A Year Like None Other by aspeninthesunlight
Past Featured StorySummary: A letter from home sends Harry down a path he'd never have walked on his own. A sixth year fic, this story follows Order of the Phoenix and disregards any canon events that occur after Book 5. Spoilers for the first five books. Have fun!
Categories: Teacher Snape > Trusted Mentor Snape, Parental Snape > Guardian Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Draco, Remus
Snape Flavour: None
Genres: Drama, Hurt/Comfort
Media Type: None
Tags: Adoption, Slytherin!Harry, SuperPower! Harry
Takes Place: 6th Year
Warnings: Alcohol Use, Neglect, Self-harm, Torture, Violence
Challenges: None
Series: A Year Like None Other
Chapters: 96 Completed: Yes Word count: 810080 Read: 1379850 Published: 28 Feb 2007 Updated: 14 Sep 2007
A Letter To Surrey by aspeninthesunlight

"Well, that was certainly great fun," Harry said when it was all over. "Nothing like being drenched in sweat from head to toe as a pair of Slytherins hold me down and pour sticky goo all over my eyeballs."

"If you want a freshening charm, you should just ask for one," Draco pointed out.

"I wouldn't ask you for the time of day--"

"Too late!"

Harry felt a surge of super cooled air rushing all around him, tickling even inside his ears, before it was over. As it whooshed through the flannel of his pyjamas, though, it sucked out every bit of moisture and odour. Really, it was quite a nice charm, far better than the ones Harry knew, but that didn't make it right.

Before he could so much as protest, Snape was snapping, "That's quite enough, you two. We have more important concerns than petty rivalries! Harry, blink a few times. Lumos."

The world slowly swam into view. "Oh, wow, how absolutely wild . . ." Harry breathed. "It's almost like . . . er . . ."

"What, Harry?" Snape pressed. "What do you see?"

Harry hesitated, then admitted, "Well, I can see more than before, but I can't see it very well. Everything's fuzzy, but not quite like I need my glasses, I don't think. More like colours are sort of swirly, like there's a halo of light around every object. And things are, I don't know, almost vibrating . . ."

"It's like he's high on Muggle drugs," Draco supplied. "Trust me; that is what he was going to say."

"Oh, Harry," Snape sounded a bit amused, but the tone was overlaid with worry. "That's really not wise. Especially for you, after what recently happened. But ah . . . we'll talk about it later."

"What recently happened to him?" Draco rudely questioned.

"Mind your own sodding business!" Harry shouted, reaching out a hand and shoving at Malfoy when he saw his blurry shape start to lean in too close.

Draco appeared to shrug it off. "Whatever. But yeah, stay clear of the Muggle drugs. You can get better effects with magic, anyway."

"Then why'd you try the Muggle kind?" Harry gibed.

"Slumming. Why did you?"

When Harry didn't answer, Snape shook his head, incanted Nox, and tucked his wand back into his robes. "Let's try your glasses," he suggested, setting them carefully on his face. Harry remembered then, Snape taking them off partway through the torture. Presumably, his teacher had kept them for him, ever since. "Any better?"

"Ah, no. Actually, they really make my eyes hurt." He reached up a hand and took them off, pushing them onto the night table. Draco's hazy outline deftly caught the item that had been shoved off the other side.

"Flowers, Potter? Ooh, from Halsey Kiersage. Mmm, and nicely spelled to last."

"Stop mucking about in my personal stuff!"

"Fine," Draco answered, and dropped the vase.

"Draco!" the Potions Master exclaimed. "We talked about this!"

"You talked to him about not smashing presents from my friends?" Harry jeered. "Isn't he a little old to be learning that? Did you also talk to him about not trying to get other people's pets executed? How about not stealing things he happens to find lying around in the Slytherin common room, or--"

"We talked about impulse control," Snape interrupted, laying significant stress on the final two words as he trained his gaze on Draco. "Well?"

"Oh, fine," Draco drawled again. "Vasula reparo. Floreuesco. Wingardium Leviosa. There, good as new, even renewed their lovely floral perfume."

The vase settled itself back down onto the night table.

Harry decided the better part of valour might be pretending that Draco Malfoy was nothing but a patch of air. "Professor? What do you think is going on with my vision? Why do my glasses hurt?"

"I suspect the Elixir's repairing your eyes to the state they should be in," Snape surmised. "You might not need glasses after this."

"I'd rather have skipped getting my eyeballs poked full of holes, all the same."

"I have no doubt. Well, I do have quite a few potions to tend. Is there anything else you need at the moment, Harry?"

"Yeah. I need to talk to you alone. Seriously alone, Professor."

"I will come eat dinner with you in a few hours," Snape promised. "Anything else before I leave?"

"Take him with you, and send Hermione back. I need to write a letter, and while I think I could sort of see the parchment now, I don't think I could write worth a damn."

"Draco will be pleased to assist you," Snape smoothly announced. "Am I correct?"

"Certainly, Professor," Draco replied, just as if he'd helped Harry with correspondence a thousand times before.

"Harry?" Snape sounded a tad less smooth when he posed a similar question to Harry. "Will that be acceptable?"

Funny he'd be asking, when the man had been so bloody autocratic before, had been all but shoving Draco at him, but Harry suddenly realised that yeah, it was acceptable. Just probably not for the reasons Snape thought.

There were, after all, far better things to do with Draco Malfoy than ignore him.

"Yeah, all right," Harry groused, making it sound good and reluctant. Snape was as wily as they came, and it wouldn't do to rouse his suspicions. "But he has to promise to get out when I say, this time. That's not negotiable. And you have to promise you'll take points from Slytherin if he sticks around after I've said to leave. A hundred points, say."

"Mr Potter drives a hard bargain," Snape observed, sounding rather . . . satisfied by that, actually. Harry almost snorted. He knew what his teacher was thinking: that Harry's bargain was rather Slytherin itself. "Can you abide by those terms, Mr Malfoy?"

"Oh, certainly," Draco said in his holier-than-thou voice, which Harry had always thought really suited his angelic appearance. It just didn't suit the demon he was inside. "However, in the interests of Slytherin, I should like to point out that you will have only Potter's word for whether I go when asked, or not. That is, unless we'd like to ask Madam Pomfrey to referee us?"

"I think we can trust the word of a Gryffindor," Snape drawled. "Even if he is a marginal one."

"Marginal?" Draco caught the meaning, but not the implication. "His middle name's practically Godric! What do you mean?"

"Harry knows. All right, then?"

"All right," the two boys echoed in unison.

Harry waited until Snape's footsteps had echoed away, before snarling with vicious intent, "Yeah, all right. Have you got a quill and parchment handy? Let's get started."

Of course he had no intention whatsoever of actually sending the letter. To anyone. He just wanted to write it, or rather, have Draco write it. Dudley would never see one word of what Malfoy was going to write, but the Slytherin boy didn't have to know that.

And as for his real letters, Hermione could help with those. Yeah, a letter to Dudley, and another one to Remus. But those were none of Draco's business.

This one, on the other hand . . .

A slow smile split Harry's face in two.

-----------------------------------------------------------

"Dear Dudley," Harry recited, leaning comfortably back on the pillows he'd demanded Draco fluff. Five times, until they were just perfect.

Draco obediently started writing, no doubt in the extremely elegant, looping script he always used on his essays. It was practically calligraphy, and took considerable effort and time, but that was okay with Harry. He wanted Malfoy to have to linger over every word and absorb every phrase.

"Who's Dudley?" Draco asked as he carefully drafted out the name.

"My cousin," Harry explained, letting each fact sink in before he moved on to the next. Sort of like Draco would have to do with the letter. "I grew up with him. His dad just died. Guess how? Death Eaters killed him. Guess why? You gave them his address."

Draco froze in mid-stroke, his jaw working though he didn't seem able to speak.

"What, you didn't know you were a murderer already?" Harry sniped. "Yeah, his dad, my uncle. Dead, at your hand! Not that you'd care; he was, after all, only a Muggle. But I've got just one relative left in the whole wide world, and his father just met his end in a horrible, absolutely sickening way. Now maybe you'll understand why I didn't feel so compelled to thank you for giving me back a stick of wood!"

Draco's quill slipped from his slack fingers and drifted to the floor.

"Well, pick it up!" Harry impatiently ordered, able to track the motion even with his half-healed eyes. "I thought you wanted to help me. Isn't that your new mantra? I've got a lot more to say to my cousin than just 'Dear Dudley,' so hop to! Or do you not want to help me so much any longer?"

"Just dictate," Draco muttered. "Accio quill." A scratching sound told Harry that the other boy was finishing the salutation.

Harry paused a moment to collect his thoughts, then began speaking phrase by phrase, with long pauses in between so Draco could keep up.

"Dear Dudley,

"I'm really, really sorry over your recent loss. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for you, to stand out on your own front lawn and watch all that black smoke come pouring out the broken windows, knowing your father was trapped inside. How absolutely horrifying for you. And then to see the house crush in on itself, like that, and wonder if your father somehow made it out, and then realise he couldn't have, realise he's dead and gone forever . . . Dudley, I am so, so heartbroken that you had to see all that.

"It must be even worse for you, seeing as your mother passed on too, just three weeks ago---"

At that point, Draco broke off to gasp, his voice stricken, "His mother, too! Is that true?"

"Oh, yes," Harry ground out, squinting to try to make out Malfoy's features. Pointless, really. The most he could see was a blurry white face surrounded by a wavering halo of silver-gold. Surreally angelic. But this was no angel. He deserved to know what he'd done. Him, not his father, not this time.

"Now Dudley's got no-one," Harry blithely went on, calculating every word to be a blow. "I know what that's like, don't forget. No parents . . . You think of it every Christmas, every birthday. Well, hell. You think of it every day."

Draco's teeth were chattering. "How did she . . . ah . . . was that Death Eaters as well?"

"No, leukaemia," Harry snapped. No point to secrets now, was there? Voldemort knew everything already. "It's a Muggle disease. I left school to try to help her, but it didn't work. She died, and I got wizardsick."

"How could you help her?" Draco questioned. "We can't cure Muggle diseases."

Harry debated for a moment, though he knew all along, really, that he was going to tell him. Might as well; it was one more way to twist the knife.

"They stuck a really big needle in me, Malfoy, and sucked out some of my bone marrow--"

"They did not!"

"Ask Severus," Harry sneered. "'Cause yes, they did. Muggle doctors. My marrow was supposed to make hers grow back right, or something, but she had a reaction to it instead, and died."

"But you're afraid of needles!" Draco exclaimed, the parchment sheets falling through his hands, that time.

"Yes, I am! Sweet of your father to play on that, wasn't it? He found it out from my bereaved uncle who was almost insane with grief that the operation had ended up so badly! But hey, no harm done, right? At least your father got to have his jollies reminding me, over and over, how stinking awful it was for me to try to help my aunt!"

"I feel sick," Draco announced, sounding every bit the part.

"Too bad," Harry spat. "Stop your pathetic whinging and write."

Harry went on, then:

"It must be even worse for you, seeing as your mother passed on too, just three weeks ago. I wish I knew what to tell you, Dudley. I only really know one thing, and it may not help, but then again, it just may.

"All the time growing up, what was hardest for me about being an orphan was not knowing who was to blame for my parents' deaths. Car accident, I was told--"

"Car accident?" Draco echoed. "What car accident? It was Avada Kedavra, wasn't it--"

"I can't explain every bloody thing about my childhood; we'll never get the letter written! Now shut up and write!"

Harry continued:

"Car accident, I was told, with no more detail than that. I used to fantasize about finding out just how that accident happened. I used to dream I'd track down the man responsible and beat him to a bloody pulp with my bare hands. The way I figured it, because of him I'd lost everything, and I was going to take every last thing from him, in recompense. But I couldn't do any such thing, not knowing who was even at fault in that accident. Then I found out I was a wizard, of course--"

"Oh, you have got to be making this up," Draco broke in again, shouting that time. "You didn't know you were a wizard? How is that even possible?"

"This is every word true," Harry hissed. "Like I said before, ask your Head of House. He knows. Now, are you going to write it? Because I'm this close to telling you to get out!" He held his thumb and forefinger a smidgen apart, and flung the gesture up right before Draco's eyes. Nice to be able to see well enough to aim, finally.

Draco didn't say a word, though he did set quill to parchment once more.

"Then I found out I was a wizard, of course, and learnt there was never any car accident, and suddenly, all my hate and anger could have a focus. Another wizard killed my parents, and I know who it was. Now, when I think of bashing brains against a wall, I can picture him, and hope.

"You may not see what all this has to do with you, Dudley, but you will, in just a second, here. See, while Aunt Petunia's death was really no-one's fault at all, like we talked about on the phone--"

Draco made some sort of gasping noise, probably over the picture of a wizard on the phone. Either that, or because he didn't have any idea what it was.

" . . .like we talked about on the phone, your father is dead because of one person, and I can tell you who he is. Draco Malfoy. He found out my summer address one day in class, here. And God knows why, but the little shite thought it would be amusing to pass this information on to his father. That's just the kind of person he is. Thoughtless, cruel, evil. Sick, in fact. See, he's known for years and years that his father's number one goal in life is to suck up to his boss (the evil wizard who killed my parents, by the way) by delivering me to him to be killed.

"So Draco gave his father your address in Surrey, and when his father was finished getting all he could from Uncle Vernon about me . . . well, you saw what happened. Draco's to blame, for all of it. He's the reason you'll never have that really nice sauce your dad used to make to put on the steaks. Every time you eat a steak for the rest of your life, you'll think of your dad, I know. You'll miss him, and wonder why it had to be this way. But at least now you can have a focus for all that hate and anger. It helps, trust me."

Draco was gasping with practically every breath by then, his hand a trembling blur as he wrote out line after line of self-condemnation. Harry closed his eyes and listened to the scratching sound, waiting for the Slytherin to catch up. Then, in absolutely glacial tones of utter contempt, he went on:

"I thought I'd describe Draco Malfoy so you'll know how to picture him. It's how I see him, anyway, though believe me, he's such an unpleasant person to be around that I really do try not to look his way if I can avoid it at all. Anyway: tall and thin, with skin so white you'd swear he was some flesh-eating ghoul that had never been above ground. White-blond hair he fusses over constantly. In fact, I think his hair is his main interest in life, which goes to show you how he could do something like he did. I mean, he just doesn't care about anyone or anything except one Draco Malfoy. His eyes are silver, which would almost be a nice colour if they weren't constantly narrowed with hate.

"Because, you see, that's what Draco does. That's all he does: he hates. He's what they call a pureblood wizard, which basically means he thinks everyone else is beneath him. He hates Muggles (that's people like you), and he hates wizards and witches that happen to have Muggle parents, and he even hates wizards who are descended from anybody who had Muggle parents (that's people like me). Hate, hate, hate. I swear it must be his middle name. Want to hear a good one, though? Draco has this a close friend named Severus, who's a well-educated and intelligent wizard, really worthy of respect. And Severus recently explained to me that he'd done a lot of research, and found out that every wizard has Muggle ancestry, even Draco. So, if Draco has the least shred of integrity (which he doesn't), he really ought to start hating himself. Fat chance of that, though. He'll probably just decide to hate Severus, instead. Anyway, it doesn't really matter if Draco hates himself, 'cause I bet you can hate him enough to make up for it. I sure do.

"I absolutely hate his fucking guts.

"Well, Dudley, enough about that ugly git. I hope to see you soon, and figure out where we go from here.

"Love, Harry"

It took Draco a few moments longer to write out the final phrases, and then, all he said was, "What do I tell the owl?"

But his voice was dead.

"I'll take care of the owl," Harry tightly informed him. "Hand me the sheets. I have to make sure you wrote it right." He waited until he had the pages of parchment firmly in hand, and said, "That's it then. Get out."

It looked like Draco was swallowing something as he choked out, "Look, Potter, I--"

"Get out!" Harry screamed. "A hundred points, remember? OUT!"

"Points," Draco gasped. "Merlin's balls, you think I give a flip about points?"

"Out," Harry menaced in a low voice, that time. A low, determined voice. "Get the hell out. Or I'll start screaming for Severus, and you can explain to him why you aren't trustworthy in the least and how you don't bother keeping the promises you make. Now, GET OUT!"

And Draco finally did.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Harry wanted to use the enchanted quill so that he could hear if Draco had really written everything as dictated, but Madam Pomfrey was back by then. He certainly didn't want her hearing the letter.

Well, Harry reasoned, no time like the present to see if he could cast a simple charm of his own.

Drawing his wand out from where he'd stashed it--beneath his pillow since the pyjamas had no pockets--he waved it in an arc, concentrated, and uttered Silencio . . .

But the magic didn't flow. Strange that he could feel it now, flowing through him . . . that was an improvement, certainly, but it didn't help him know how to make it come out through his wand. He didn't know how to make it come out at all, except in those surges of fury. But he couldn't control those, so they weren't much use. After all, he hadn't really wanted to shatter the windows. All he'd wanted was to see Snape.

He tucked his wand back under his pillow, and stuffed the letter under there for good measure, and stared around at his surroundings for a while, trying to identify things by their blurs. It was really a pretty boring game. Besides that, it made his eyes feel tired. It didn't take long before Harry's eyelids were drooping and he was dropping into a light sleep.

The End.
End Notes:

Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:

Chapter Thirty-Two: Dark Powers

~

Comments very welcome,

Aspen in the Sunlight



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