Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It didn’t take Harry very long at all to realise that all was not well in the Dursley household, and for once, it was nothing to do with him.

Dudley had, to Harry’s intense amusement, been put on a diet by his school nurse. From what he’d gathered, Dudders had been looking forward to being able to eat whatever he liked for the next two months, but the school had sent home a plan which had been taped to the fridge, and there wasn’t a scrap of unhealthy food to be found anywhere in the house. Aunt Petunia had even gotten rid of the plain sugar she kept for tea. Dudley was still allowed to eat as much as he liked, but his options were limited to carrot sticks and celery and non-fat yoghurt, rather than crisps and candy and fizzy drinks.

Dudley was, to put it mildly, not pleased about this. He’d only been home for a week, but so far, Aunt Petunia hadn’t budged, following the plan to the letter.

Harry had only been back for five days, but so far he’d heard eight shouting matches about it and caught Aunt Petunia crying twice. She seemed to be under the impression that Dudley hated her and would never forgive her for “trying to starve him to death” but the school nurse had apparently told her that Dudders was going to have a heart attack by the age of thirty at this rate, so she wasn’t about to cave. Uncle Vernon was trying to stay out of it, which only meant that both Aunt Petunia and Dudley were angry with him for not taking their side.

Harry strongly suspected that the only person following the diet plan was Aunt Petunia. She’d decided that the rest of them were also going to go on the diet to be supportive, but Uncle Vernon had seemed unusually happy to get off to work each morning, probably because he could pick himself up a pastry and coffee on the way in to supplement the quarter of a grapefruit Aunt Petunia had been providing to each of them for “breakfast”.

Harry, like Uncle Vernon, had been eating large, hearty lunches out of the house and smuggling in snacks to eat in his room (he’d wasted no time resuming his day-trips up to London), and he was fairly certain that the reason Dudley was spending so much time at his friends’ houses was so that he could bum junk food off them.

So far, it had all been working out rather well for Harry, honestly. Between going up to London every second day and Dudley spending as much time as possible away from Aunt Petunia’s watchful eye, he’d hardly had to speak to his cousin at all. They'd only really had one conversation so far. It had been short and all but painless.

So, so far, Harry had to say, it had been a pretty good summer.

It got even better on Day Six, when he received a letter (via perfectly normal muggle post, it had a cancelled stamp and everything, there was no reason at all for Uncle Vernon to act like it might explode or something at any moment, just because it was addressed to Harry) with directions to Sirius’s uncle’s cottage, just outside a tiny village in western Wales.

Of course, Uncle Vernon hadn’t been pleased that Harry had given out their address to one of your lot, but wizards had been to the house already on multiple occasions, and the school and the Ministry clearly already had it, since they’d sent their own letters. None of the Dursleys seemed to remember what had happened to Marge and the circumstances of Harry’s departure from their home last summer, but they did remember Ron, Fred, and George tearing the bars out of his window with a flying car the summer before that. Uncle Vernon hadn’t pressed the issue.

“Right, then,” he announced the next morning at breakfast. “I’m going to visit a friend. Not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” Uncle Vernon scoffed.

“What, would you rather I stay here?”

He clearly wouldn’t, he just had to object to anything Harry wanted to do because Harry wanted to do it. “Just don’t you expect me to drive you wherever or give you bus fare,” he grumbled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Since when’ve you got friends?” Dudley asked petulantly, stabbing his grapefruit with his pointy little spoon as though it had personally offended him.

Harry ignored him entirely, because Aunt Petunia said, “I suppose these friends of yours are quite content to have you dropped on them for an indefinite stay. Not much for making plans, are they!”

____“Nope,” Riddle agreed cheerfully. “Impulsive flakes, the lot of us. I’m sure I will be back — you do remember our conversation last summer, regarding forces beyond either of our control?”

She did. She stilled, whatever sharp comment she’d meant to make dying before it was said, then nodded, something decidedly like fear creeping onto her pinched, horsey face.

____“Quite. I will endeavour to stay out of your lives as much as I possibly can, though I expect I’ll be made to return periodically. I assure you, the moment I figure out how to permanently remove myself from your household, I will do so. Until then...” he shrugged.

“What’s this about, then?”

"Why're you talking like that, you freak?"

“I’ll tell you later, Vernon,” Aunt Petunia snapped. Both she and Riddle ignored Dudley. “And you need to find out how often you’ll be coming back! I won’t have you dropping in unannounced whenever you please!”

____“Fine. Let’s say I’ll be here weekends — after breakfast on Saturdays until Sunday afternoon — and find somewhere else to be during the week. If anything changes and I find I’ve a need to be here for some as yet unforeseen reason, I’ll call ahead. I trust that will be acceptable,” Riddle said, in a tone which made it very clear that it had better be acceptable, or else.

Aunt Petunia hesitated, but only for about half a second. “Very well, then. Mind you take all that rubbish from under the stairs with you, we’re not keeping it if we’re not keeping you.” (Harry really had to figure out how to do that for himself.)

“Seriously?” Dudley complained. “You’re just going to let him go have fun with his friends all summer and do whatever he likes? Him?!”

“He hasn’t been sneaking off to eat crisps and ice cream with his friends, and even if he were, I don’t care if he has a heart attack!” Not that it was exactly likely he’d be eating himself into an early grave, Harry thought. “I do care about you, Dudley! Following the Plan is for your own good, and by God, you’re going to do it if I have to keep you in this house all summer!”

“This is bullshite!” Dudley shouted, slamming the table with his fists and pushing his chair back with an awful screech. “You can’t make me! You can’t keep me here!” he insisted, lurching to his feet and heading for the back door.

Aunt Petunia was faster, blocking it with her skinny body. “I am your mother, Dudley Byron Dursley, and you will not use that tone with me! Go to your room!”

“No!” Apparently he wasn’t quite hungry enough to shove her out of the way to get to freedom and sweets — assuming Aunt Petunia hadn’t already called his friends’ mums and told them not to give him anything — but he very much looked like he wanted to.

“Go to your room right this second, or every television in this house will be out on the kerb Monday morning!”

“You wouldn’t!” Dudley gasped, horrified at the prospect of losing telly as well as junk food.

“Er. Pet...” Uncle Vernon said, probably because he didn’t like the idea of throwing out hundreds of quid like that.

“Don’t you start with me, Vernon! I can and I would, if that’s what it takes to get through to you, Dudley!” she said, tears in her eyes. “Go! Right now!”

“I HATE you!” Dudley screamed at the top of his voice. “I hate you! I hate you! You’re the worst mother! You’re starving me to death! If you loved me—”

Aunt Petunia unplugged the small television that sat on the counter beside the door, the one Dudley normally watched during breakfast, and shoved it to the floor while staring directly at Dudley, not unlike an angry cat might bat a water glass off a table. There was a horrible crunch as it fell on its screen.

“Jesus, Pet!” Uncle Vernon exclaimed, lurching to his feet as well, moving toward the fallen appliance, apparently on instinct. He stopped when Aunt Petunia glared at him.

Dudley just stared in mute horror, pale as a ghost, his eyes moving from the smashed television to his mother’s uncompromising expression and back as though he truly couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.

Harry was hard-pressed not to laugh. He dearly wanted to say something along the lines of how have you missed that your mother’s a psycho for the last ten years, Dudders, she used to make me sleep in a boot cupboard, but he held his tongue.

“I love you more than life itself, Dudley. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, even from yourself. Now, go. to. your. room.”

He went, leaving his father to try to talk some sense into his mother, but she wasn’t having it. “No, Vernon! I am done. If this is what it takes to get through to him, this is what it takes! You! Boy! Isn’t someone expecting you?”

“Er...yes?”

“Well get going, then, I don’t need you here making a nuisance of yourself! Can’t you see my Diddykins needs my full attention?”

“I’m already gone,” Harry said quickly, legging it for the stairs.

Dudley was huddled at the top of them, just outside his door, straining his ears to hear his parents’ conversation, but they were keeping it quiet. “Mum’s gone completely mad, hasn’t she?” he muttered to Harry, who finally let out the laugh he’d been holding in since she smashed the telly.

“She’s always been mad, Dudders. You think sane people keep their nephews locked in cupboards?”

“Well, no, but you’re a freak!”

“Tell you what, since I’m getting out of here, you can have the food I’ve stashed under the loose floorboard in my room,” Harry offered, sneering.

Dudders was understandably suspicious. “What’s the catch? Poisoned it somehow, have you?”

“No catch. I’m just hoping you really will have a heart attack before we’re thirty. I might even come to the funeral to watch your mum cry over your extra-extra-large casket,” he said as viciously as he could. “She’s made my life hell, and the best way I can think of to ruin hers is to help you commit suicide by twinkie, so have at it!”

____You know, that’s only more likely to get him to buckle down and keep to the diet.

...Honestly, that hadn’t occurred to him, that Dudley might decide to eat healthier just to spite Harry. He’d just been saying the most hurtful thing he could think of in the moment. You’re a freak— Like that made it okay to lock him up and deny him food and make him do all the work around here?!

It didn’t matter anyway, though.

For a few days, maybe. Dudders doesn’t have the self-control to buckle down and do anything he doesn’t like for more than a week. And it’s not like she’s going to give up, anyway. They’ll both still be miserable all summer.

And Harry would be free to do whatever he liked five days a week until the Narrator showed up again (but that hadn’t happened until the second half of the summer the last two years, so he was hopeful he had at least a few weeks). Almost six, really. Riddle had only committed them to coming back here for about thirty hours a week, say nine or ten on Saturday through to three or four in the afternoon on Sunday. One night a week, four meals, he could handle that. And it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so to fly to the coast on the Firebolt, he’d still have plenty of time on Sunday to make dinner and then do whatever he liked in the evening, he thought, packing up the few things he had actually unpacked over the past week — mostly dirty clothes he hadn’t gotten to washing yet. It was fine, he’d just fold the pants and socks inside a tee-shirt and use magic to clean them when he got to the Cottage.

Within half an hour, he was ready to go. Riddle had enchanted his trunk to be feather-light before leaving school, just in case he had to do a runner again, so he just needed to carry it far enough away from Number Four that the wards wouldn’t catch them shrinking it, and he could be off.

He was in such a good mood that he even jotted down the details Mags had sent about where he’d be and how to get in touch if there was an emergency or Dumbledore or the bloody Minister or whoever showed up looking for him. (The letter was from “Maggie’s mum, Miranda” and her husband, Felix, who would be delighted to have Harry come stay with them. Presumably just in case the Dursleys actually cared about where Harry was and whether he was being supervised by a responsible adult.)

The White family lived in Rhos, Llandysul. Their cottage was off the beaten path and they didn’t have a telephone, but they did have a box at the post office, and there was a number for a local pub which would take down messages. They’d be sure to check at least once a day to return any calls, at whatever time was most convenient for the Dursleys. (Harry decided to just put down between one and four in the afternoon. Aunt Petunia was always home anyway.) If there was an emergency, the Dursleys should call the pub. They could send someone to relay the message and Harry could be home in two hours or less.

Harry could not imagine a single emergency scenario where the Dursleys would want him to come home, but “Miranda White” had asked him to pass it on to his guardians, so he presumed this was the sort of thing normal adults cared about, and it would come off as convincingly responsible. She’d even said that she completely understood if Aunt Petunia wasn’t comfortable letting her nephew go stay with someone she’d never met, and she would be happy to come pick him up and answer any questions Aunt Petunia might have about the Whites and their home.

Harry couldn’t decide if Mags was just betting Aunt Petunia wouldn’t call her bluff, or if she had gotten her hands on an ageing potion somehow, and intended to show up pretending to be Miranda White if Aunt Petunia asked her to. Riddle said it was probably the latter, because could Harry imagine Mags not taking the opportunity to dress up and pretend to be some completely random person for a few hours, which admittedly he could not.

If Harry would prefer to make his own way, it was about eight and a half kilometres east-south-east-ish of Newcastle Emlyn, or he could follow the A484 north from a town called Cynwyl Elfed until he found Rhos and ask Gwen at the pub to point him toward Sunrise Cottage. He was going to have to stop somewhere and get a map of Wales, because it sounded like it would be easy to miss the place going by any directions including ‘about’ or ‘-ish’, and Cynwyl Elfed was too small to be on his map of the UK, but that wasn’t exactly a problem. He still had plenty of muggle money left from the last time he’d changed galleons, and he was sure he’d still get there before lunch.

The lady washing glasses and getting ready for lunch at the pub gave him an odd look when he showed up alone, on foot, without so much as a bookbag in the way of luggage (he’d stashed his broom and trunk in a little copse of trees just outside of the village, hidden under an unobtrusive charm), but her concern and confusion cleared when he asked which way to Sunrise Cottage.

“Ah, you’d be the friend little Maggie asked me to have an eye out for, would you? It’s just down the end of the way, then across the river, take the left fork and keep going past the gate. It’s up the hill a bit, but it’s the only thing up there, you can’t miss it,” she said, with a broad, friendly grin.

“Er. Thanks.” Do you think she’s in the know?

____Got to be, Riddle thought back. Even if she’s not a witch, she could be a squib or have a muggleborn sibling or something. Why else would she think it made sense you didn’t have shite with you when she heard where you were headed?

“Think nothing of it, dear.”

“Marvin,” Harry said, brushing the light brown hair of his wig out of his eyes. He was always Marvin Harrison when he was in disguise, since he’d needed a name to order those copies of the Prophet articles about Sirius last summer.

“Well met, Marvin.” Definitely a witch, then, or a squib. “I’m Gwen. Now get on with you, I’ve a job and a half to get done before the lunch crowd comes in.”

Harry wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not — from what he’d seen, there couldn’t be more than ten people in the whole village to come in for lunch, but he didn’t want to offend her by laughing if it wasn’t supposed to be funny, so he just said, “Thanks” again and slipped out into the summer sunshine.

A brisk, twenty-minute walk brought him to what had to be it, a tidy little two-level fieldstone, slate-roofed house nestled on the western side of a little valley. The overgrown one-lane track that continued beyond the rusty old gate (with suspiciously well-oiled hinges) wound up a series of hairpin turns and then alongside a stream for maybe half a kilometre ended at its back door. His first impression of the place was that it was just overwhelmingly...beautiful.

It looked like a postcard, honestly, or a photo in a magazine, just...lovely and charming. The gardens had grown wild probably since Sirius’s uncle had died, but they were still flourishing. There was a stream which wound around the building before babbling past at an angle to the road, a little arched, wooden footbridge to cross over it, and beyond the stream and the gardens, the cottage. It had blue sashes and doorways, twin chimneys at either end of the building, and the windows with all the little panes— It struck him very much as the sort of place Aunt Petunia’s friend Yvonne would go on holiday, which Aunt Petunia would go green with envy over and insist that it couldn’t really be that nice in real life. (Uncle Vernon would never stay anywhere they didn’t have television, much less phones...unless he had lost his mind and was trying to outrun a billion Hogwarts letters, Harry guessed. Anyway, no electricity was practically tenting.)

In this case, though, Harry thought declaring that can’t be real might be justified. He was having trouble believing somewhere like this existed in real life, and he was standing here. He could reach out and touch it if he wanted to.

____You should. Specifically, knock, rather than just standing here fae-struck.

Harry hesitated. You’re sure this is the right place?

____I think the directions were fairly clear, yes, and can you imagine what this place looks like when the sun comes up? It has to be Sunrise Cottage. And if it’s not, you can ask whoever answers where we’re supposed to be.

Oh, fine... There was no bell, and the heavy wood dampened the sound of his knocking. He was about to try tapping on the window instead, or maybe walk around and see if he could find any signs that someone was home when a familiar dark-haired, light-eyed girl flung the door open.

“Harryyyy!” she squealed. “I’m so glad you came! Hi, Marv!” she added, grinning. “Isn’t this place amazing? Come in!”

The interior of the house was just as picturesque as the outside, the layout simple and open — they came in through the kitchen — lots of counter-space, relatively few cupboards and a tiny pantry, a sink with no taps, an enchanted cold-box, an ancient wood-burning stove that was going to be an adventure trying to cook with — which led straight into the dining/sitting area. There was a small library covering one wall, while the others were plastered and painted like murals of the landscape outside — he had to look very closely to be sure there were real walls there at all, despite the windows that would be floating in mid-air if there weren’t — and an open fire opposite the stove. All the furniture was heavy wood, very rustic looking (which absolutely fit), upholstered with something green and leathery-looking.

____Dragonhide, Riddle thought. Welsh green, probably.

Aside from that, and the basin in the kitchen, and the relative lack of storage space Harry supposed, there was nothing that was obviously magical about the place. (The cupboards and pantry were probably magically expanded on the inside.) Even the cold-box could be an old-fashioned one with an actual ice-tray. It felt magical, though, in a subtle, too perfect to be real way. It was significantly cooler than outside, the windows open to catch a breeze, and there was something inherently home-like about it that reminded him of the Burrow, even though it was nothing like the Weasleys’ house, aside from that. The Burrow felt lived in. Sunrise Cottage felt like everything was ready and waiting for someone to come live in it — too neat and clean and perfect for anyone to actually be living here already, but fresh and welcoming, rather than sterile like Number Four. The bedrooms and loo must be upstairs — the stairs were in the corner between the books and the fireplace, which was probably a good idea—

“Did you bring your things? How long are you staying?” Mags asked, flopping onto the sofa, though she popped back to her feet to sit on the arm almost immediately. She absolutely belonged there, to a degree Harry found...almost startling. Especially since if anyone had asked him to guess who lived here, what kind of person, he thought he would have said an author or something. Maybe a poet. Or a kindly, retired old lady who had been here for decades. Definitely someone more...settled than Mags. But her guileless grin matched the open, welcoming feel of the house, and stupid as it sounded, even in his own head, he kind of felt like the too perfect to be real thing matched, too — her feet were bare and there was dirt under her fingernails, her shoulders and face were sunburned, sweaty curls escaping her ponytail, her left knee was scraped up and her right arm looked like she recently lost a fight with a rosebush, but...

____Part of it is her magic being in tune with the wards here. Black must have keyed her in before he left. Part of it is that she’s the very image of childhood summer in the countryside in the same way this place is a perfect country cottage. Part of it is that she’s very good at unselfconsciously living in the moment, so wherever she is and whatever she’s doing, it seems like she’s meant to be there.

She finally paused to breathe and let Harry get a word in: “Yeah, I left my trunk—” he pointed back in the direction of the tiny village. It would be half an hour’s walk to get back to it, but he’d figured that would be less weird than wandering around looking for this place with a miniature trunk and a bloody racing broom. “Also, hi! Yeah, this is amazing!” He couldn’t help wondering if this was where Sirius was planning to bring him, if they’d been able to clear his name and Harry could have lived with him openly.

____“We’ve arranged to spend Saturday nights at the Dursleys’,” Riddle volunteered. “They don’t care where we are as long as we’re not making trouble for them, so I suppose long-term we’re staying until the Narrator makes us go back.”

“Brill! Bedrooms are upstairs. I took the east-facing one, but I haven’t really unpacked anything, we can switch if you want to.” No, not being woken up at the bloody crack of dawn was fine by Harry. “There’s a vanishing toilet and a bath up there, but I’m trying to rig up a shower of some kind out by the stream because baths, ew. I’ll show you the ward-line later — it’s basically out to the stream, and that far out all the way around the house — so you can use your normal wand without worrying about the Trace, and there’s a series of tripline wards to alert me if anyone comes up the track past the gate.”

Harry used the opportunity of her next breath to ask, “Are you staying here all summer, then?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. I didn’t even go back to Dublin like I was supposed to to meet whoever from the group home I’ve been assigned to. Did a couple of illusions in the loo on the train in case they think to check the cameras on the muggle side of the platform when they realise they’ve lost one, and just came straight here. If Gwen or anyone else asks, Miranda is an author, she writes novels about spies and mobsters. Felix is in import-export and travels a lot for work. Their careers are definitely not related in any way, but we pay for everything with cash, and you should absolutely make import-export sound as sketchy as possible at every opportunity. You and I go to a boarding school in Scotland. You’re an orphan, and my mum’s letting you stay here this summer to keep me occupied and out of her hair while she’s writing. I’ve been to town with an ageing potion twice, just to establish Miranda’s character and get groceries. She’s a bit scatter-brained and doesn’t much seem to care what I get up to as long as the police aren’t bringing me home. Any questions?”

“You’re really just going to...live alone, all summer.” He didn’t know why that surprised him, but something about the idea felt off and...like it was against some kind of rules or something.

“Aren’t you going to be here most of the time?”

“Well, yeah, but I mean... What if there’s an emergency or something?”

She shrugged. “I dunno, I guess we die?”

She said it so seriously and casually Harry couldn’t stop himself laughing, long and hard. When he caught his breath again, though, he had to say, “Seriously, though, you’re not worried about...anything?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like anything.”

She gave him that infuriatingly cocky smirk. “Harry, you’ve been taking care of yourself as long as I have. I’m pretty sure we can handle keeping ourselves clean and fed and doing our summer homework and whatever else without a minder. Plus, Marv’s an adult.”

“An adult who doesn’t have a body.”

____Sure I do. Yours. I know how to do enough healing charms to deal with anything short of serious battlemagic. The likelihood of either of you getting into more trouble just because you’re sleeping here than you could going to Knockturn three times a week is absolutely non-existent.

That...was a point, Harry guessed. It still...felt weird, though. Like the longer he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, the more likely it was he’d be caught. And a little bit like if someone realised they were living here alone, they’d probably call the local authority and Harry would be dragged back to the Dursleys, and Mags to wherever she was supposed to be. Thirteen and fourteen-year-olds didn’t just get away with living by themselves for an entire summer.

____“Maybe muggle teenagers don’t get away with living alone anymore — in my day, no one gave a damn if there were adults around, as long as the oldest kiddie could change a diaper for the littles, their parents would be out working or drinking or whatever. They could die and might be no one would notice until the rent didn’t get paid. You don’t have to worry about money, so no problems there, and the nice thing about magic is, you can use it to trick people into thinking you’re your own mum. Just enjoy not having people hovering over your shoulder and making you clean the house or whatever for a while, why don’t you?”

Mags nodded enthusiastically. “I’m working on getting the gardens back in shape, want to— Actually, wait, no, we should go get your broom and your trunk before I forget or someone finds it or something,” she said, hopping to her feet and heading for the door immediately. “And speaking of brooms, can I borrow one of yours to get over to Knockturn? I let Sirius take the wand you gave me for Christmas because he really needed one, but he left me money to get a replacement. And anything else I could possibly need all summer, I swear, that man has no idea what money is worth...”