Shade

Second Meeting

II.

The second time, Harry’s sure it — he — isn’t.

A coincidence, chance, or luck, that is.

Dudley and his gang are chasing him for what feels like hours ever since class ends for lunch. It’s only after sneaking and weaving through the school courtyard — overlooked by peer-pressured kids and unseen by the far-off Prefects and oblivious adults — that Harry unluckily turns into a dead end with Dudley lumbering behind his heels. Fearing for his life and already feeling unavoidable blue-black marks, Harry leaps at a breakneck pace, hoping to jump over and behind the lunch room’s massive garbage boxes.

Instead, he finds himself up on the school kitchen roof.

Now, don’t get him wrong, Harry knows he’s small and light enough to be blown down by a strong wind, but even he doesn’t think some blast of air could possibly lift him up so high. Peering down the thousands and thousands of feet after the first hour passes and the bell rings and classes have begun, Harry wants to bawl even though he’s not some crybaby girl.

He’s not.

And it’s just random drops of September rain running down his cheeks, because Harry James Potter hasn’t cried since he was four when he realized food and water and warmth came at a price and he refuses to start now so hedoesn’t, even if he’s never liked birds or the swings or been on a plane before and would never, ever, ever go up so high.

Harry’s gotten used to large, sharp-teethed dogs and snarling cats and clawed bigger-than-and-uglier-than-cat-thingies, small, enclosed places and creepy-crawlies in the looming dark, freezing temperatures in winter and water and prickly plants that are nasty, a red/blue/purple-faced shouting Uncle/Aunt and other disapproving adults—Harry knows he’ll get used to extreme heights sooner or later.

Harry was raised an adapter.

So he stands back from the edge, not wanting to get too far in case he misses a passer-by who’d maybe help him, but not wanting to be so close in case the stupid wind knocks him down instead of up. He ignores the biting gales and the light rain and the freezing cold. Another hour passes. Harry curls into a sitting position, hugging his jean-clad knees and breathing warmth into his small shaking hands. He’s lucky he chose one of Dudley’s too-small-for-him but too-big-for-Harry sweaters. The darkish green fabric is still warmish and soft, but still, Harry longs for his favourite fire-red wool, which is in the wash today, because warm colours are better than cool colours in the cold because they’re warm.

Green is not a warm colour.

Suddenly, as the rained-on-cheeks stop flowing and he stops rubbing his eyes red, Harry hears a pitter-patter before there’s buckets of water hammering the ground like one of Dudley’s fists or the pellet guns Piers has that always misses when trying to shoot him. Harry’s soaked to the skin, and the hundred-holed shoes Aunt Petunia gave him two years ago aren’t doing much to protect his now-wet socks and feet.

The bell rings, and with rising hope, Harry tries to scream for help — but his tongue is stuck behind frozen blue lips and he’s fixed in this curled-cramped position and, car after car, each child from Dennis to Katy and Malcolm to Zuzia and even Dudley’s gone, which squeezes his heart the most, if only because Uncle Vernon just does a half-hearted sweep through the kids, raises an eyebrow, and drives off, no questions asked.

He feels numb both figuratively and literally when Ms Meyers jogs through the rain to her car and the cook and the office ladies and the principal and the vice-principal follow suite.

Harry wonders as hours or days or years pass, if being fostered off into the cold midwinter like last December is worse than this; then he decides it definitely isn’t, if only because Aunt Petunia kicked him out with a thick, warm jacket and black boots when the Christmas banquet she was hosting got too crowded.