophecy that he was the only one who could kill Voldemort anyway, not even Dumbledore could do it. And that meant that in order to remove the threat from his friends he would have to be proactive, he would begin looking for Voldemort. He wasn’t going to just sit and wait anymore while everyone else did the fighting for him.
"I will right what I have done. I will murder or be murdered. I will learn how to destroy you… Do you hear me? Harry clamped his eyes shut and slapped the palm of his hand on his scar. I’ll be looking for you... I’ll end this on my terms, not yours …"
After a few silent moments, Harry wiped the tears from his face and looked again at the unopened letters on his desk. He felt another jolt to his heart as he realized he was going to miss his two best friends most of all. All at once he started to have a fit of silent giggles.
“I’m… going… t-to… be… k-killed…I’m…g-going…to…d-die…” Harry was having a difficult time trying to maintain control from laughing out loud hysterically. He had such a crazed look on his face; he was quite worried that he was starting to lose his mind. There was simply no way he was powerful enough to defeat Voldemort… he felt as if he were resigning himself to death… He just hoped he could take him with him.
Harry’s brutal fit of hysteria ended just as abruptly as it appeared. He was overcome by a sudden rush of calmness…Peace.
“After all,” Harry breathed “I have nothing to live for really “ no parents, no home, nothing…but…Hedwig!”
Harry glanced up at Hedwig’s empty cage and frowned.
“Where is she?” he asked with a confused expression.
Now that he thought about it he hadn’t seen her in a while. He recalled that three days ago she had delivered a letter from Hermione and began pecking at him in such a manner that clearly indicated that she had wanted him to read it and respond. He refused and told her that he wouldn’t be writing to anyone this summer and then had simply told her to “go away”. She seamed to study him for a long moment and then he remembered her hoot indignantly as she soared back into the night.
His gaze turned back to the unopened letters on his desk and he suppressed the guilty feeling creeping into his stomach. They were probably worried about him since he hadn’t bothered to answer. But what was he supposed to say? He knew what was written in those bits of parchment; he knew he didn’t want to hear about Sirius in the past tense and how he shouldn’t blame himself…
"What did they know? My parents, Cedric, Sirius “ ALL OF THEM MY FAULT!! Just because I exist!!"
Harry had never felt so angry in his entire life. He stood in front of his desk clenching his fists at his sides again but this time so tightly that his fingernails were cutting into the palms of his hands and he could feel little droplets of blood falling from them onto the carpet.
He tried once more to calm himself and gently closed his eyes. He noticed immediately how he could feel the anger in his heart “ as if the emotion itself was a living entity coursing through his veins, embracing him. He could not recall ever feeling this sensation before so he concentrated harder on it.
He tried to harness the anger feeding into his heart, it made him feel more powerful than he had ever felt in his entire life. He felt it grow stronger with every pulse. And as he focused, the beating in his ears grew louder, the louder the beat “ the more powerful the sensations became. It was a strange and welcome feeling “ every cell in his body brimmed with a physical type of magic. Every hair on his body stood on end “ almost like static electricity; surrounding and caressing, making its presence known “ tangible…
Harry’s concentration broke suddenly and he jumped backward in surprise as he felt a brief flash of intense heat.
He gaped at the pile of dust that stood where his desk should have been, the unopened letters untouched.
"What the…?" He started to wonder.
And for the second time that night he jumped in surprise as a very familiar voice startled him from behind.
“Now that’s something I wasn’t able to do until I was twenty four!”
Harry quickly turned around to find the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’s Headmaster looking at him with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes.