you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 28

»»————-　song:　————-««

mercury

★ by sleeping at last ★

❝ rows of houses, sound asleep...
only street lights notice me.

i am desperate, if nothing else,
in a holding pattern

to find myself.❞

♢ ♢ ♢

Harry was back just in time for dinner.

"Just be glad it wasn't anything more serious," Snape said as they ate, waving his fork at Harry. For such a stiff man with such a strong sense of etiquette (He more than once snapped at Harry to keep his elbows off the table), it was very amusing to Harry to have bits of mashed peas waved in his face.

"I can't help it if my hemoglobes or whatever are out of wack, sir," Harry said.

Snape curled his lip. "Hemoglobin, Potter," he said, as though disgusted that a thirteen year old wouldn't know the inner mechanics of the human circulatory system. Or perhaps he was more disgusted by the casual way in Harry spoke to him. Harry wasn't sure why he dared to do that—if there was anyone he shouldn't risk a casual tone with, it was Snape.

It was later that night as Harry lay in bed that he allowed himself to think about what Healer Abasi had said to him about his father. 

No one ever told him anything about his parents. It was always, "You look just like your father," and on rarer occasions, "You have your mother's eyes." Come to think of it, rarely anyone mentioned his mother. Was she so ordinary and plain that no one remembered her? Petunia was ordinary and plain. Harry shuddered to think that his mother had been anything like Petunia. They were sisters, after all, but the idea that his mother may have had anything in common with his aunt...

Lily Potter wouldn't have shut Harry up into a cupboard. She would have celebrated his magic, would have allowed him to dress and act any way he liked, would have dropped the name "Helena" as soon as they knew he wasn't a girl, but a boy. James Potter would have had the same untidy hair and he'd never shout at Harry to comb it, would have played Quidditch with him and let Harry win, would have been proud of his son.

They would have been happy.

And Harry wouldn't be here in Snape's house, of all people, and he wouldn't have blown up Aunt Marge because she called him a dyke and his parents drunkards, because he would have been blissfully unaware of her existence, and his parents would have loved him in a much more different way than how Vernon and Petunia loved Dudley. A purer love, that had nothing to do with toys and everything to do with cherishing another human being.

Suddenly, Harry had to get out. He couldn't stay in this house for one more second. He hadn't gone outside once since he had come here—it had been a week—and he felt that if he stayed in this small room for one more second, he'd suffocate. Already he was short of breath as he staggered to the window and threw it open. After a hesitation, he clambered out onto the roof. 

The summer air was surprisingly cool and clear. The chimney stack in the distance, for once, didn't pump out smoke. He could see houses, rows and rows of them with hardly any space between, all bathed in a sickly sort of light from the streetlights. His own hands were tinged with orange, and it felt a bit like everything was smoldering, this dirty coal town ready to ignite into a blaze.