rakina (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} rakina) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} snape_potter,@ 2009-01-09 20:48:00 |
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| Entry tags: | fic, rakina, rating: pg |
Fic: Tapestry, 1/?
Title: Tapestry, A Journey in Eight Stages
Author: Rakina
Rating: PG for now, probably rising to R or NC17 later.
Pairing: Will be Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Warnings: AU
Summary: Harry only has one thing from his parents: a blanket. But his mum and dad were magical, and so it turns out to be no ordinary blanket, after all.
Disclaimer: I am not making any money from the characters which belong to JK Rowling. No disrespect intended. I do, however, lay claim to the plot and original characters.
Beta: the wonderful hel_bee
Author's Notes: I thought it would be appropriate to start this fic's online life on Severus' birthday. Feedback is highly valued.
Tapestry
Prologue: The Blanket
Harry didn't know if it was the best thing about the cupboard, or the worst, that he was in touch with the outside, with the world. His aunt and uncle's voices would drift in through the grille, sounding to him as though they had substance: he imagined their sleek, snaky bodies slithering through the open slats at the top of the door. From inside the cupboard Harry couldn't open or close the grille, though Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia closed it whenever he'd done anything to displease them. It was so easy to do that, just shut him away.
Harry cuddled his quilt as fragments of their conversation assaulted him. Often, their words had power to hurt him.
"…bad idea. Now the authorities know he's here, so we can't just lose him; but what's the point of educating the little shit anyway?"
"Vernon, you know I don't like that sort of language." As usual Aunt Petunia sounded as though her lips were almost shut when she talked, as if she was too mean to open them for the words to come out properly. "Besides, I can't stand him under my feet all day. You've no idea how creepy it is, having him following me around, or lurking in corners, watching me. Even when he's shut away it's no good – just knowing he's in the house makes me shudder. This way, he'll be gone Monday to Friday for most of the day. Finally I can get a few hours' peace. It's all right for you; you don't have to deal with him when you're at work."
"Oh, yes. Of course..." Uncle Vernon's voice was full of sarcasm. "I only have to worry about earning enough to keep this household going. You know how high our mortgage payments are, Petunia. It's a struggle, every month. And I want to give our son the best, you know that. Dudley's welfare and his future are what I work for. If that means taking on more accounts, touting for business among obnoxious dealers who think they're better than I am, I will."
"I know, Vernon, I'm sorry." And Aunt Petunia sounded it, really. Harry was always amazed when he heard it, for he'd never heard that tone of voice, nor any other that smacked of kindness, directed at him. Only in the wisps of conversation through his door, or in the way she talked to her son, to Dudley.
Dudley, who got the best, just as his father wanted. Dudley, who knew only too well how to ask for things, how to demand what he wanted. Dudley, who followed his mother's cue when it came to Harry. Dudley, who hated him.
Harry got lost thinking about Dudley, unconsciously rubbing his upper arm where the larger boy had shoved him into the table edge last night. "No one wants you here," Dudley had sneered nastily, and his mother hadn't gainsaid him. Because it was true, Harry knew that, but he had nowhere else to go. If he'd had another aunt or uncle he'd have asked them to take him in. Dudley had his Aunt Marge, but she wasn't Harry's aunt, she'd told him that often enough, and Harry didn't like her any better than Aunt Petunia. In fact, he suspected she could have been even worse to him. Those holidays when they went to Marge's, or Marge came to stay with them, were some of the worst days he could remember. No, he had no other aunts or uncles. Worse, Harry had no gran or granddad. Harry knew from stories, and from the way the kids in Reception Class spoke, that grans and granddads were the best thing ever. They spoiled you, and told your mum and dad not to be so firm with you, and bought you little presents and hugged you when you were upset, even more than Mummy and Daddy did. But of course Harry didn't have even one gran or granddad, because Harry didn't have a mum and dad. He had to stay here, with these people who hated him, because no one else wanted him. And his uncle and aunt didn't want him either.
Harry snuggled into his blanket. It was warm and thick, and he pulled it around his head to block out the words that invaded his little space under the stairs. It always felt so warm, so comforting, to snuggle into its thick material. Harry liked to think it felt like a mum hugging him, though he didn't really know what that felt like because he couldn't remember being hugged. His mum had died when he was so small, his dad too, in an awful car crash. Because they were drunk, Aunt Petunia had sneered, with her mouth open just the tiniest bit as she spoke such vicious words, but she got them out all the same. And they hurt, as if she'd spit acid into little Harry's body, somehow. Acid that burned his heart, because it hurt right there in his chest, and that was where your heart was.
The quilted blanket, as always, circled the child, and Harry managed to find a little peace in its embrace.
At weekends Harry wasn't bored. He had to sit in his cupboard for long hours keeping out of the Dursleys' way, but he didn't mind that during the daylight, because usually his grille was open, allowing a little light to shine in. And that was enough for him to look at his blanket. And his blanket gave him everything he needed.
The blanket had pictures on it. It was rectangular in shape, big enough to cover a child's bed, and the design was divided into quilted panels. Each panel had a different picture. To Harry they were magical: he would run his little fingers over the pictures and make up stories about them. Each picture, he thought, was a different world – a different place he could live. And each had to be better than here, just had to be, because there were no Dursleys in those worlds, Harry was sure. The blanket always felt good, warm and comforting, and his mum and dad had given it to him, Harry knew that much. He knew it for certain somehow; whether his aunt had told him so he couldn't quite remember, or maybe Uncle Vernon had taunted him with how little he had from his parents: just this poor old blanket. Harry didn't care, he told himself, and resolutely turned to the first square, tracing the familiar design, rather than think about his uncle's words.
The first picture, as Harry thought of the one in the top left corner, showed a boy running along bowling a hoop along the ground in front of him. The boy had dark brown hair a bit like Harry's, and rosy cheeks which weren't like his, for Harry didn't get a healthy complexion in his cupboard. So the picture showed the outside, the countryside. And the boy looked really happy, he was laughing as the hoop skittered along in front of him. The hoop was made of wood; somehow Harry knew that, knew it wasn't red plastic, but that it was wood painted red. The ground along which the hoop skittered was like a pathway, flat with small stones or smooth pebbles laid out before the boy; the verges alongside were green, which must be grass. There was nothing else in the panel. The background was a pale blue, perhaps it was the sky. Yes, Harry decided, it was a pale blue sky. Not the bright blue of summer, but nice all the same. The boy's world was called Playland; Harry named it that in his mind. It must feel nice to live there, in Playland, and to play like that, so joyfully, with just a simple toy and no cares in the world. Harry didn't know what that would be like; he never knew how to play… until he went to school.
When the teacher had sat the new kids down in the little chairs and tables just the right size for five year olds, Harry had felt awkward. Because set out in front of them were boxes of toys: crayons and little sheets of paper; toy animals and dinosaurs; a game where you put shaped pieces into a piece of wood with cut-outs – Harry thought it must be a sort of wooden jigsaw. And Harry had no idea what to do. The other kids grabbed at toys, the little girl next to him started drawing a picture with a red wax crayon, her chubby hand pressing the colour onto the paper with a force that seemed too heavy to Harry. Sensing him watching, she looked up at him and frowned. "Get your own," she said, "this colour's mine."
Harry didn't get his own crayon, or anything else. He wasn't allowed to touch toys; Aunt Petunia would smack his hands with a ruler if he did, so Harry's fingers had learned never to stretch towards toys, because they were all Dudley's.
"Harry? Would you like to play with the farm animals?" Miss Read, Harry's new teacher, asked from behind him.
Harry looked up, uncertain. The teacher took his behaviour as shyness, and she took his hand and led him to a corner of the classroom.
"You can sit here, in the quiet corner, if you prefer," she said kindly. "You can play with anything you like here. I'll come and fetch you in a little while, or you can come to me. It's where children can sit if they get a bit upset. Sometimes being in a class is a bit much to take in on your first days at school."
Miss Read squeezed Harry's thin hand, and left him in a little area behind a screen. There was a small blue beanbag seat, just the right size, set before a box of toys. The screen that made this space private showed pictures from nursery rhymes, though Harry didn't know that was what the scenes were, never having heard them, but he would come to learn the rhymes here, at school. The screen reminded him of his blanket, which he'd had to leave in his cupboard when Aunt Petunia had called him to go to school, telling him not to dawdle and to keep up with her and Dudley. Harry had trotted along behind his aunt, who was holding Dudley's hand. There was a lot of cooing and fuss when they got to school, all of it directed at Dudley, of course.
"You'll be all right, my sweetums," Aunt Petunia had said, hugging Dudley as if he was a lamb being sent to slaughter. "Mummy can't stay with you, but you're a big boy now, a schoolboy."
Dudley had wailed and clung to her, and Harry had watched, embarrassed when all the other kids and mums and dads looked their way to see what the noise was. Harry had wandered off and joined the line when the Reception teacher had come out to gather up her new brood. Dudley had lingered, clinging to Aunt Petunia and milking his mum's mood for all it was worth; Harry heard promises of presents, and chocolate cake, and ice cream when her little man got home. Harry told himself he didn't want things like that anyway.
Harry slowly learned to play, but always he played alone. He didn't feel comfortable with the other kids around him; other kids hated him. Dudley told him other people hated him, and always would because he was unwanted, and Dudley soon told the other kids too. Harry was ugly, and a freak. Harry didn't know what freak meant. He knew he was ugly, though. He wore big glasses with thick lenses, because he wasn't only a freak, Dudley said, he was a blind freak.
Miss Read tried her best to encourage the boy to come out of his shell, but Harry spent a lot of time in the quiet corner, and she had a whole class to oversee. While the others played games in the playground, Harry wanted to stay in, alone. He was painfully shy, and Miss Read had asked Aunt Petunia why. Aunt Petunia had come out with the story of his parents' death, and how it had affected the boy. It was part of the truth, after all, and only too plausible, so the teachers accepted Harry's behaviour at Little Whinging Primary School.
Harry let his memories fade, drifting back into the scene on his blanket. If he lived there, in Playland like that boy, he wouldn't be hated. The kids in that world were happy. His eyelids drooped, his eyes lost their focus. The blanket was covering his legs, he pulled it up to wrap around his body. Warm, nice… the only thing that was his, just his. Dudley didn't want it; it wasn't a toy, just an old bit of cloth, and worthless. Aunt Petunia didn't want it; it was Harry's, not her good linens. He could have the scrappy old thing. The pleasant warmth drew Harry down now and the little boy lay down on his mattress, snuggled in his quilted blanket, and was soon dozing.
It was Dudley's sixth birthday. Harry sat in the kitchen on a wooden chair, being quiet and keeping out of the way. He couldn't help overhearing Dudley's squeals of excitement and happiness as his fat cousin unwrapped each present. There had been a great heap of them, different sizes and shapes, all wrapped in different wrapping paper, bright and colourful. Aunt Marge was there, exclaiming over "Dudders' special day", encouraging him to "open another, Dudley, you've lots to get through before we can have our tea. And don't forget, there's a special cake for you!"
There was; Harry was sitting looking at it in the middle of the kitchen table. As if reminded of the fact, Aunt Petunia put her head around the kitchen door.
"Don't touch that, you dirty boy! Go and get in your cupboard and keep out of the way. I won't have your filthy fingers near my Dudley's food. How many more times must I tell you that?"
Harry slid off the chair and headed towards the hall door, almost feeling his aunt's hand slapping him, even though she hadn't moved. Every time he touched the cooked food when he served it for any of the Dursleys he got a nasty smack, just to remind him to keep his filthy, freaky fingers away from it and use the serving utensils, however awkward they were for his little hands. Harry was good enough to cook it, apparently, good enough to put the shopping away, good enough to scrub the floor. But his fingers mustn't touch their food, because he was filthy. Harry didn't know if he had special, freaky germs or something. It must be something like that for them to be so wary of him.
Harry slid into the darkness of his cupboard. His chin trembled as he fought not to cry. It didn't do to be found crying. Aunt Petunia just smacked him, and Uncle Vernon would push him in the cupboard and shut the grille, and worst of all if Dudley saw him he'd call him a cry-baby and tell everyone at school that Harry was always crying because he was such a worthless little baby.
The dark space in the cupboard was almost womblike as Harry entered it, though he didn't know that word, didn't know what a womb was. But it was maternal, in a weird way. Harry couldn't remember being scared of the dark in here, frightened of being shut in. He thought sometimes that he must have been, when he was littler. But now it represented his space, his own, private space away from the Dursleys. They didn't care about the cupboard, they didn't want to come in here, and that was good. It was his. All it contained was a mattress, some ordinary grey blankets, and his special blanket. Harry picked it up, covered himself and let his fingers stroke over the slightly raised images that formed each section. Other worlds, other lives, places of the imagination that were all so much better than here.
They had to be.
It stuck in Harry's head, that snatch of conversation. He thought he'd been eight years old when he'd heard it. It had chilled him, and made him wonder if, perhaps, things could be worse than living here where he wasn't wanted.
"If only he'd go," Aunt Petunia had whined. "If only some of those other freaks would take him away."
"He'd be in good company," Vernon's deeper voice had rumbled, agreeing. "Freaky behavior; they're all weird. The Lord knows what they do, what they get up to among themselves.
"Nothing natural," Petunia had said, her voice lowered to a forced whisper. Harry remembered he'd pressed his ear against the open grille to catch the words from the kitchen. He'd got very good hearing, even if he was blind. Because whenever he took his clunky glasses off the world went blurry and he couldn't make anything out, just shapes. Yes, Dudley was right, he was blind.
Aunt Petunia was still talking – she hadn't quite finished, and Harry concentrated to catch every word. "They probably do things with their children to make them freaky like that. I hate to think what it might be."
"Don't," Vernon advised. "It's disgusting. Decent people shouldn't have to have anything to do with them. He should be with them, though. It's where he belongs, with those other freaks."
Harry had fallen away from the grille then, scared by the mention of freaks who might come and take him away. Dudley had bustled into the kitchen soon after and the conversation had ceased anyway, but the damage was done. Harry often shivered at the thought of having unnatural things done to him by grown-up freaks who'd take him away from here, from everything he knew. And so sometimes when he was feeling upset, even though he cuddled into his blanket and ran his fingers over the ridges of the patterns, each one lovingly remembered and etched into his mind, Harry did wonder if the worlds on the blanket really were better than here. Or whether they were they full of freaks, of freaks who did unnatural things?
Little Harry didn't know about sex, but he knew there was something adults knew about that made them whisper in corners and lower their voices when little kids were around. Something scary. Maybe that was the unnatural thing, the thing those freaks did to kids.
It was Christmas again. Harry's heart ached, because Christmas hurt. It was the worst time of year, the time when everything was about family, and Harry didn't have a family. He just had people who hated him. At school all the talk was about what presents the kids wanted, what their mums and dads might have promised them. The teachers spoke about love and warmth and the real meaning of Christmas, about the Holy Family. To Harry it was as unreal, as unknowable, as the fairy tales in his reading book.
There was lots of food in Aunt Petunia's cupboard. The Dursleys were stocked up for the holidays. All Harry would get would be his usual fare – toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, something easy and cheap for dinner, beans or cheese on toast perhaps. Bread was a large part of his diet. He might get a few biscuits for a change at Christmas time; just digestives or ginger nuts, not the special shortbread or the chocolate-coated selection from the pretty tins. Harry got enough to eat – just. But it was low-quality food and he suffered from frequent colds due to lack of vitamins in his diet. He was thin, always had been, and small for his age, several inches shorter than his burly cousin. He felt the cold and would have been far more miserable without his own, special blanket.
The Christmas tree in the lounge sparkled prettily with many-coloured lights, which were kept turned on throughout the season, bringing a sense of magic to the rigidly proper house. Uncle Vernon had bought the tree from the market one Saturday in December, and the Dursleys had spent the afternoon decorating it, hanging baubles, tinsel and chocolate Santas and reindeer on it. Harry had kept quiet, out of the way, in his cupboard. Just as he'd been told. It was best to do as he was told – less painful, and then he'd get dinner.
Beneath the tree's lowest branches were stuffed piles of presents. There were lots, all gaudily wrapped and adorned with bows, ribbons and with dangling tags with the recipient's name on and who had given the gift. Most of them were Dudley's, Harry knew – he'd practiced his reading by making out the names on the tags – though Vernon and Petunia had quite a few too. There were none – not one – for Harry. Harry tried not to think of it, because it always bought a big lump to his throat and made him feel sick.
His mum and dad would have given him presents. Perhaps it would even be better to be with those freaks after all, because even if they did unnatural things to him, they'd maybe give him a Christmas present.
Christmas Day was just as bad as he'd feared. Harry cooked and tried to ignore the happy sounds from the living room. And when he could get away he retreated to his dark, safe space, and to his blanket, which always wrapped him in comfort; but today that comfort wasn't quite enough. The blanket got damp around the top edge, because today Harry couldn't stop the tears.
Harry was eight today. Eight was not a special number. Not like ten, which was 'double figures', or eleven, which heralded the change to big school. But still Harry felt a lot bigger with each birthday that passed. Not bigger in height or weight, just bigger in occupying the world. He thought more, worked things out in his head during the long hours of being shut in. He knew he had to hold on, just hold on and wait. Something would change, because things always did. Every story ever told, every fictional story and every person's life story he'd ever heard at school, always had a moment of change. Harry's life would change too, he had to believe that. Whether it was for the worst, with a freak coming to gather him up, or for the better, being taken to some lovely place where he'd be pampered just like Dudley, Harry didn't know. Sometimes when life with the Dursleys got especially bad, Harry didn't care. Change would be good; any change. And that night, his first night of being eight years old, Harry crept under his blanket. It was summer, the final day of July, and really too hot and airless in his cupboard to cover himself with the special blanket, but he always did so for the comfort it gave him. It was then that Harry's life did change, completely unexpectedly and in a way he could never have imagined.
Harry woke – it felt like the middle of the night and it was totally dark. The blanket was around him, and oddly it felt quite tight, like a fierce embrace, as if his mum or dad was hugging him too tight. Harry felt too hot and put up his hands to push the blanket down, but it wouldn't let go. His position reminded him of when Dudley squirmed, trying to get away from Aunt Marge's smothering greetings and failing to escape that brawny woman's arms. Dudley's face used to screw up in a kind of panic, and Harry thought he must look like that now, though of course it was too dark to see, and there was no one in the cupboard but him. The blanket must have got tucked under him somehow, with Harry's weight holding it in place. He wriggled, but he still couldn't get the blanket loose – he couldn't get out of it! He came awake at that, fully awake, and panicked. With a huge effort, Harry managed to get his right hand free; it slipped out of the top of the blanket and he grasped the cloth to push it down, to free his body, and his fingers gripped the image of the boy chasing the hoop, its pattern as familiar to him as a word of Braille to a blind man: Playland.
Harry gasped as the blackness of his cupboard changed; as everything changed.