fan-fiction: Harry Potter and the Temple of Anubis
Harry was slouched by the window of his room, watching as the evening sky was glowing with alchemistic sorcery. The sun was setting in a blaze of gold and purple, and did absolutely nothing to alleviate the heat and humidity that lay as a thick blanket over the suburb.
In front of the houses lining Pivet Drive the lush lawns, bushes and flowerbeds were kept from withering solely by the hard labour of owners armed with water-hoses, usually quite late, since the nation-wide watering-ban was still in effect. It hadn’t rained for almost a month now, but the populace of Pivet Drive would rather die a slow and painful death, than have a front-garden that didn’t look as if it was a contestant in the annual “Garden of the Year” competition.
Those home-owners included a very bulky man, pottering about in the garden just below Harry’s window, wheezing and cursing beneath his breath. Harry couldn’t help thinking how much his uncle Vernon looked like an angry bull doing garden-work, with his complete lack of a neck, small beady eyes and very large moustache.
Uncle Vernon was wearing a soft hat, and insisted on dressing himself like an old-fashioned English home-owner, even though the weather demanded shorts and a T-shirts and nothing else.
But Harry was somewhat grateful for not being subjected to uncle Vernon’s very pale and very broad shins.
He dropped down from the window, and surveyed his room. It wasn’t very big, but still better than the cupboard beneath the stairs, that he’d once called his home. It was littered with books, clothes, various objects of glass and metal in strange shapes, posters on the walls, and a desk so cluttered with objects, that it was hard to tell what material it was made from. In other words a typical 16-year old boys room – at least at a glance. A second look would reveal the books to bear such titles as “One hundred Magical Herbs and Their Uses”, “Advanced Books of Spells 1” and “The History of Magic”. The objects were such things as a broken mirror, the shards held in place by tape, various colourful boxes, quills and parchment, a few dried leaves and a black pointy hat. One of the posters sported the words “England Quidditch Team” beneath a photograph of seven robed men and women on broom sticks – who were waving and smiling at anyone looking. Not to mention the cage on top of the closet, were a very large white owl was gasping slowly for its breath in the unbearable heat, sitting pitiable on one leg, as it had a bandage around the other.
Harry heard a slight breeze rustle in the trees outside and uncle Vernon swearing at what sounded like the water-hose.
He could hear the clattering of plates somewhere down-stairs, so Aunt Petunia was obviously doing the dishes. The TV-set was silent yet still managed to convey the message, that his cousin Dudley wasn’t at home.
If Harry had thought, that saving Dudley from the Dementors last summer, would change his cousins need to bully and harass him, he had been gravely mistaken. During his fifth year at Hogwarts Dudley had grown, mostly in width, and the only thing keeping him from exploding was his wrestling and biking around with a gang of boys, that was feared by every child in the neighbourhood. Aunt Petunia’s family-diet had only taken five pounds from her and Uncle Vernon, so that she now looked very scrawny with a very skinny horses’ face.
Dudley and his gang often shop-lifted their hearts out at the candy-stores in the area, and the constant sugar consumption was slowly but surely turning Dudley into a balloon on legs.
A strong balloon nonetheless, and one that hated Harry with a vengeance. But since Harry had taken to carry his wand with him no matter were he went, Dudley simply didn’t dare attack him. But Harry could feel Dudleys pig’s eyes glaring at him, when ever they passed each other, promising that “One day…”
This far all Dudley had managed was to torture Hedwig. Harry had come home two days ago, and saw his cousin sneak down the stairs, gloating at him and vanishing out into the kitchen. Dudleys eyes had spoken volume, and Harry had rushed up to his room, to find that not only had his owl returned from delivering a letter to The Order of the Phoenix, but Hedwig had been lying in a pile of feathers, hooting sadly with her leg broken. And with the reply missing.
For a split second Harry had seriously considered testing one of the three banned curses on his cousin, or just see if a spell could break a leg. He’d rushed down to the kitchen, where the Dursleys were gorging on chicken-roast and mashed potatoes, and had confronted Dudley.
The result, of course, had been all too predicable. Aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon had protected Dudley savagely and while uncle Vernons blotchy face had gone from beetroot coloured to purple, he had yelled at Harry not to toss around accusations like that. All the while Dudley had smirked with no small amount of smugness behind their backs, and even managed to wave the letter he’d stolen.
Harry had reached for his wand when Dudley simply stuffed the parchment in his mouth, and devoured it, like it was chocolate fudge.
It had been pointless to stay in the spotless stain-free kitchen, which Aunt Petunia kept as if it was the set for a detergent commercial, so Harry had turned on his heel and marched back up-stairs to tend to his wounded owl.
Fortunately a face-off like that had become rarer, after the treat Mad-Eyed Moody had delivered to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Most of the time they both left him alone, or did what they could to ignore him. Which Harry was grateful for.
Harry crossed the room carefully to the closet, stepping carefully over the objects on the floor, that shone back at him like pieces in an obstacle race. He opened the closet-door and reached for a small glass top lying on a pile of clothes. It stood, perfectly balanced, on his palm and reflected the last sun-light, blazing lazily through his fluttering curtains.
He was about to close the door again, as he saw himself in the mirror on the inside. A thin boy of sixteen, with ruffled black hair, that always defied any attempts at flattening it, and startling green eyes behind glasses. But his most remarkable trait was the lightening shaped scar on his forehead, and he reached up a hand to let his fingers brush over it.
This day it hadn’t hurt, merely ached slightly a few times.
He lowered his gaze to the sneakometre in his hand. Together with the silent scar, the glass top seemed to indicate that for now he had nothing to fear. At least not from Lord Voldemort and his Death-Eaters – at least not right now.
Harry closed his eyes for a moment, as he became aware of another kind of pain. The stinging in his heart, that kept reminding him of his loss of Sirius. His god-father. He drew in a slow breath of air and closed the closet door indifferently and slunk to the floor. He still couldn’t believe he was gone. All he’d seen was that the Lestrange woman had cast a spell in the Room of Death in the Department of Mysteries, and Sirius had fallen through an ancient arch-way. But everyone had assured him that Sirius was dead. Remus Lupin, Mad-Eyed Moody, even professor Dumbledore.
He wasn’t sure what would be worse. Not ever having known Sirius, not ever having had a god-father, or knowing and loosing him. Sirius was the only one who’d ever really understood him, and listened to him.
Outside the evening was billowing like a scarf of dark silk, and as the shadows conquered Pivet drive only the faint misty orange lights from the street lamps tried to keep them at bay.
He stared over his shoulder at his desk, were he’d been writing a letter to the Order of the Phoenix, as he’d promised to do every third day. He put the sneakometer down on his night table and stared out the window.
Some nights, very late, he could swear he’d felt a presence these past few weeks. Like a dark echo in the back of his head, that was making its way up to his conscious mind. He would wake up with his scar searing with a white-hot pain, but before he could get up, and get to the window, the sensation had faded again.
When he looked outside there was nothing to see, but the shadow of a cat stealing away in the deep night outside. Maybe he should tell the Order, or Dumbledore. Or his friends, Ron and Hermione. But they’d spend most of the summer condoling his loss of Sirius, as if that would change anything. If he told them about his feelings, they might just all start worrying even more, or condoling even more, or thinking he was just doing this to get attention.
And if there was one thing, which Harry was sick and tired of, it was being accused of making things up. The past year he’d spend as an outcast, ridiculed for claiming Voldemort had returned. Only the past few weeks, since Voldemort had appeared right there, in the lobby of the Ministry of Magic, had the witches and wizards accepted the truth.
Maybe he should tell Ron and Hermione about the prophecy then? That one day he would either kill Lord Voldemort, or the dark lord would kill him. Murderer or victim, those were his choices.
But the chances that they’d realise he wanted to talk, and not be fussed about were slim. And the time for revealing that would come sooner or later, and right now later suited him better.
Both Ron and Hermione had written to him on his birthday, and said he’d get his gifts very soon. Harry would’ve settled for spending the rest of his vacation at the Weasleys house, were he could be kept up to date with what happened in the magical world.
He watched the muggle-news whenever he got the chance, or slipped Uncle Vernons newspapers to his room, to look for clues of what Voldemort and his Death-Eaters were op to. But either the Ministry of Magic were managing to keep it from the news, or the dark mages were being reclusive and working in secret, for he had found nothing.