Listen Now: A Harry Potter & Remus Lupin Hurt/Comfort Adoption Fic

Protection

Harry woke up the next morning with a plan fully formed in his head.

Back when he was the one to do all of the cooking, he'd usually managed to get enough to eat. He could do the same thing now. He couldn't use magic to ensure nothing came out burned, but he was a lot older than he'd been when Aunt Petunia had first thrown him into using the stove every day. Eggs and bacon weren't that difficult.

He was up long before the Dursleys were. Just as a precaution, he made his own breakfast first and scarfed it down before starting on theirs. It was the first thing he'd eaten since breakfast with Remus the day before, and it tasted amazing. He vowed not to change a thing when he made the food for the Dursleys—they would never admit it, but they'd be thrilled with him, maybe enough to leave him alone until lunchtime.

Unfortunately, he made the mistake of severely underestimating how much faster the eggs would cook once the pan had had time to heat up, and he hadn't realized the coffee maker was new and worked a little differently from the old one. By the time Uncle Vernon came down to the kitchen, Aunt Petunia and Dudley following close behind, the entire house smelled like bad coffee and burned eggs.

Harry swallowed hard—he had to work with what he had. He cut away the worst of the burned parts and set down the plate of food on the kitchen table. There wasn't much he could do about the coffee, but he poured it anyway. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad. Maybe Uncle Vernon would be too half-asleep and out of it to notice how bad it was.

Uncle Vernon took one swig of the coffee and spat. He turned to Harry, fire in his eyes. "What do you call this, boy?" he barked.

Harry swallowed hard. "Sorry, I—"

Uncle Vernon lifted a hand to cuff Harry on the back of the head. Harry flinched, but he felt nothing—nothing except for a slight tingling sensation, like static electricity.

There was no impact at all.

Uncle Vernon yanked his hand back, hissing and rubbing his palm, as though he were the one who had been struck. "What—what . . . ?"

"Potter, what did you do?" Aunt Petunia went to stand over by her husband.

Harry glanced from Uncle Vernon's hand, to his face. All three of the Dursleys were staring at Harry as though he had sprouted two extra heads. Like he was a freak. It was, to some degree, the way they always looked at him, but he hadn't seen such shock in their eyes in awhile—perhaps since Mr. Weasley had shown up to take Harry to the Quidditch World Cup.

"Y-you're not supposed to use magic. You'll be expelled from that school of yours."

Harry straightened up, gaining confidence by the second. "I'm not using magic. I am magic. It's in me, in my skin."

"Y-you've never—"

"No. Every day I become more powerful."

"You'll not be going back to that school," Uncle Vernon hissed.

Harry's heart pounded at that, but he thought fast. "It has nothing to do with my schooling. It's just who I am. You. Can't. Hurt. Me."

The Dursleys scrambled out of the kitchen, leaving Harry behind with the bad coffee and the half-burned eggs.

Harry sat down at the table and picked at the eggs, taking deep breaths. So the spell worked. It hadn't helped him at all the night before, when Uncle Vernon had been beating him with his own wand, but he'd guessed that had been because of the fact that Harry had attacked Dudley first. Of course, the night before, a part of him had just wondered if the protective spell hadn't been very effective; Remus had said it was difficult to make effective. The incident at breakfast answered the question of whether the protective spells worked. It also gave him a clue about how the spells worked.