A/N: Hi! Hello! Few things before you start!
This chapter is mainly to set the mood, and certain facts for this story. It's a lot more sombre and deep, so don't be surprised when the next chapter starts a bit more casually. It's also slightly upsetting, introducing themes of self-harm and abuse, so please be careful!! 💗❤️
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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
Terry Pratchett
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9th July 1996
Harry collapsed on soggy grass, its thick, musty smell filling his nostrils. He quickly pushed himself up to perform a rotation on his heels, observing his surroundings.
An eerie silence haunted the graveyard, hanging about in the thick fog like a bad omen. The Cup lay discarded by a nameless grave.
The Cup. The Cup was a PortKey, they had to go back—
"Cedric—"
"Kill the spare."
A green light pierced the darkness and struck the elder boy down. A thud that sounded too painful to be normal, and the fog parted to reveal the fallen body of Cedric Diggory.
"CEDRIC—" Harry gasped.
The features of the dead Hufflepuff shimmered and warped and distorted hideously, before rearranging themselves to one Harry had seen too much in sleep and too little in life.
Sirius Black stared up at him blankly, slightly greying hair splayed out like a crown, mouth agape in a way far too reminiscent to the Dementor attack by the lake.
"Sirius," Harry breathed. Even the mist parted at his words. "Sirius, I'm sorry—"
"You didn't save me, Harry." The voice was too harsh, too cold, too dead to be Sirius, and yet it was. The mouth of his godfather moved in time with the words that fell from those blue lips. "Why didn't you save me? I'm dead now. It's all your fault."
"Sirius, please—"
"I'm dead now. It's all your fault."
"No—"Harry sobbed, trying to clutch a hand. His fingers simply passed through. But Sirius was speaking; he could still save him—
"I'm dead now. It's all your fault." He could save Sirius and he could bring him back and then they would hug each other and it would all be ok.
It had to be ok because he couldn't—
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
"I'm dead now. It's all your fau—"
"I'm SORRY!" He screamed through tears, and his scream split the nightmare open, and brought him back to a darker reality.
Harry's screams grappled for release under the duct tape sealing his mouth shut.
***
11th July 1996
"Sirius Black."
Nothing.
As always.
Sighing, Harry held the mirror fragment up to catch the reflection of glitchy red numbers glowing dimly in the black-blue gloom, already announcing the fourth hour of the day.
He'd been getting far too little sleep lately.
***
13th July 1996
His OWL results fluttered carelessly into the loose floorboard.
An O in Defence has mocked him, as though a petty school exam would help protect his friends.
An E in Potions had tore apart the possible future of becoming an Auror. Should he have a future at all.
A D in History of Magic—the vision that had sent him to the Department of Mysteries, to save Sirius.
A P in Divination mocked his past surety, and beheld him for a fool the moment he watched Sirius fall through the Veil.
He had not saved his godfather. He had killed him instead.
***
15th July 1996
I killed Sirius.
I killed Sirius.
I killed Sirius.
Blood dripped on lacy table cloth, stretching out to the other threads with bloody claws.
"You must not tell lies, Mr Potter." A saccharine voice dripping with poison whispered sweetly.
I killed Sirius.
***
17th July 1996
Speech spilled from his uncle's lips as Harry wrote words that weren't his own. The glow of defiance in Hedwig's amber eyes was the only sign of resistance to what was happening.
It was a mercy that his owl had left, just in time to avoid seeing Harry's head collide with the wall.
A knell rang with too late a warning in his skull, as liquid pain fell in drops of blood from his head.
***
19th July 1996
Harry glanced at the copy of the Daily Prophet the owl had dropped on his bed. A family of four in Swindon. Dead. They'd had a Muggleborn daughter in Hufflepuff. A second year, called Eleanor Branstone. He'd helped carry her books once, when her bag had split.
She'd been so small, so young.
Too young.
Four more cuts joined the ones already on his wrist, counting up the death toll.
There were thirteen now.
***
21st July 1996
Careful not to disturb any of his still throbbing bruises, Harry slowly lay on his side.
The myriad of lesions decorated the pale canvas of his stomach and his tanned arms in colourful splotches. The majority of them were blue and dark purple; very few had turned yellow and the number of red ones topped the half healed green. Choleric welts cut across his sunburnt back, though they remained numberless, and their state of healing equally unknown.
The Order's attempts to cow his uncle, though done with kind intentions, had not been taken well; it seemed the man had a few more functioning brain cells than Harry had realised.
"Well they haven't stopped us before!" Uncle Vernon had yelled. "What'll let them know I'm doing anything now!"
And now Harry doubled as a punch bag and house elf, as well as divined Saviour of the Wizarding World.
Whoever was weaving the threads of his life had been awfully generous with all the pain and misery.
***
23rd July 1996
'The Basic Guide for the Basics of Occulemency' : his birthday gift from Hermione. He'd told his friends he didn't want any presents; his birthday didn't feel worth celebrating after...everything.
Therefore, they'd given him his presents early.
This book, his wand and mirror fragment had been the only things he'd managed to save before his trunk had been shoved away in the cupboard under the stairs.
Sighing, Harry turned back to the passage on 'Strengthening the Fortification of The Mind'. Perhaps this would tell him how to keep the nightmares away. Then he could stop seeing Sirius die, over and over again.
***
25th July 1996
"Your parents adopted me as your guardian...If anything happened to them..."
It was funny how, in dreams, some things came with painful accuracy. He could have been with Sirius, should have been. Those words had been emblazoned in his heart with a golden shine of hope.
"Once my name's cleared...if you wanted a...a different home..."
How could something happen to Sirius? he'd thought back then. They'd prove his innocence, and then they'd go home. Together. His summers would be filled with glorious stories of his parents, his winters with the Christmases he'd so often dreamed of.
And then Pettigrew had escaped.
And then Voldemort had returned.
And then he had lost everything.
***
27th July 1996
Gentle fingers grazed against the laughing figure of a younger Sirius Black, face alight with joy. Light and life radiated from the picture like the rays of a now dead sun.
Harry could no longer see the same colour in life. The world, in his eyes, had been infected with a grey tinge.
***
29th July 1996
Punches rained down on Harry's curled up form, mingling with derogatory slurs and insults that fell like needles on his skull.
Harry hid himself in the mental construction of a certain cupboard. The book had explained Occulemency much better than Snape's stupid repetitions of "clear your mind, Potter!". It was more existence within non-existence; if your mind was space, you were an insignificant speck of stardust. The cupboard had become an unusual place of safety; his uncle and cousin had eventually become too large to get in, and his aunt had always maintained as little contact with his unexpected haven as possible.
It was with the broken toy soldiers that Harry found solace in, as a well-aimed kick pierced his gut.
***
31st July 1996
"Sirius Black."
The mirror stayed dead and useless, just as it had every night he'd spoken his godfather's name.
Born as the seventh month dies, sixteen years ago.
'Birthday luck' had never been something that had featured in his life.
Harry snorted humourlessly as he caught dead green eyes in the reflection of a deader mirror.
Sirius was dead. And it was all his fault.
He welcomed the nightmares that punished him, way into the early hours of the morning.