Chapter Text
Harry really should have known better.
Walking outside at one in the morning would have been a dumb thing for anyone to do, let alone someone with luck as rotten as his. After three years of being nearly killed by a variety of nefarious individuals, creatures, and motor vehicles, Harry really should have thought twice before wandering out into the darkness.
But Harry had never been known for his caution, and he walked right out the front door of number 4 in pajamas and ratty trainers, leaving his wand sitting uselessly on his bedside table. He didn’t even think to take it with him, too deep in his thoughts to consider that there might be dangers lurking even in the relative safety of a Muggle suburb.
It had been nearly a month since his Third Year had ended, and Harry simply couldn’t stop thinking about Sirius. For just a moment, Harry had thought he might be free of the Dursleys. A bright future had been dangled right before his eyes only to be snatched away.
And Harry couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He couldn’t stop thinking about how Sirius had been betrayed, imprisoned, abandoned. He couldn’t stop thinking about where his godfather was now: alone and friendless, forced to flee from a corrupt government and a traitorous rat.
Harry thought about it until he wanted to smash his face against the wall.
And since face-smashing was widely frowned upon, Harry had chosen a different way to escape the thoughts: walking.
As it turned out, he probably should have stuck to the face-smashing.
Later, Harry would remember that it was a truly beautiful night, filled with stars and moonlight and wind. It seemed almost perfect, like it’d been crafted exactly for Harry Potter.
It was a shame that he only got to enjoy it for fifteen minutes.
Because almost exactly fifteen minutes after Harry set out from number 4, he was involved in perhaps the most cruelly ironic attack of all time.
Harry Potter being attacked wouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone. After all, he was a target of pretty much every evil person in Wizarding Britain. But no one would have expected that a random Werewolf would have randomly come to the Muggle neighborhood where Harry just happened to live.
But one did.
It came out of nowhere, barreling into Harry with such force that it knocked the wind out of him and forced him onto the ground. Before he even realized what was happening, the Werewolf kindly took an enormous chomp on his leg.
Harry didn’t know it was a Werewolf though. He never even got a good look at it. Because mere moments after the creature sank its fangs into Harry’s leg, his magic absolutely lost it. The wolf was flung backward into the air with an enormous bang, disappearing into the night as it was tossed nearly fifty feet away from Harry.
It didn’t try to come back.
Harry stared after it, too stunned to move.
What on earth had just happened? What was that thing? Harry hadn’t seen more than a flash of dark fur and an enormous shadow. Maybe it was someone’s dog?
On the other hand, Harry was pretty sure dog bites didn’t involve fire, and his leg really did feel like it’d just burst into flames.
Ouch.
He looked down at his leg, squinting in the dim light of the street lamps. He immediately wished he hadn’t looked. There was a small puddle of dark liquid growing around his left shin, a set of deep bite marks showing through a tear in his flannel trousers.
“Gross,” Harry whispered.
This just confirmed his already existing hatred for dogs.
Harry grit his teeth as the bite gave a sharp twinge, trying not to make any noise. Aunt Petunia would probably try to murder him if the neighbors heard him screaming in pain at one in the morning.
Speaking of the neighbors…
Harry looked around, hoping no one had seen him. He’d just performed a rather large feat of accidental magic, and Muggles generally weren’t supposed to see that sort of thing.
The street was completely silent, nothing but a stretch of dark windows. No one had noticed him. Not yet, anyway. He definitely couldn’t stay in the middle of the road. Especially not with his leg bleeding like this.
Harry had picked up quite a bit of first aid after years of being beaten to a pulp by Dudley and his gang, and he was fully aware that he needed to apply pressure sooner rather than later.
There was no other option: he needed to get back to number 4.
It took all his willpower to make the journey.
Harry had been injured before, but this felt different. It hurt so badly that he had to keep a hand clamped over his mouth as he stumbled down the street. When he finally made it to the front door of number 4, he had tears welling in his eyes, the pain so intense it was nearly unbearable.
He didn’t know how he managed to pull himself up the stairs, attributing it to the distinctly Gryffindor trait of being stupidly resilient.
When he made it to his bedroom, he lowered himself to the floor beside the loose floorboard, prying away the wood and pulling out his jumbled assortment of bandages, gauze, and rubbing alcohol.
He was pretty sure that cleaning the wound nearly killed him, his vision going red as he pressed alcohol against the bite. He bit clean through his lip as he wrapped his leg tightly in gauze, his hands shaking as he struggled to apply sufficient pressure.
Once he was satisfied that he wasn’t going to bleed to death, Harry dragged himself onto his bed and passed out, completely oblivious to how fundamentally his life had just changed.
…
“MY CARPETS!”
Harry sat bolt upright in bed, Aunt Petunia’s voice pulling him roughly out of sleep.
He immediately knew what must be happening, his heart falling right into his stomach as he realized his fatal error.
He’d forgotten to clean up the blood.
“YOU!”
His door burst open, his aunt appearing in the doorway in all her pink, frilly glory. She marched over to him and grabbed his upper arm tightly, dragging him out of bed and pulling him toward the stairs. She didn’t seem to care that he could barely walk.
“Look what you’ve done!” She pointed at the stairs with trembling fingers, her sharp nails looking disturbingly like talons.
Harry looked, wincing as he took in the staircase. The white plush was marred with splotches of cracked brown, dried blood streaking up the length of the staircase.
“Aunt Petunia,” he started, leaning against the railing as his left leg nearly gave out. “I’m sor…”
“Just clean it,” she spat, glaring at him. “And throw those trousers away.”
She marched off, leaving Harry alone at the top of the stairs.
Harry knew that most people would be shocked that she clearly didn’t care about his obvious injury. But most people hadn’t met Aunt Petunia. He could lose a limb, and she wouldn’t bat an eye unless he got blood on her precious linens.
Speaking of losing a limb, Harry was pretty sure his leg was about to fall off.
He limped back to his room and unwrapped the bandages, trying to see if his left leg was still attached.
It was definitely still attached, but it looked…weird.
Harry narrowed his eyes at the wound, confused beyond belief. He’d never seen anything like this before. The bite itself looked like a fairly normal injury, nothing but crusted blood and red flesh. What wasn’t normal were the black lines extending around the bite. It looked like someone had injected ink into his veins, lines of pure darkness extending outward from the bite. Harry pulled up his trouser leg, following the lines until they stopped just below his knee.
Harry wasn’t a genius, but he knew that this was not good. More than that, though, he was fairly sure that normal dog bites didn’t look like this.
“GET A MOVE ON!” Aunt Petunia shrieked from down below, her voice echoing through the floor.
Harry wanted to yell back, but he wasn’t that stupid.
He quickly re-bandaged his leg, and pulled on a pair of Dudley’s enormous blue jeans. He knew that he needed to deal with the bite soon, but Aunt Petunia was a more pressing concern at the moment. If she tried to hit him with a frying pan again, he wouldn’t be able to dodge. And mutated dog bites didn’t matter if you were already dead.
….
Cleaning the carpet was horrible.
In fact, it was so horrible that it made scrubbing cauldrons for Snape look like a sunny beach vacation.
The problem wasn’t the cleaning, per se. After all, Harry had quite a bit of experience with scrubbing, bleaching, and all manner of housekeeping activities. The problem was that his leg felt like it’d been dipped into the fires of hell.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Aunt Petunia’s wrath had only increased when a Ministry Owl had come flying into the sitting room. It’d come bearing a letter that essentially said “please stop accidentally causing enormous magical disturbances. This is your second warning. We won’t ask again. Love, the Ministry of Magic.”
The only upside to her anger was that she often went shopping when she was furious. Harry wasn’t quite sure where that particular habit had originated, but he didn’t complain when she stormed out of the house with her handbag clutched like a lifeline. With her out of the house, Uncle Vernon at work, and Dudley out terrorizing small children, Harry could finally deal with the issue of the demonic dog bite on his leg.
Once he was sure Aunt Petunia was gone, Harry dragged himself back up to his bedroom and pulled out a piece of parchment he’d never thought he’d get to use. Hermione had given him her phone number at the end of last year, begging him to call. Harry hadn’t known how to tell her that using the phone to call a friend from school would probably result in a black eye. That particular conversation likely would have ended with Hermione murdering the Dursleys.
Harry had never intended to use the number, but he didn’t have a choice now. Hermione was the only person he could call.
He dialed the number with shaking fingers, the pain starting to get to him.
“Hello?”
He’d never been so glad to hear someone’s voice. “Hi, Hermione.”
“HARRY?”
Harry had to hold the phone away from his ear, grinning in spite of himself. He’d missed her.
“How are you? I’m so glad you called. I have so much to tell you! I’ve been doing research on Wizarding Law, and I think—”
“Hermione,” Harry interjected. “I’d love to hear all about that, but I sort of have a slight, er, problem.”
“What did you do?”
Harry took offense at that. He hadn’t done anything.
“I sort of got attacked?”
“Oh my god. Are you okay?”
“Well…no?”
“Explain. Now.”
Harry did his best, telling her about the walk, the strange dog thing, and the bite.
“Did you say black lines?” she asked, sounding far too panicked for Harry’s comfort.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “It looks like my blood is turning black or something.”
“This is bad,” she whispered. “This is so, so bad.”
“What is it?”
“Oh, Harry,” she said, sounding close to tears. “Why do you never pay attention in class?”
This didn’t seem like the right time to berate him for lazy study habits.
“Just tell me,” he said, his heart starting to pound like mad.
“That wasn’t a dog, Harry,” she whispered. “It was a Werewolf.”
…
Harry was still sitting dumbfounded by the phone when Hermione arrived twenty minutes later. She’d taken the Knight Bus, showing up so quickly that Harry wondered if she’d been using the Time Turner again.
Hermione seemed to understand that Harry was in too much shock to do anything, taking charge of the situation like she always did. She shepherded him out of the house like he was a small child, calling the Knight Bus again and asking Stan Shunpike to take them to Hogsmeade.
Harry let himself be led to a seat, flinching slightly as Hermione shoved a cup of hot chocolate into his fingers. He hadn’t even noticed her asking for it.
“Drink that,” she said quietly, putting her hand on his shoulder. “And try to stay calm.”
That was easy for her to say. She hadn’t been bitten by an actual Werewolf on a random Tuesday in July. She didn’t have a leg that felt like it was trying to detach itself.
“It’s going to be okay, Harry,” she said softly. “Think about Professor Lupin. This isn’t the end of the world.”
Harry hadn’t even thought about Professor Lupin, too stuck on the idea that he was now a Werewolf to think of anything else. Thinking about his old teacher helped more than Harry had thought it would, easing the strange clump of panic that had formed when Hermione had explained what was happening to him.
“Why are we going to Hogsmeade?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we go to a hospital or something?”
She gave him one of her signature “you’re an idiot” looks.
“We can’t go to a hospital, Harry,” she said. “People can’t find out about this.”
“Oh.”
Harry hadn’t even thought about that. He hadn’t thought about the fact that he would be shunned by the entire Wizarding World if they found out what he was.
“We’re going to Hogwarts,” Hermione explained. “To Dumbledore.”
…
The Knight Bus dropped them roughly a mile from the Hogwarts gates, zooming away in a nauseating flash of purple.
“Come on,” Hermione said, wrapping an arm around him. “Lean on me.”
They hobbled toward the gates like some deformed three-legged creature, moving so slowly Harry thought he saw a snail laughing at them as it glided by.
“Hermione,” Harry said, apprehension rising as they neared the gate. “How are we going to get in?”
She rolled her eyes fondly. “You’d know if you’d read…”
“Hogwarts: A History,” Harry grumbled. “I get it.”
“Hogwarts grants sanctuary to students in need,” Hermione explained, dragging Harry toward the black metal of the gate. “It has complex spells that will alert the staff that we need help.”
She placed her right palm against the iron gate, searching until she found a small raised circle. She pressed it, the button glowing briefly silver as her finger touched it.
“That ‘complex spell’ looks an awful lot like a doorbell,” Harry said.
Hermione shrugged, her lips twitching with amusement. “It’s a magical doorbell.”
Harry couldn’t stop himself from laughing, pressing his face into Hermione’s shoulder as he cackled. It wasn’t even that funny, but Harry was feeling close to hysterical by this point. Pretty much anything would have set him off.
“I’m glad you find this amusing, Potter.”
The voice killed Harry’s laughter immediately. He lifted his head from Hermione’s shoulder, staring into the face of the last person he wanted to see right now.
“Professor Snape,” Hermione said quickly. “We need to see Dumbledore.”
“It is summer, Miss Granger,” Snape drawled. “I’m sure your concern can wait until the new year…”
“But sir,” Hermione stammered. “You don’t understand…”
It was very convenient that Harry’s leg decided to give out at that exact moment. Hermione just managed to hold him up, looking pleadingly at Professor Snape.
Snape pushed open the gate without another word. “What happened?”
Hermione looked unsure, and Harry knew exactly why. Snape had outed Professor Lupin. There was no guarantee he wouldn’t do the same to Harry.
But Harry knew it didn’t matter. Snape was the only one who could brew Wolfsbane. He’d find out anyway.
“Werewolf bite,” Harry said, looking Snape right in the eyes.
The man showed no visible reaction, simply nodding.
He conjured a stretched for Harry, levitating him onto it without even asking. Harry glared at him. He didn’t like being manhandled, even via magic.
That being said, it was really nice to be able to rest his leg.
It was almost too nice, the sudden relief making Harry feel so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright for the last twelve hours was finally starting to fade, and Harry suddenly felt like his head had been filled with bricks.
He was really quite tired.
He eyes flickered shut, and he tried to force them back open. He really didn’t want to fall asleep anywhere near Snape.
That would be really stupid…
Really stupid…