Two more months, Harry thought to himself. That’s just 62 more days and one of them had the potential to break the loop. His birthday. Mmh, still some 31 days away. He scratched his head and put the last of the dishes away. His hair could use another wash. It had been some days now since he was last granted a shower. But, if push comes to shove, he could always make do with the kitchen sink. Dudley wouldn’t come down for the next three or four hours so he had some time to get started with his chores in peace and maybe there would also be enough time for a brief wash.

“Don’t just stand around there! The laundry isn’t going to wash itself, boy!”

Relative peace, he amended mentally. And a very brief and secret wash. Outside it was already smouldering warm, perfect conditions for drying even without a towel. He quickly hung up the chequered one intended for dishes only on the hook specifically serving this purpose. Heaven forbid, if he would have ever thought about hanging it up on the oven rung. No, these movements were long drilled into muscle memory just as much as finding the right program on the washing machine was.

With the machine joyfully filling with water and beginning to rotate, Harry headed off to the garden, before the hypnotizing circles could draw him into another loop. Staring into the washing machine wasn’t going to help him anyway. But seriously, why built in a see-through door? Were there people in the world who had the time and longing to watch their dirty clothes take a ride on the Ferris wheel?  If there ever was a thing made to drive people bananas it was this.

Or the lawn mower, Harry pondered, pushing the thing out into the yard. At least at the frequency the Dursleys made him use it. Yet, it did calm him down somewhat from all the jumbled thoughts running through his head since, well, since he died.

Harry hadn’t known death to be this way. Sure, he had lost his parents. He was an orphan. This peculiar word hat clung to him since he could remember. It was his label since he got to Primary School. Hell, he was even popular due to the simple little fact that he had no parents to a whole world existing parallel to the Muggle one he grew up in. Except it wasn’t a simple fact or perhaps it was simple but that didn’t make it any less small.

Primary School… If he thought back on this time, it was curious how it could hold both some of his worst and some of his best memories. Some of the worst thanks to his cousin. Well, he wouldn’t go into depth here. Not now anyway. Dudley didn’t know better. That was the only solace Harry ever had that helped him endure the constant bullying. All the lunch breaks spend running, hiding, ducking glances of his hunters, ducking punches- No. All the lunch breaks spend hiding. Hiding was the safer bet.

Some of the best memories originated from hiding in the school library. It might be somewhat cliché. Bespectacled scrawny orphan-kid hiding between books. Not only between but in them as well. But that’s what his life had been. Before Hogwarts, before the promises magic made, before all the hopes rising warmly in a tiny chest. Only to be crushed, Harry thought rather cynically as he emptied the grass into one of the plastic bags that would be collected by the litter service tomorrow.

Well, hopes were made to be crushed in his opinion. It had been the same with the library. It had worked for some weeks. He would hide between the shelves, would sit down on the carpeted floor where he was surrounded by books. Books that weren’t thrown into corners by his cousin and that he wasn’t allowed to touch despite this.

Harry could remember that for the solid first week he was too intimidated, too scared of all the books to actually touch one of them. Full of wonder he just sat there and stared at them. They seemed to whisper. Then, one day these whispers became too loud to ignore and he pulled out the first of many more.

That is was a dictionary of all things was almost more cliché if not for the circumstance that he had used it to look up some of the big words adults around him seemed prone to use regarding him. "Orphan" was one of the first. Or maybe it had been the first, Harry couldn’t remember. Of course, he had figured what it meant a long time before. He wasn’t stupid as his relatives tried to make all the others and himself believe.

Try to tell Snape that. He had to laugh a little under his breath. Try telling him about all the library-adventures I had. He would have a stroke hearing that Harry was once a bookworm. Or would just laugh it off as a bad joke and dock Gryffindor some ten or twenty points.

Relentlessly, Harry pushed the mower forward, looking curiously at his naked feet that were visible though the handlebars and steadily turning an interesting shade of green. 

The word orphan generated from Latin. He knew that already, because, well, he wasn’t stupid. It meant a child who had lost one or both parents, generally the latter. Yes, he also knew this. It also meant “deprived of free status”. Even then, in the dusty library this little addition signified something for Harry. It struck something deep inside of him and he knew without a doubt that the label everyone around him wanted so badly to stick to him fitted perfectly. However, it wasn’t until this summer, that he really learned to appreciate it again. Not until Dumbledore told him about this bloody prophecy. Quite literally bloody, he might add. He didn’t want to think about this either.

So, his mind circled back to the death-theme or perhaps it wasn’t such a wide leap from the prophecy to there. Harry had never felt about death this way. Sure, people died. His parents had died. Were murdered actually. As if the first wouldn’t have been trauma enough. For the longest time he had believed it happened in a car accident. He should have been relieved that his parents weren’t some good for nothing drunks killing themselves without regard to their child. What Harry wouldn’t have given for it to be real now. At least this story came without a narcissistic psychotic mass murderer trying to kill him every few moons. At least it came without these feelings now.

People died. But never ones Harry knew well before. Cared about even. Sirius had been there for a good two years and then, just like that, he wasn’t.

Harry could still not grasp how this change could come in seconds. Seconds separating the death and the living, severing the threads of human life.

One glorious lunch break Harry had discovered Greek Mythology. All these tragic heroes seemed to speak to him. In the evenings, alone in his cupboard, he imagined himself in these stories, fighting bravely for the good, fighting epic battles that weren’t but a great game for the Olympic Gods. Harry always liked Hermes the best. Not only because he was younger than the other eleven great Gods. Hermes, ever moving in his nice winged shoes and turtle helmet was the patron of travellers and magic. Does he have to say more?

The Moirai however, better known as the Fates, Harry hated with a passion. How could three old hags decide so carelessly about life and death? As a nine year old, he had sworn to take fate into his own hands. Except it hadn’t really worked out well, had it?

His godfather was dead just like his parents. It felt like a cold black whole had been ripped into his chest right were his heart was. It might sound metaphorically, but that is exactly how it felt. Harry wondered how much more of his heart could be ripped away before it became so small that he wouldn’t be able to feel anything at all. Although, right now this sounded just great. Not to feel anything would have been nice for a change.

Not to be flooded with this kind of sadness and this kind of fear, which was almost worse than the grief. The fear of ever losing someone dear to him again… It was worse than the sadness. This pain- how could anybody bear this? How could anybody not scream with this much stinging ache inside? How could anybody walk away with a head held high after this? There were days Harry could hardly muster the strength to drag up his slumped shoulders let alone his head. Of course, this suited him just fine at the Dursleys.

Under these circumstances he was nearly glad to not have consciously known his parents. The void they left behind in his heart would have been even wider.

As it were, the gap Sirius left was too much. In a way, he was thankful for all the chores. They kept him from doing something immensely stupid, just to fill the dog-shaped hole in his heart.

Finished with mowing an already perfectly manicured lawn, Harry cleaned the blades and put the mower away in the garage. He quickly washed his hands and feet with the garden hose, treating himself to some lukewarm water in the process before entering the quiet kitchen. Still no Dudley. What a blessing. His cousin on his own wasn’t as bad but the combination with his parents promised trouble nine times out of ten.

He hastily made his way upstairs and arrived in the bathroom. Not a second too early as the washing machine was ready to go off into one of its beeping fits to announce to all the inhabitants of this house and maybe all the other inhabitants of picket-fence-city that the laundry was done. The door clicked open and before the beeping could wake Dudley, Harry squeezed the button.

Muscle memory and timing and circles, and impossible summer loops. Ingrained since early childhood.

He could already picture the rest of this day. Hell, he could already picture the rest of this summer. All 62 fucking days of it.

Except for little interruptions like being allowed clean clothes or to have a cold shower this would be the routine. And maybe, if he just stuck to it, maybe there´d be a chance to survive it again. The crazy loopy loop of summer at Number Four.