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The knife slid through Harry’s throat like butter, a spray of blood arcing through the air to splatter across Wormtail’s pointy face. The man grimaced and stuttered, his beady eyes watering, but he did not stop the ritual.
“L-l-lifeblood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe…”
His chanting faded into static as blackness encroached on Harry’s vision, his ears ringing as every gasping breath brought another wave of hot, sticky fluid rushing into his lungs. His head tilted back, or maybe he fell forward, or perhaps nothing moved at all as his eyes slipped shut.
He couldn’t help but think of Cedric, poor Cedric, lying no more than a few meters away, and thought that maybe he’d at least see his friend soon, to apologize for dragging him into this.
Blood pounded in his ears as every sense left him, until only the beat remained. Slower and slower, weaker and weaker, until it faded off to a sickening stop.
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Harry woke with a wet gasp, scrabbling at his throat.
His fingers met the mess of thick scars slashed across his neck that spread ear to ear, and cold sweat stuck his pyjama shirt to his back.
Harsh breaths echoed through the small room he shared with Ron in Grimmauld place as he struggled to get himself under control.
It’s not real, it’s over, you’re not in the graveyard. You’re safe!
It took a while for his chest to stop squeezing so tightly around his lungs, and for the black spots to fade from his vision, but eventually he was able to take control of himself enough to stumble from the room. He didn’t want to wake Ron up.
Despite himself, his fingers ghosted across the scars again.
Maybe he didn’t have to worry about that. After all, it’s not like he could scream.
He’d only barely escaped the graveyard with his life, coming back to himself as Voldemort gloated over what he assumed to be Harry’s corpse.
It was almost funny, the look on his face. Almost.
Harry’d barely had a chance to duck behind a headstone before crucios started flying, and he’d dived for the cup and Cedric while the Death Eaters had panicked.
The rest of the night had been a blur, a crush of people forcing him away from Cedric’s body and up to the infirmary.
He’d written out his statement for Fudge while Madam Pomfrey fretted over the still-oozing gash in his neck, but the man had been the first of many to ignore him.
It seems it was easy to do, when Harry couldn’t yell to make himself heard.
The official story– and he coughed out a silent laugh just at the thought of it– was that there was a tragic accident. Something had gone wrong with the portkey, and Harry and Cedric had been severely splinched upon reaching the cup.
Harry’d read it in the paper, a few days after he’d woken up from the magical coma he’d been placed in.
Madam Pomfrey wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to survive long enough to make it back to the school, but she’d patched up his neck as best she could. He’d spent the first week of his coma in Saint Mungos while they monitored his condition, but from what he’d been told the wound had closed up remarkably quickly. They’d had him back on his feet in time for the closing feast at Hogwarts, and the train ride home.
All of it had been a blur, though. He spent at least a month in some sort of fugue state, wandering around his aunt and uncle’s house like a ghost.
Vernon and Dudley didn’t even bother to bother him, he was so out of it.
Eventually, though, he woke up from a nightmare gasping for air and suddenly felt alive again. He retrieved some spare parchment and a flashlight from under his loose floorboard and sent Hedwig off with a letter to Dumbledore that night.
No reply.
And no reply to the next six letters he wrote to the man, as well as the ones he sent to Ron and Hermione, and Sirius.
Not a word, until Dudley turned up dead.
The letter he received from Sirius (and why was Dudley of all people the thing that broke the silence?) said that it had been a Dementor, and they were sending people for him.
He tried to tell the Dursleys– that people were coming to get him, not that the magic they hated had killed their son– but Petunia wouldn’t read his note, and he knew better than to approach Vernon. There was a shouting match downstairs when the Order arrived. It was convenient, gave him time to finish packing.
When they managed to push past Vernon, Harry got his first taste of what was to come. All the color drained from Lupin and the woman’s face when the locks unlatched and the door swung open. All eyes made a beeline for his neck, and he squirmed under the weight. Even Moody’s glass eye– the real Moody, he assumed– stopped it’s buzzing in his skull to stare with lazer focus at the mass of scars around his neck for a long moment before moving on.
Harry rubbed his neck self conciously as he waved, jumpstarting them into action. Lupin grabbed his trunk, the girl grabbed Hedwig’s cage, and Moody grabbed his arm with a grunt.
“Got your wand?” he’d asked gruffly, and Harry averted his eyes. It hadn’t made it’s way back from the graveyard with him. He wondered what Voldemort had done to it. Had he given it to Wormtail for his servant to use, or had he just snapped it outright?
Moody scoffed at his nonanswer, grumbling about vigilance and kids these days, before they were off with a gutchurning twist– again and again and again, until he felt his stomach was shredded to ribbons and tied again into bows and they finally came to a rest on a muggle street.
A piece of parchment was shoved under his nose, and he finally learned their location– Number 12 Grimmauld Place.
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Everyone was walking on eggshells around him since he’d come to Grimmauld. Sirius was dodging him like he owed Harry money, discomfort crackling up his spine every time they locked eyes, and Remus wasn’t much better. Molly was fussing over him like he was a baby, like he was made of glass, conversations between her kids fizzled to an uncomfortable stop whenever he came in the room, and Hermione…
He loved Hermione, he really did. Loved her like the sister he never got a chance to have, but it stung sometimes, the ways she tried to help. Speaking for him, assuming what he wanted to say or ask, always putting words in his mouth. How she corrected his grammar and spelling on the notes he wrote out for people before she even let them see what he had to say.
What hurt worse was the look on her face when he bothered to call her out, in rough, angry scratches of his quill on parchment. A self-loathing disappointment in the downturn of her mouth and watering eyes, she promised again and again to be better. It made his gut churn.
So he’d stopped writing, stopped fighting back when she spoke for him with words he’d never say. What was the point? She was just trying to help. At least this way, only one of them was miserable.
His chest spasmed at his own spinelessness, and he crept down the stairs, vision blurring with tears.
He had to– he had to get somewhere dark, somewhere small. Somewhere small and safe, where nobody would tell him what he was thinking or feeling or living through. Just him and the walls pressing close against his shoulders. Somewhere he could think.
Tripping into the kitchen, he slid into the pantry, upending a shelf of spices and sparking a renewed wave of tears.
God, he was so useless!
Chest aching with his shallow breaths, he sank to his knees as the world shimmered around the edges. A small, hysterical thought flitted through his head that if this was the end, he might as well let it happen. It wasn’t as though he could help anybody like this, with no wand and no voice to use it. No wonder nobody wanted anything to do with him. He retched and gasped for air, his face soaked with tears.
So it was that in the dark of the night, The Boy Who Lived– and died, and somehow lived again– coughed out rasping sobs in a cupboard, as helpless and alone now as he was when he first earned the title.