Phoenix Tears

Chapter 1: Outside in

Harry Potter sat on his bed in the smallest bedroom at Number Four Privet Drive, leaning against the headboard. A smile played at the corners of his mouth as his fingertips brushed over the dots emerging on the small slate balanced on his knees. He laughed out loud without a thought of stifling his laughter and then felt along the top edge of the slate until he had his fingers aligned over nine impressions on the surface, one for each finger and a longer depression in the center for both thumbs. His tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, he started pressing into the divots in patterns and then paused every once in a while to run his fingers over the six-cell patterns of dots that had emerged on the slate below allowing him to read what he'd written. Assured that he hadn't flipped his i's or e's, he continued writing.

Though Harry's understanding of braille was growing, he was still very slow. He was determined to get faster before the start of term (still over a month away) because he wanted to avoid having other students overhear him working on his assignments or having to fiddle with silencing charms. Communicating with his friends through the slate was the perfect way to practice. And the connection the slate provided helped ease his despair that was fueled by the stifling miasma of bleach mingled with Petunia's perfume.

The slate had been a gift from his friends Gemma Boot and Petro Sinistra just as he was leaving the Perenelle Flamel Adaptation Center unexpectedly. The Center—where he had acquired a lot of useful skills for getting around since he'd been blinded by basilisk venom in the Chamber of Secrets at the end of May—had been forced to close after it had been attacked and compromised by a wix who had been hades-bent on ruining the life of another resident at the Center and her family. Also, there was the little matter of an escaped Death Eater who was purportedly trying to kill Harry even though the two times he'd managed to get close to him, he inexplicably ran away. All of this happened in the last two months and in a trice, Harry found himself back at Privet Drive. The slate in his hands was helping him hang onto the reality of it all.

But Privet Drive was different this time and Harry was trying to explain this to Gemma. She was peppering him with questions... first with an onslaught of demands... she wanted to know why Professor McGonagall had whisked him away from the Center and back to the Dursleys. Why did he have to go back? Why couldn't he have gone anywhere else? Why couldn't he go home with her? She didn't seem satisfied with the answers Professor McGonagall had given him and it made him wonder if he should have fought harder for another solution.

I did try, he reassured himself. He felt his cheeks heat up as he remembered how he had even hidden from Professor McGonagall in an attempt to talk to Healer Jordan alone... to plead his case.

Load of good that did.

He shook his head trying to dislodge the resentment. Professor McGonagall was in the sitting room right now telling Aunt Petunia how it would be and Aunt Marge was being magically detained in the kitchen.

Harry cocked his head. He could still hear Ripper's occasional whimpering and wondered again what Professor McGonagall had done to the dog. While one part of him felt a smidge bad for the bulldog—after all, he was just a manifestation of Aunt Marge's bullying—another part of him couldn't resist taking some pleasure in knowing that Ripper was getting his due. The skin on his leg tingled with the memory of Ripper's teeth around his ankle.

Harry shook his head to dislodge the unwelcome thoughts and turned his attention back to his conversation with Gemma. Now she was telling him about their friend Aminah who, with her mother, was trying desperately to secure the release of her father from Ministry of Magic custody. The real culprit of the attack on the Center had vanished without a trace to an eternal punishment of his own making. This happened when the magical vessel that he, Bill McCarthy, had stolen and loosed on the Center had been returned to its sacred place in the world. The void of magic disappeared, magic returned to the Center, and McCarthy had been pulled along with the vessel.