AftermathGeneral disclaimer: I don’t own the characters and I certainly don’t own the plot.
Harry Potter awoke stiffly and groggily. He hadn’t been sleeping well since the night on the Astronomy Tower when he had watched, petrified, as Severus Snape killed his mentor, Albus Dumbledore. He had left Hogwarts immediately after the funeral and returned to the Dursleys.
Arriving when his Uncle Vernon was at work, he pushed past his Aunt Petunia when she came to the door. “I need to stay for a week,” he told her quickly. A week should give him long enough to gather up some supplies and sort out everything he could remember about the memories Dumbledore had shown him in the Pensieve. “After that, I won’t bother you ever again.”
It was the truth. Either he would be dead or not, but he had no intention of returning to their house ever again. Unless, he did die and found himself a ghost. Then the thought of haunting them might be too irresistible to pass up.
I might be able to scare some weight off of Dudley, he thought, and it was the first time he felt like smiling in what seemed like ages.
Harry’s first stop had been Gringotts, where he had converted some of his parents’ Galleons into pounds. He dropped an impressive amount of them on the kitchen table. Petunia had looked at them for a moment before giving him a tight smile.
“I’ll just fix you some tea.”
That had been a week ago, and today was his last day before moving on to The Burrow. Bill and Fleur’s wedding was to take place two days after his birthday. He would be seventeen, and all the restrictions on underage magic would be lifted. Not that it mattered, as he would be in the household of adult witches and wizards, so the Ministry would not be able to keep tabs on his use of magic. Hermione had already sent an owl outlining some of the information she had researched for ways to destroy a Horcrux. Ron was plotting strategies. It would be difficult to be so close to Ginny, but he would do it. He was on a mission.
As he lay in his narrow bed, he rolled toward the window to watch the pinkening of the sky. It finally came through his jumbled thoughts that he heard water running, which was unusual this early in the morning. Climbing out of bed, he reached for his wand, determined to investigate.
Dudley’s door was still closed, but so was the door to the bath, and a rim of light shone beneath it. His aunt and uncle’s bedroom door was open, snd he could hear Uncle Vernon’s snoring and Aunt Petunia’s whistling breath out into the hallway.
Confusion, fear, and then anger, ran through him. Someone was in the bath. Noiselessly, he turned the doorknob and stepped into the steam-filled room. It fogged up his glasses, but he pressed on. There was movement behind the milky white shower curtain, a pink body that was apparently washing under its arms. Wand in hand, he backed into the sink cabinet and drew a shaky breath.
“WHO’S THERE?” he demanded fiercely.
The shower curtain was pulled back quickly and there stood Albus Dumbledore with a bit of shampoo still in his beard and his own half-rimmed spectacles fogging. Twinkling, he smiled. “Hello, Harry. Hand me a towel.”
“But, but, but,” Harry gasped, “but you’re DEAD!”
Dumbledore chuckled while hiding modestly behind the shower curtain. “Dead? Are you certain, Harry? I wouldn’t leave you and little Hedwig all alone. I think you were having a bad dream. Towel, please?”
Author’s notes: I finally got to meet the incomparable
PlaidPooka and she laughed at this idea. So blame it on her. My thanks to her and to the wondrous
Vocalion, editor extraordinaire and my darling D'Arcy who is still teaching me about writing.