A Darker Form of Magic

The field was still warm from the day's sun as Harry laid down in it, staring up at the vast night sky. The bugs and frogs buzzed and croaked almost pleasantly in the distance, a soft melody that was just about as close to a lullaby as the boy knew that he would ever get. But he couldn't sleep just yet.

Grass rustled by the boy's ear as another sat down in the field next to him. Harry didn't need to look to know just who the newcomer was. There was no one else that it could be after all. No one else would really be crazy enough to sneak out at night to meet the green eyed boy in a field at night, especially not for so many nights over the past school year.

"Nice night," Jude Finley observed as he fitted himself at the younger boy's side, their arms pressed closely together in a way that neither of them ever allowed for anyone else to do so.

Jude's voice was gruff as he spoke, even at the age of eleven. Harry liked it that way though as opposed to his more joyous classmates, the ones that could hardly ever be found without a laugh in their words. Harry understood the gruffness of the other much better than anything else. It matched his own after all.

"No shit," the lightning scarred boy cursed, ignoring the older boy's false gasp of deslblife. Jude had no room to be making such noises, both of the boys knew that much. "Oh, shut it Finley. You're the one that I learned it from."

"Fuck it," the older boy cursed indignantly. Out of the corner of Harry's eyes he could just make out the older boy threading his fingers through the tall grass. "You're right."

Harry hummed gently, biting down the remark that he normally was. "How did you get away?" The black haired boy asked the brown haired one instead, even though he'd already heard the answer before too many times to count.

"Out the side door," the other boy lied. Harry knew that it was one as sure as he knew the name of the brightest star in the night sky. 

There were fresh scraps on the older boy's arm from getting it caught on a tree limb while he was climbing out of the window of his room on the second floor of the Boy's Home  that he lived in. It was a lie that Harry knew Jude told and stuck to after the green eyed boy had become angered with the reckless blue eyed one for twisting his ankle the first time that they had met like this. 

It was a lie that Harry let the other tell him so that they wouldn't fight. 

"How did you escape?" The older boy asked even though Harry knew that he already knew the younger boy's lie. He just didn't know that it was one.

"Through the patio door and over the fence," Harry told the other easily. And really it wasn't much of a lie at all as he'd done just that. It was a lie of omission as he'd done so much more before that.

The cupboard door had been shut and locked tight when the Dursleys had gone to sleep for the night, but that didn't really matter so much when Harry was a freak, as his relatives so kindly called the boy. The door had thrummed and heated almost as if it was alive when Harry had placed his hand upon it and vanished the structure altogether for long enough for the boy to slip across the threshold before it came back. After that, everything had gone exactly as Harry had said.

It wasn't all that long ago that Harry had learned that when he really wanted things to, he could make seemingly impossible things happen. He could remember running once, as far and as fast as his legs could take him, which was much farther than most boys his age given his practice despite his sorry state, as Dudley and his little gang had chased after him. 'Harry Hunting,' they had so joyously called it. 

But Harry in no way had wanted to be found. 

He could still remember how it had felt to so desperately want to be almost anywhere but where he was right then, and how in the next moment he had been on the school's roof. 

Between that and the time that his hair had grown back completely overnight after his Aunt Petunia had taken the shears to it, Harry had understood that these were things that he was doing. So he sought to control it.

Intention and emotion were everything, Harry had learned quickly enough after being locked up in his cupboard for a week after the hair incident. It had been nearly three after the occurrence at the school. There had to be emotion and a cause to drive and change the emotion into fuel. Harry had more than enough anger and drive for both. 

Though he never dared to put a name to what he was or what he could do.

Harry knew that Uncle Vernon would surely kill him if he did.

"How are the Dursleys?" Jude asked, the scorn evident in his tone as he drawled the other boy out of his thoughts.

Harry stared up at the night sky and studied the constellations there for a moment, tracing the ones that he knew, and whispering their names in his mind. He didn't want to talk about the Dursleys, but the only other option was the happenings at the Boy's Home and all Jude would have to speak of is the extra readings that the Matron was making them do in hopes of raising the boys' literacy levels. She got on tangents like this every now and then, according to Jude, usually more so as summer drew closer.

"As normal as always," Harry answered at last, taking a moment to breathe in the scent of the night air to ward off the harsh screams that still lingered in his ears from hours before, his own screams. "Dudley is going to throw a fit in the morning, though that's normal enough I suppose."

The older boy's chest rose and fell in a way that might have been a laugh in another life, but not quite this one. "And why's that?" Jude asked as he shifted in the grass and laid his head against the younger boy's shoulder as if it belonged there. 

Most nights it did.

A sigh escaped Harry's chapped lips, the crease in the middle opening painfully as blood sprung from the bust, but the slight boy only licked it away. It was nothing new after all.

"He only got thirty - six presents this year," Harry explained almost bitterly, showing just how much he cared for his cousin's idiocy, "last year he got thirty - eight."

"The poor bastard," Jude falsely lamented, his voice filled with enough sarcasm that Harry knew that he would get slapped seven times to Sunday if he were to use even half as much at the Dursleys. 

A familiar bitterness curled in the younger boy's chest at the way that the other boy could act so blatantly like himself, the easy way that he could let go. Harry could too if he wanted, could switch everything on and off like some sort of game. And sometimes he did, but it was a taxing ordeal. Harry normally conserved his energy for the Dursleys.

In moments like these, Harry thought that perhaps he hated summer and all that it brought with it.

He thought that sometimes he hated Jude too.

The boys had pressed up against one another in the grass, talking about nothing and everything that came to mind as their eyes began to droop heavily and the conversation's lull grew longer and longer with the passage of time.

The pair parted slowly, Harry making his way back to the Dursleys slowly with an apple tucked neatly in his hand, something that Jude would never let him leave without. Sometimes the other boy's kindness was at war with everything else that he knew of the older boy, but Harry thought that he quite liked that about the older boy. He would be boring otherwise, it added layers to something that would have otherwise been much too simple.

—-

Morning came far too early for Harry as his Aunt rapped on the once more locked door of his heavily dusted cupboard before screaming demands for the boy inside of it to wake. Harry could hear the heavy sounds of a lock coming undone as he proved his eyes open just before closing them once more in a wince.

"Up!" Aunt Petunia screeched loud enough that Harry was almost surprised that the neighborhood dogs didn't start barking at the awful noise. He could hear the woman storming away towards the kitchen as he sat up in the small bed and searched for a pair of socks. She was back by the time that the boy had pulled his trainers on.

Harry pushed the door to his cupboard open quickly, giving his Aunt a good view of the stare that she'd willingly  put her own nephew into as she stood there with her hand raised to hit the door once more. Harry had few joys in his megar life, but one of them was the subtle ways that he just refused to disappear in the way that his relatives so clearly wanted him to. The way that they always seemed disgusted with Harry and - in part - themselves, was just an added bonus. It felt almost like a form of revenge, maybe it was.

Though the only real revenge that he would want would be their bodies in the ground. Not that Harry would ever admit that out loud.

Aunt Petunia balked at her nephew for a moment before she lowered her arm down to her side with all the grave of a toddler.  "Get a move on," the woman said at last, though she made no move to get out of the way so that Harry could do just that. Not that Harry would have dared to point such a thing out. "I want you to go look after the bacon, and don't you dare let it burn," the woman snarled at the small boy as he shuffled to the edge of his bed. "I want everything to be just perfect for my Duddy's special day."

What wanted to groan in annoyance at the childish name for the boy that was older than Harry himself. But he didn't do so out loud, not when - as of right now - he was still being allowed to eat breakfast.

Aunt Petunia moved gawakly down the hall and Harry followed quietly behind her to take his place in the kitchen, up behind the stove. He'd been cooking for the family since he was tall enough to reach the burners and had the scars lacing and marring his arms to prove it.

Harry tried his best to ignore the almost buckling table as it all but bowed under the weight of all of the presents that Harry's Aunt and Uncle had bought their son.  The sight made Harry feel almost ill to see, though resentful would be the best word to use as he rolled up the sleeves of the shirt that was once Dudley three times just so that it would not swallow the boy whole as he flipped the simmering bacon. Though just because Harry tried to ignore the sight, doesn't mean that he actually did.

He could see a new computer, a second television, and a new racing bike of all things. Out of all of the presents there, the last one made the absolute least sense to the younger boy as he knew that his cousin hated anything that had to do with exercise that didn't involve punching whoever Dudley and his sycophants could get their grimy hands on. Harry knew that the boy's favorite punching bar was usually Harry himself, but the younger boy was harder to catch than most would think, years of running laying firmly under his belt. That, and his ability to disappear at will when he so wished it.

Uncle Vernon walked into the kitchen as Harry turned over the bacon, the sizzling of the grease was nowhere near enough to cover up the sound of the man barking at the boy to comb his hair, something that he did at least once a week Harry found. That, or he'd look over his paper and say that the boy needed a haircut. Not that any that the child had ever gotten had stuck. 

A part of Harry wanted to ask the man why he bothered to do so at this point, but he'd learned a long time ago that the first rule for surviving the Dursleys was to not ask questions. Things have only ever gotten ugly when Harry had broken that rule.

Harry was putting the plates onto what little room was left on the table by the time that Dudley had gotten around to getting up and inspecting his presents, because of this Harry got to see the exact moment that the other boy's face fell. 

"Thirty-six," the plump boy said as he looked up at his parents. The older boy's fingers were still held in the six Harry noted as he sat down on the other side of the table to eat what food had been left for him. A piece of bacon and the scraps of eggs that were left, a small portion that Harry wouldn't put it past anyone in the house to take. "That's two less than last year."

Harry watched silently as his Aunt attempted to placate the older boy as warning signs of an impending meltdown began to flash in the minds of everyone else in the room. Harry could almost physically feel the tantrum that was coming as Aunt Petunia bargained with the other boy.

"-Two more presents. Is that alright?" The woman asked as Harry quickly scarfed down what little food he had left, knowing that Dudley turning the table over was still a very decent probability.

The older boy thought for a long moment, enough that Harry could almost see the clogged gears not turning in the other boy's mind as he tried to do the basic math. "So I'll have thirty… thirty…"

"Thirty - nine, sweetums," Aunt Petunia said in that sickly sweet voice of hers that Harry had noticed that she reserved only for the plump boy and particularly nosy neighbors. A part of him wondered if the woman even noticed the silent manipulations that she used, but to ask would only land him on the wrong side of a locked door.

"Oh," the older boy said at last, all of the fight suddenly leaving the boy's body as he sat down heavily in his chair. The other members of the room all let out a silent, relieved breadth. Not that any of them would ever admit to that. "All right then."

Harry heard Uncle Vernon chuckle as Dudley reached for the nearest parcel, dragging it towards himself rather than bothering to pick it up. Sometimes Harry couldn't help but wonder just how the older boy could exert so much energy into remembering a number of presents from a year ago, but couldn't be bothered to do simple math or pick up a package. Most times he found it easier to just not care at all. Life was always much easier when you didn't have a stake in it.

There was a blunt sound of plastic crashing into plastic as Aunt Petunia hung up the phone and stormed back into the room. Harry was quick to identify the anger on the older woman's face and even quicker to make himself small at the table, hiding neatly behind the growing pile of trash on the dining table. 

"Bad news, Vernon," Aunt Petunia said, speaking the obvious as Harry had noticed that most people had a tendency to do so for reasons beyond his understanding. "Mrs. Figg has broken her leg. She can't take him." 

The 'him' in question was Harry himself, something they he would know well enough even without his Aunt's hateful gaze flickering to him as she spoke.

That was another thing that Harry had noticed that most people tended to do. Adults liked to talk about children as if they weren't there, even as they sat in the same room. The Dursleys liked to talk about Harry. The only person that he knew that didn't do this was Jude, but he was often the exception in most things, not the rule. Harry sometimes thought that life would be much easier if the older boy had set the rule.

Harry could see the exact moment that Dudley registered his mother's words, as his hands ceased their endless pursuit for gifts and his mouth fell open in shock. The boy turned an angry gaze at Harry as if he were somehow responsible, but Harry didn't so much as prickle at it as he might usually. He was too busy feeling relieved that he wouldn't have to spend the day with Mrs. Figg or her cats for another year until Dudley's next birthday came around. Aunt Petunia, Harry thought, seemed to share her son's view of things if her angered glare was anything to go by.

"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.

"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy."

"What about…" that was when Harry stopped listening to their verbal game of deciding what to do with him. There was almost no point in bothering to listen when he would get no say in what happened to him anyway.

Story of my life. 

The sound of tears is what brought the boy's attention back to the conversation at hand. 

Across the table from him, Harry could see the older boy wrapped up in his mother's arms as he wailed, acting as if this was all an injustice against him. The tears weren't real of course, Harry knew that Dudley hadn't seriously cried in years, it was just another manipulation in a house overflowing with them. The younger boy thought that the other occupants of the house knew this as well, they were just too cowardly to go against the older boy and risk a real tantrum.

The doorbell rang almost forebodingly through the house and Harry saw Dudley stop pretending to cry at once, as if to prove a point. The older boy shot Harry a nasty look as his mother pulled away to answer the door and welcome Piers Polkins into the house. The older boy had a rat - like face and beady eyes that sometimes made Harry wonder if he wasn't related to Uncle Vernon in some way. The fact that Piers was the boy that held children's arms behind their backs as Dudley beat them bloody only reaffirmed the idea in the younger's mind.

When half an hour had passed, it was time to leave for the zoo and no one in the Dursley house had found a decent solution for the problem that was Harry, the youngest of the three boys found himself walking out of the door with the other four to go to the zoo with them. He almost would have been excited if Uncle Vernon hadn't taken a vice - like grip to his arm and pulled him to the side on the way to the car.

"I'm warning you," the older man leered, his voice low and threatening in a way that Harry knew the man would never take with his son. Uncle Vernon stuck his face close enough to Harry's that the boy could make out the small chips in the man's yellowing teeth. "I'm warning you, boy - any funny business, anything at all and you'll be in that cupboard of yours until the New Year."

"I won't do anything," Harry assured quietly, just loud enough for the other to hear. He always tried his best not to speak while at the Dursleys. Nothing good ever happened when he did speak, but it was only slightly better when Harry didn't.

Uncle Bernon didn't seem to believe Harry, he never did, but the boy really wasn't planning on letting his freakishness show, not today. He would never purposefully act in such a way where so many people could see. The punishment would not be worth the price.

Sometimes Harry wished that his instincts would listen to the logical part of his brain.

The zoo was busy, filled with families and the like as they took advantage of the cheaper prices that the facility offers on Saturdays. The sun was beating down with a viciousness that had the older two boys complaining as they walked and studied the animals with slowly dulling gazes, but Harry found that he quite liked the heat. That he liked the burning kiss of the sun, the unforgiving nature of it all. He wanted that ruthlessness.

The group walked to the reptile house after they'd finished lunch and Harry wasn't the least bit surprised to see the older boys walk straight for the biggest snake in the room. The reptile was easily big enough to wrap itself around Uncle Vernon's car twice over and crush it into something unidentifiable. But the brown coils were asleep, something that seemed to bore the Ofer boys as Dudley wined and Uncle Vernon rapped on the glass as if it was Harry's cupboard door.

The four of them moved away from the snake, moving onto whichever one would catch the pudgy boy's attention next, but Harry only moved closer to the reptile. The snake glittered prettily beneath the warm fluorescent lights, but he couldn't really find it in himself to appreciate the beauty of it all. Harry knew what it was like to be locked away like you belonged to someone other than yourself. To be alone. Harry felt more like the snake than he did like any human most days.

As if noting Harry's gaze, the reptile lifted his head and met the boy's eyes and winked.

Harry was quick to look around subtly, as if deciding where to go next. Once he saw that no one was watching, the boy shoved down the absurdity of it all and winked back. 

The snake jerked its head in the direction of where Uncle Vernon and Dudley had gone before giving Harry a look that seemed to convey to the boy that the snake was quite used to the treatment that the group had given him. Used to being gawked at.

Maybe if Harry had been a bit duller, or more childish in nature he wouldn't have noticed the breadthy way that his voice came out when he spoke, or the hazy thrum of something in his chest, but he did. "I know how that feels," the boy said to the boa constrictor, knowing somehow that the snake would understand him as well as Harry did it.

Harry had been about to say more when there was a scream from behind from a voice that made the boy's body go stiff at the position that they were in. He could only vaguely hear Piers calling for the Dursleys over the panic rising in the boy and telling him to keep his arms pressed closely to his chest.

The panic had morphed into that unspeakable thing by the time that Dudley had waddled over to the tank, punching Harry in the ribs hard enough that he fell harshly to the concrete floor as the older boys pressed themselves up against the glass. By that point, Harry couldn't have hoped to stop the wave that rushed through the boy's body in the shape of the first panicked thought that had come to him.

To say that the glass gave way under the boys' combined weight would be a lie, because in order for it to break or fall like that, the glass would still have to exist at all. But it had vanished just as Harry's cupboard door did at night.

Harry sat up to the sounds of howls of horror echoing through the large room as the boa constrictor uncoiled itself with a blinding speed and slithered out of the display and to the floor as people rushed past and around it to the exit. Harry knew that he wasn't imagining it when he heard the snake hiss a quiet thanks.

Though the snake had only so much as nipped at the boys as it had passed them, Dudley and Piers in hysterics, swearing that the boa constrictor had tried to eat them whole by the time that the group had gotten to the car. That was a story that Harry was glad to let the boys keep so long as no one gave the vanished glass so much as a second thought.

But then Piers had camped down enough to think about the events that had just transpired clearly, and had turned to look at Harry in the car. "Harry was talking to it," the older boy had said almost to himself before focusing his gaze to look right at the boy with glasses. "Weren't you, Harry?"

Harry hadn't known just what to say to that so he had chosen to say nothing at all.

Uncle Vernon had only waited until Piers was halfway down the driveway before he had turned on Harry, grabbing at the boy's hair harsh enough that Harry thought that he was about to just rip it out. The boy didn't even struggle as he was dragged to the cupboard and thrown harshly inside, his shoulder banging painfully into the metal corner of the bed frame as the cupboard door slammed shut.

The burly man could hardly speak as his anger made him almost mute, proving to the boy what he already knew about those who expressed their anger out on others, a quiet anger was much more deadly than any explosive anger could hope to be. Harry was just grateful that Uncle Vernon was normally more prone to loud anger.

"Cupboard - stay - no meals," the man stammered before stomping away to his chair.

Harry could hear Aunt Petunia's flats slapping against the ground as she ran to get the man a brandy. Harry didn't really think that giving someone that was already angry alcohol was really the best of ideas, but Aunt Petunia didn't really seem to care about that. After all, she didn't need to. It wasn't her that would take the brunt of the anger anyways,

That night as Harry slept, he dreamt of flying motorcycles that would come and take him away to somewhere safe. 

But he knew that it would never come.