It happened during my second week after speaking with Master Wei. I was angry, filled with black rage that caused my mind to became hazed with red. Dudley had been being his usual pesky self, annoying me with his spoiled attitude and generally unpleasant disposition.
“I wanna go to Disneyland! I wanna go to Disneyland!” He cried and shouted and screamed and raged. Petunia did everything she could to make him settle down. She promised they would go eventually, that he just needed to wait for Vernon's next paycheck, but it was no use. The boy continued whining. He wanted to go now!
I'd had enough.
“Shut up!”
Calling upon my magic, feeling it course through my body like a maelstrom, I wrenched Dudley out of his seat and slammed him against the wall.
“Dudley!” The scream tore from Petunia's throat. She turned her attention on me, her eyes filled with the rage of a protective mother. “Let go of him!”
As Petunia charged me, I directed some magic towards her. I watched apathetically as her body flew headfirst into the island in the dining room. From the way her limp body crumpled to the ground, I could tell she was unconscious.
I turned back to Dudley, still pinned to the wall, dazed but struggling. I stalked up to him, the fire of my rage burning ever hotter, fueling me with the dark desires even I had not thought myself capable of.
The boy became more cognizant. I watched as his eyes locked with mine. I saw the realization in them.
I saw the fear.
It made me pause.
I stared into those eyes, so familiar, so horrifyingly familiar. I knew those eyes. I knew that look. I recognized them. Those were the eyes I used to have every time Uncle Vernon was angry at me. Every time he threatened me with violence. Every time he locked me in the broom cupboard. Whenever I saw my reflection during those times, I had those eyes.
My body lurhced. I suddenly felt sick.
As my magic dispersed like a violent wind and Dudley dropped to the ground, I raised a hand to my mouth, trying not to vomit.
The need to run overpowered me. Without a backward glance I rushed out of the house as a horrible realization struck me far harder than Vernon's fist ever could. And so I ran. I ran far and hard. I ran to the one place, the one person, who might be able to offer me advice.
I could only hope he could help me. I could only prey I wasn't too late.
XoX
Harry woke up with rays of sunlight shining in his eyes. After blinking several times for his eyesight to adjust, the young 11-year old looked around and saw that, much like he had suspected, he was laying on the couch in Lisa's living room.
Also, much like he had expected, Lisa was still with him, curled up like a cat as she lay on his chest. Her arms were wound tightly around his torso, preventing him from moving much. Despite how the girl was a heavy sleeper, even the littlest of movements seemed to make her tighten her grip, as if she knew he was trying to escape.
Somehow, despite the fact that Harry had expected to find himself in this situation, he was still surprised. It had been a long time since he and Lisa had fallen asleep together. The last time it had happened was when they were nine. The Dursleys had gone on vacation to Italy and he had not been allowed to go with them.
In an act of incredible kindness, Anastasia Crawft had offered Harry a place to stay, since he would have otherwise been forced to stay with Mrs. Figg, a strange old lady who owned several dozen cats. The first night he had stayed over, Lisa had them staying up well into the night watching movies of all kinds—mostly Disney movies—and the two of them had fallen asleep on the couch together.
That was also the first time he had woken up to find Mrs. Crawft taking snap shots of him and Lisa, to frame them on a wall that had many other pictures of Lisa—mostly baby picture—which she showed to her guests.
Lisa had never been more embarrassed in her life, or so she always told him.
Harry noticed that someone had put a blanket over them sometime during the night. He suspected Lisa's mum to be the culprit as the television had also been turned off.
Thinking of how Mrs. Crawft had most likely come in last night to cover them with a blanket reminded him of how he had been convinced to stay over for the night by Lisa. Yesterday had been the last day before he left for Hogwarts, which he had told the Crawft's was a very prominent boarding school in Scotland.
They had accepted his words without question—Harry suspected magic was involved somehow—and his friend had all but demanded he stay with them for the night. The two of them had then proceeded to stay up late watching movies, before falling asleep together on the couch like when they were younger.
Harry had to admit that even to this day he was not sure how he felt about waking up to find himself being used as a giant teddy bear. Uncomfortable because of how close this girl was and how deceptively strong her grip seemed, or warm because this girl, who was the closest thing he had to a sister, cared for him so much that she would stay up late just to be with him for as long as possible before he went to Hogwarts. He supposed it was a mixture of both.
Harry carefully shifted in the girl's grip, ignoring the way her arms tightened against him, then proceeded to gently tap certain points on her wrists and arms. The pressure points he touched caused Lisa's hold on him to loosen, and he swiftly removed himself out from under her and replaced his body with a pillow. Lisa frowned for a moment, no doubt sensing the lack of warmth the pillow emitted, but thankfully didn't wake up and just buried her face into the sack of feathers.
The first thing Harry decided to do after escaping was take a quick shower. Having stayed over at the Crawft's many times in the last three years, he had grown comfortable enough to use their facilities. These days Harry was practically considered a member of the family—even if Mr. Crawft didn't like him all that much due to how close he was to their daughter.
Absently, he wondered why Mr. Crawft disliked him so, but shrugged the thought off as the man just being an overprotective father. He had read about how some father's could get very protective of their children, especially their daughter's, though he couldn't for the life of him understand why. He would never hurt Lisa. Surely Mr. Crawft knew that.
Harry spent a good long while under the hot spray of the shower before actually cleaning himself off. By the time he was clothed it was nearing six a.m.. He could hear the sizzling of the stove and caught the scent of bacon wafting along the air. Lisa's mum was awake and cooking breakfast.
Moving into the living room, Harry saw that Lisa still had yet to wake up. The girl had changed positions and was now laying on her back. The blanket had been thrown off at some point while he'd been in the shower, and one of her legs was dangling off the couch, while the other was raised up on the couch's arm. Likewise, her left arm hung off the couch while her right lay at a slightly awkward angle behind her head.
With a shake of his head, Harry walked past the couch and into the kitchen/dining room where he found Mrs. Crawft cooking what he had already deduced from the smell to be bacon, eggs and hash browns.
“Good morning, Mrs. Crawft,” Harry greeted amicably as he walked up to her. “Do you need any help?”
“Good morning, Harry,” Mrs. Crawft said with a smile. She did not seem surprised to find him in her kitchen at such an early hour asking if she needed help. Why should she? This particular scene had occurred so regularly whenever Harry slept over that it was practically tradition.
The smile soon turned into a pout, and Harry didn't even need to guess to know what was coming.
“Though I do wish you would stop calling me Mrs. Crawft. It makes me feel so old. Perhaps you call me Anastasia.” The smile returned with a vengeance, only this time there was a teasing glint to it. “Or better yet, why don't you call me mum?”
And there it was. This was not the first time Lisa's mother had suggested he call her mum, and it would most definitely not be the last either. Within the last year alone, Anastasia had asked him to call her mum exactly 652 times, which was exactly 16 times more than last year. She seemed to be increasing the amount of times she asked him to call her mum every year since they had met—he suspected her reason was due to his less than desirable living conditions.
Harry resisted the urge to sigh. He didn't dislike Mrs. Crawft. Truth be told he was very fond of her. She was everything a mother should be in his opinion; kind and compassionate, yet also firm when needed, and wise in certain aspects of life. She also had a slightly mischievous side that came out quite often. Just seeing how Lisa had turned out showed how well the woman was at raising her child. He had great respect for the woman's abilities as a mother and truly appreciated the hospitality and acceptance she had shown him.
The problem was that Anastasia was not his mother. His mother had died tragically, nobly sacrificing her life to protect his. It didn't matter that he had only known his mum for a year; that year had been more than enough time that no one could replace Lily Evans in his heart. He loved his mother, for the life she had given him, a life he would not have were it not for her. Mrs. Crawft could not compete with that, no matter how much he liked her.
Still, that didn't mean he was going to be rude. Even if Anastasia Crawft was being serious and not just jesting, he did like and even appreciate her attempts.
“So, do you need any help with breakfast?”
Mrs. Crawft huffed a bit as Harry changed the subject, but decided not to call him out on it and instead went back to scrambling eggs. “Breakfast is almost ready so I don't really need any help here, but if you could set the table, that would be nice.”
“Very well.”
Harry knew where all the plates and utensils were, and he quickly and efficiently gathered the plates, forks, knives, and cups, and began arranging them on the table with four people in mind.
“Harry,” Anastasia called to him. He looked over to see that she hadn't turned from her self-appointed task as she spoke. “I'm going to start putting breakfast on the table. When you finish setting the table, could you please go and wake up Lisa?”
“Sure,” Harry replied, and after he finished his task made his way into the living where Lisa was still sleeping heavily on the couch. He noticed with some amusement that the girl's mouth was wide open and she had a small trickle of drool escaping the left corner of her mouth.
Harry knelt down next to the girl and began to gently shake her. “Lisa, it's time to get up.” Despite his attempts it took a while before his friend actually began to stir. Lisa had always been a heavy sleeper. Her mother had once joked that the world could come to an end and she would probably sleep through it.
“Mmmmggggg....” Lisa let out a long, drawn out groan as her eyes began to open blearily. She was forced to shut them almost as soon as she opened them due to the light hitting her face. “Could someone turn that light off?” she asked, her voice coarse from disuse and sleepiness.
“Unfortunately the light you're talking about just so happens to be the sun,” Harry informed the girl. “Which, by the way, is impossible to turn off.”
Lisa just groaned some more, turned onto her side, and tried to go back to sleep. Harry frowned as he realized that his friend was going to be stubborn this morning, and decided that more drastic measures were needed to wake her. Reaching out, he grabbed her side and gave it a light pinch.
This action earned a loud squeal from Lisa, who shot into a sitting position and jerked away from Harry. She rubbed the spot where Harry pinched her, glaring at the boy in question, who could only watch her in amusement.
“Breakfast is almost ready,” he told her without preamble. “Your mum asked me to wake you up.”
“Did you have to pinch me?” Lisa asked with a grumble.
“I probably could have found another way to wake you,” Harry admitted with a shrug. “But this was the most expedient method.” Lisa tossed him a glare. Harry matched her glare with a smile so bright it had to be fake. After a moment his friend grumbled about good for nothing best friends, causing him to chuckle.
“Did you wake my daughter up yet, Harry?” Anastasia asked as she stuck her head out of the kitchen door. “I thought I heard her squealing.”
“I was not squealing!” Lisa said with a huff as her cheeks took on a slight red tint.
“Yes, she's awake now,” Harry told the mother of his best friend. Standing up, he offered his hand to Lisa who, after several seconds of glaring at it, took the proffered hand and allowed him to pull her up.
They walked into the dining room to see that Mrs. Crawft had already put all of the food on the table. Both of them moved to what was essentially their assigned seats, Harry near the head of the table on the left side and Lisa right next to him.
“No need to stand on ceremony, you two,” Mrs. Crawft said as she moved around the counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen, a pitcher of orange juice in hand. She filled their glasses with the freshly made beverage and beamed at them. “Dig in.”
Not needing to be told twice, Lisa was quick to grab the large spoon stuck in the bowl of eggs and serve herself up. Harry shook his head at his friends enthusiasm, and decided to help her out a bit by setting several pieces of bacon and a serving of hash browns on her plate. When finished, he served himself with a much larger serving of food that had Lisa shaking her head at him in turn.
“I don't know how you can eat so much,” she mumbled as she gave his plate the evil eye. “Especially when you're so tiny.”
“I'm taller than you are,” Harry grumbled. It was true that he was technically thin. While his body was layered with muscles that really had no right existing on one so young, they would never be very big. He just wasn't built that way.
“Besides, with all the exercise I do, as well as my martial arts and football, I burn a lot of energy. I need more food than you to keep my body going.” There was another reason for his need to eat more, he believed. But it was something of an untested theory, and definitely not something he could tell Lisa or her parents, even if he did manage to find ample evidence to support it.
“Right, right.” Lisa rolled her eyes as she took a fork full of eggs and put it on her mouth, chewing carefully before swallowing. “And just what do you think I do when I go to my dance classes? Sit there like a lemon and watch everybody else dance?”
“You're smaller than me,” Harry argued, “much smaller than me. And I didn't say you were lazy. Plus, I'm a male. Generally speaking, the male body requires more sustenance than the female body. The theory is that...”
“I don't need to hear your technobabble,” Lisa interrupted him, causing Harry to shrug indifferently.
“Then you shouldn't have said anything.” Lisa grunted, but didn't reply as she turned fully to the task of eating. This kind of banter was nothing new. More often then not he and Lisa would trade barbs back and forth when they weren't engrossed in something both of them enjoyed. However, it rarely happened when they were eating sans dinner.
Harry knew why she was doing it, of course, and couldn't begrudge her for it. He felt much the same way she did. And so when she grew silent, he started up on another subject, forcing her to speak some more while they ate.
Sitting farther away at the other end of the table, Mrs. Crawft watched them with a sad smile.
The banter between the pair was interrupted when the door to the dining room opened and Mr. Crawft walked in.
Daniel Anderson Crawft was a tall man, much taller than most people Harry had run across. His dark raven hair with flecks of gray was cut to just below the chin and slicked back, giving him stylish yet professional appearance. Like his hair, his eyes were very dark. They were brown, but almost looked black.
He was also in decent shape for a man of forty, with a build that, while not athletic, was at least fit. Despite his age he looked rather young. The only signs of him getting up there in years being the distinguished looking gray hairs and the small age lines around his mouth and eyes.
“Ann, Lisa... Harry,” he greeted as he marched into the room, straightening the tie to his business suit. Harry didn't miss the hesitation in the man's tone when greeting him. He was well aware Mr. Crawft didn't approve of how close he and Lisa were and it showed. The only reason he didn't say anything against Harry was because both Lisa and his wife would become cross with him if he did.
Daniel Crawft was a rather prominent business man, a manager at HSBC Holdings, and was very successful when it came to investing money in the stock market. It was actually thanks to him overhearing Mr. Crawft speaking with his wife about some of his investments that had gotten Harry interested in learning how to properly invest his money in the first place—not that he ever had enough money to invest until now. He was a business man through and through and, in Harry's opinion, not a very good dad.
That was not to say that Harry thought the man didn't care for his daughter, or that he was a bad person. Just that he focused more on his work than he did his family. The few times he did focus on Lisa was when they were having a... difference of opinion, which they had quite often, as Harry could attest to.
It was only during dinner that Mr. Crawft actually acted like a father towards Lisa, and Harry was almost positive that Mrs. Crawft was the largest reason for that. The woman could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be.
“Off to work so soon, dear?” asked Mrs. Crawft, pouting a bit as she watched the man grab a cup of coffee and a piece of toast from the toaster. This was as much tradition as her's and Harry's 'call me mum' moments. “And I went through all this trouble preparing a large breakfast to see Harry off before he goes to that boarding school, too.”
“Sorry,” Daniel replied, though Harry already knew the man wasn't. If anything, he was most likely relieved Harry was leaving.
Beside him, Lisa stiffened at the mention of Harry's school. He did his best to ignore that right now, knowing that bringing it up would only make the current situation worse.
The man of the house looked at him and inclined his head. “Good luck at your new school.”
Well, at least that had been a sincere statement. If nothing else, Harry could count on the fact that, while Mr. Crawft may not like how close Harry was to Lisa, he at least respected him for his intelligence and drive.
“Thank you,” Harry returned as Lisa's father kissed his wife on the cheek, before taking his leave.
Breakfast finished fairly quickly after that, and before long, Harry found himself standing in front of the doorway while Lisa and her mother stood in front of him.
“Are you sure you don't want me driving you to your relatives, Harry?” Mrs. Crawft asked him. Harry shook his head.
“It's fine,” he said, “I don't have to be at the train station until ten, and it's still only eight thirty.”
Mrs. Crawft sighed, but didn't argue with him. “Very well. I know you like your independence when it comes to these things.” She leaned down and gave Harry a tight hug, which, after a moment, was returned. “Good luck at school. We'll miss seeing you around here.”
“Likewise,” Harry replied softly.
When the mother of one released her hold on him and backed away, Lisa walked up to him and stopped just short of being able to touch him. She bit her lower lip, and Harry could already see the tears barely contained in her eyes.
He knew this would be hard on her. Lisa had been his best friend for years; they had done practically everything together. Well, almost everything, and the idea that he wouldn't be around for an extended period of time no doubt hurt her.
Suddenly, Harry wasn't so sure going to Hogwarts was a good idea anymore. For a moment, he was tempted to forget about learning magic, if it would keep the only person he'd ever been close to from feeling so sad. Just looking at the girl as she tried not to cry made him feel like someone was trying to tear his heart out of his chest.
However, the feeling only lasted for a moment, before he strengthened his resolve. He needed to do this. Not just because he was a wizard, but because of his parents. They had spoken of Hogwarts so much when he was younger, about how amazing it was. The joy in their voices had been undeniable when they spoke fondly of their times at the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry wanted to follow in their footsteps, to make them proud by becoming the greatest, most powerful wizard in the entire world. He couldn't do that if he stayed here.
In a rare display of open affection, Harry moved forward and initiated their hug. While he had never denied the girl physical affection—indeed, he probably allowed her to be more physically intimate with him than was proper for children their age—he rarely ever initiated such instances. He would go along with her because she meant so much to him, but it was always Lisa who started any contact between them.
If she was surprised by the contact she did not show it. She returned his hug fiercely, her arms wound tightly around his torso and she buried her face in the crook of his neck, while one of his hands slowly stroked her hair and the other rested against her back.
“Promise you'll write to me?” she croaked, and Harry could feel a few tears hitting the bare skin of his neck. He felt a moment of intense guilt threatening to overwhelm him, but reigned in it.
He also managed to reign in the suspicious moisture that gathered in his eyes. He would not allow himself to show weakness by crying. Especially not when his friend needed him to be strong.
“I promise,” he whispered. He had actually spent quite a bit of time making sure that it would be possible to send her letters. He couldn't send Hedwig to her. While that wasn't quite breaking the law or jeopardizing the secrecy of magic, it would cause a lot of unwanted questions to be asked.
Fortunately, there was a way to send letters to non-magical people via the wizarding post office. Harry didn't know the mechanics behind it, but knew they had a way of transferring letters to a regular post office using some kind of magic. While it would be interesting to study at some point, at that moment, the only thing he really cared about was that it meant he could send letter's to Lisa.
“Everyday.”
He chuckled, though it was lacking any humor. “I'll see what I can do.”
Harry could feel her nod against his neck. For a moment, no one spoke, and the only sound were the small sniffles coming from the girl in his arms.
“I'll miss you.”
Harry's arms tightened around the girl who was a sister in all but blood. Why was this so much harder than he thought it would be?
“And I you.”
He carefully loosened his hold on the girl, his hands going to her shoulders. He pushed her back a bit, forcing her to let go of him. Giving the girl a small smile, Harry gently wiped the few tears that had fallen from her eyes.
“Try not to be too depressed, ok?” he said, trying to give her a smile he didn't feel. “I know it seems like a long time, but it won't be forever. I still get Christmas off, and I'll see you then.”
“It seems like it's going to be forever,” Lisa muttered, and Harry looked away uncomfortably. He wished he could make her feel better, wished he could say or do something to assure her that everything would be all right. That he could take away all the pain she was feeling, but there was nothing he could think of that would help in a situation like this.
Because even with all knowledge Harry gained, there were some things that you just couldn't learn from a book.
Because sometimes, the only way to learn is through first hand experience.
And unfortunately for Harry, this was one situation he had never been in before, and so all he could do was hope that things would get better with time.