Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Way of the Patronus	By : QueenB Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 15104 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter in anyway, shape or form. The rights of such belong solely to J.K Rowling. I do not make any money or accrue any monetary benefit on this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
Vernon was grousing at something on the telly. He was always disgruntled at something or the other when it came to the news. Harry often wondered why he bothered listening when it put him in such a bad temper.
He ignored yet another grumbling from the living room. He stirred the pot and took another taste from the ladle. The beef stew was almost done, the delicious smells of meat, sage, onion and other spices wafting through the kitchen.
“Isn’t that supper ready yet, you lazy boy!” Vernon yelled. Harry smiled grimly to himself. All the preparations were in place. This was one family meal he was actually looking forward to.
“Nearly, Uncle Vernon,” he called back. “How does beef stew and pudding sound?”
There was no answer except a barely audible grunt. The Dursleys never acknowledged anything Harry did for them with so much as a kind word. But today that didn’t matter. As of midnight tonight, he would be a free man and he could kiss these horrid people goodbye.
When everything was ready, he filled the drinking glasses--beer for Uncle Vernon, wine for Petunia and milk for Dudley. He was well aware that Dudley had been drinking liquor with his nasty little friends since he’d turned fifteen. But his parents were utterly without a clue where their little Duddikins was concerned. In their minds, they still thought him an innocent boy of eleven, a ridiculous idea that was reinforced whenever they made comparison with their delinquent freak of a nephew.
“Supper is on the table,” Harry called out and he stepped aside to avoid the mini stampede as Dudley ran to the table as though the food would disappear if he didn’t get to it in time.
“Well, what are you hanging around for?” Vernon yelled, seeing him hover by the door. “Clear off so decent people can eat in peace!”
Harry nodded and left without another word. He trudged up to his room and waited impatiently for half an hour, resisting the mad urge to pace. He had to time this just right otherwise it might not work.
When he thought enough time had passed, he unlocked Hedwig’s cage, scribbled a tiny note and attached it to her leg. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you locked up. But this is really important. So hurry up, girl,” he whispered. “Pretty soon, you’ll have all the space you want.”
The large white owl nipped at his finger. Since returning to Privet Drive, she’d been cooped up again in her cage. The Dursleys didn’t like having her fly around in broad daylight and it had made her cranky. But she took off obediently through the opened window.
Harry tiptoed back down the stairs. He could hear the usual disgusting sounds of chewing and slurping. The Dursleys weren’t much for conversation during meals. Like a bunch of cows, the lot of them.
When the chewing noises abated for a bit and he heard the low rumble of conversation from Uncle Vernon, he knew it was time. He peeked around the edge of the door. Then he came sauntering back into the kitchen and walked to the stove to help himself from the stewpot.
Uncle Vernon froze in the act of lowering his glass from his lips. “What the hell are you doing here, boy?”
“Helping myself to some of the stew, Uncle Vernon. I hope you don’t mind,” he said calmly.
The pink face began to grow pinker, a sure sign that Vernon was losing his temper. “I ruddy well do mind! You know damned well you don’t eat meals with the rest of us!”
Harry flung him a look of utter contempt, something that caused his Aunt Petunia to gasp in shock. “Oh, I know that, Uncle Vernon. It’s been almost 17 years of this and I am well and truly fed up.”
The pink face was turning a dangerous red. “How dare you talk to me like that, you vicious freak!”
Harry barreled on. “Sixteen years of being treated like an unpaid servant, made to feel invisible, lied about to the neighbours, kicked around from pillar to post, called ‘boy’ like you can’t be bothered to remember my name--and made to be your sex slave on the side.”
There was a second of almost chilling silence. Then the meaning of what he said sank in. “WHAT?!?!” Aunt Petunia shrieked.
“Oh, Uncle Vernon hasn’t told you, Auntie?” Harry asked with a poisonously sweet smile. “You liked fucking me, didn’t you, Uncle Vernon?”
Whatever Vernon really meant to say never made it out of his mouth. Instead he answered, “Bloody right I did, boy. You had the tightest little ass.” As the words left his lips, the pink in his face faded to a splotch-filled white as he grasped his throat.
Aunt Petunia’s watery blue eyes swiveled from Harry to her husband. “What? W-what did you say, Vernon?”
“How often did you fuck me while she was out of the house, Vernon?” Harry didn’t bother with the honorific “Uncle” this time.
“Eight times,” Uncle Vernon gasped. He grabbed his throat again and glared in fear and hatred at Harry. “Why did I say that?”
“Because it’s the truth,” Harry replied. The Veritaserum Severus had given him was working perfectly, just as it had done on Barty Crouch in his fourth year at Hogwarts. For the next hour, Uncle Vernon would be forced to tell nothing but the truth. This would be a very entertaining hour, indeed.
“You--you little shit! I know what this is! It’s nothing but filth you’re forcing me to say!” Uncle Vernon said, shaking his fist.
“You’ve got that right, Uncle. It is filth. But no filthier than what you actually did to me, isn’t it? You’ve got a thing for little boys. What would you have done if I hadn’t been around?”
“I would have fucked Dudley. But he was my son and out of bounds so you filled the job quite nicely.” Vernon let out a sound like a strangled cat and jumped up from the table. Dudley gaped and his fat, moon-shaped face turned a queer shade of puce.
“It’s a lie, isn’t it, Vernon? Y-you never did that to Harry, did you?” Petunia pleaded.
Vernon glared at her. “Of course I did! I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be afraid I’d turn to Dudley instead and take my son away.” The yell he made this time was more of a fearful howl and he grabbed at his throat as though attempting to choke himself.
Petunia staggered from her seat and pointed a trembling finger at her nephew. She didn’t, wouldn’t, believe this of her husband. Just as when she was a young girl, she turned on someone else to blame for the wreck her perfect life had become.
“This is more of that mischief they teach you at that place, isn’t it!?” she screeched. “You’re not supposed to perform this outside of school. They’ll have you expelled for this, you nasty little boy!”
“Mischief? Wrong M word, Petunia,” Harry spat. “It’s called magic, remember?”
“DON’T USE THAT WORD IN THIS HOUSE!!” Vernon roared.
“Why not?” Harry asked mildly.
“Because magic is something I don’t understand and I hate what I don’t understand! It makes me feel weak and small, because it’s something bigger than me that I can’t grasp, control or beat. I’m supposed to be master in this house and the use of magic makes me the weakling,” Vernon gabbled. If looks could kill, the look he flung Harry after this outburst would have had him dead on the floor.
Harry nodded as if this answer didn’t surprise him in the least. Then he turned cold jade eyes on his aunt. “First of all, it’s not wand magic so the Ministry can’t detect it. If they could, there would have been an owl delivering the bad news by now,” Harry pointed out. When the moments passed and there was no bird flying through the window, he continued, driving home the true nature of what he’d done to them.
“Second, this may be magic, Petunia. But it’s also the plain, unadorned truth. Vernon can’t keep from telling the truth to any question posed to him. And neither can you.”
The blood drained from her face. “W-what? Y-you did this to me too?” she squeaked.
“Oh, yes.” He stared at her. “Just why did you resent me all these years, Petunia?”
“Because you’re a reminder that that school wanted your mother and not me,” she blurted. “We’d been close all our lives until that year she turned eleven. Then they sent her a letter saying she’d been accepted to that horrible Hog Pimples school--”
“Hogwarts,” Harry grated.
She continued to rant, years of rage, resentment and envy seething out of her, the potion loosening her tongue uncontrollably. “I sent a letter too but they didn’t want me. So she went off without me, the selfish girl, with all those other freaks…”
Harry flared, stung at the insult. “Don’t you talk about my mother that way!”
“I’ll call her anything I like!” Aunt Petunia yelled back. “You never knew her! She died when you were just a baby. But you have no idea of what she got up to before you were born, before she even met your magic-loving father. She was involved with another boy, a piece of white trash from across the tracks! He’s the one who did this to her, who turned her into one of those magic-loving monsters!”
“DON’T YOU CALL HER THAT!” Harry bellowed.
“Indeed.” The silky whisper that followed Harry’s shout seemed to whisper and curl through the air like smoke. Vernon and the others looked around wildly as they tried to find the source of the eerie voice.
“W-who said that?” the fat blond boy squealed.
In answer, there was a thunderous knocking at the front door. Harry marched to it, past the tableau of his relatives, seemingly frozen in place, and flung open the door.
A tall, shrouded form stood there, filling the space with an impenetrable darkness. It glided in soundlessly, shadow and ice seeming to ooze from the hood where the face was hidden. The Dursleys having crowded to the hallway stared in shock and confusion, uncertain what to make of the menacing figure. However, Dudley squealed again in mindless terror.
“DEMENTOR!” he yelled and stumbled backward, tripping and falling on his fat bum.
“No, you stupid boy. Although from what Harry tells me, you owe him a debt from saving you from them.” A white hand reached up and pulled down his hood. Aunt Petunia’s eyes widened.
“You?”
The thin lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Petunia. You remember me after all these years. How flattering.” The smile disappeared. “Far more flattering than what you said about Lily just now.”
“Severus Snape,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing. “I never thought I’d see you again, much less in a decent neighborhood like this.” She snapped at Harry. “Shut the door. I don’t want the neighbors seeing this low-class freak here.”
“The decency of this neighborhood is debatable, seeing what kind of depravity goes on behind these walls. What other secrets does this place harbour, Harry?” Severus purred.
“I was just about to find that out,” Harry grinned. Then he sobered. “You didn’t tell me you knew Petunia.”
“I knew your mother. You could have deduced my acquaintance with your dear aunt as well, Harry,” Severus intoned.
“Petunia? You know one of these…persons?” Vernon asked, looking between Severus and his wife.
Her hands clutched convulsively. She didn’t want to admit to it. But Vernon had asked her a question and the Veritaserum meant she had to answer. “Yes. He was one of the low-class filth from across the tracks in Spinners End. A miserable, crawling bunch of riff-raff, the whole lot of them. The neighbors used to whisper how his father and mother would row all the time,” she added spitefully.
Severus glared daggers at her, the contempt in his eyes even deeper than Harry’s. “Yes, Petunia, you were always one to pry and listen to idle gossip. But that’s not important now. My business here is with Harry. The rest of you are immaterial.”
Vernon was recovering his temper. “Immaterial? In my own house? We’ll see about that!” He rounded on Harry. “Boy, get this long-haired piece of trash out of my home! I won’t stand for having his kind here any longer. I won’t put up with having this scum here!”
Severus’s gaze was so icy Vernon’s moustache should have been growing icicles. “What you will stand is no concern of mine. And this house is as much Harry’s as yours, considering all the work you forced him to do in it throughout the years.”
“He was an orphan and we took him in out of the goodness of our hearts,” Vernon spluttered. “Nothing wrong with making him earn his keep, is there?”
“And the sex you forced him to endure? Was that also out of the goodness of your…heart?” Severus hissed.
“No. I didn’t give a shit about his welfare. I just like sex with young boys and he allowed me to indulge without risking being caught trolling elsewhere.” Vernon’s face turned a truly unflattering purple as he made a gagging sound. “When does this bloody stuff wear off?!”
“‘Round about the time I turn 17, I reckon,” Harry stated in bored tones. Tormenting others really wasn’t a pastime of his; this game was rapidly losing his interest. There was just one last score he needed to settle… “Dudley, what do you really do with your friends when you tell Petunia and Vernon you’re having tea at their places?”
“We hang out in the park, copping smokes and drinking cheap whiskey. Sometimes we go around the neighborhood looking for younger kids to pick on,” Dudley babbled. His mouth shut with a snap as his eyes bulged.
“Why younger kids? Why not pick on somebody your own size?” Harry asked, green eyes boring into his cousin’s dim blue ones.
“‘Cause I’m a coward and always have been. It was great picking on you when you were small. But now that you’re grown up and can do magic, I have to find other victims.”
Vernon and Petunia gazed at their precious offspring in horror. “Dudley, is that true? You’ve been lying to me and your father?”
“Of course I have! I knew you wouldn’t approve,” Dudley said. He shuffled backwards as though he wanted to melt into the wallpaper.
“Why wouldn’t they approve of your being a bully, Dudley? They’ve been pretty much encouraging it since you were a kid,” Harry asked, scornful looks raking over his aunt and uncle.
“That’s just it. I’m not a baby like they’ve been treating me! Piers Polkiss and his boys treat me like a grownup and they made me the leader of their gang. I like playing the big man and they make me feel important not like a little kid.”
Dudley didn’t look like a big man when he said this. Instead, his body seemed to shrivel until he appeared to be nothing more than a child in too-big clothes. To Harry, it was as if their positions had become reversed somehow. He almost felt sorry for his cousin.
“Oh, Dudders,” Petunia burbled, tears welling in her washed-out blue eyes.
“If you wanted to be a big man, as you put it, why don’t you simply take a job? You’re old enough for one. Big enough, too,” Harry added with a smirk.
“I can’t get a regular job. I’m too stupid. I’ve failed most of my school tests. Mum and dad make excuses for me but the fact is I’m a thickie,” Dudley replied, his mouth pulling down in an ugly pout. “Any job I could get would involve low-class manual labor and Dad won’t stand for that. In fact, he’s offered to have me work with him in Grunnings.”
“So why don’t you do that?” Harry asked, genuinely curious, for he hadn’t heard about this plan of the Dursleys.
“‘CAUSE I HATE DRILLS!” Dudley yelled, the volume causing his parents to jump. “I’ve known since I was seven that Dad wanted me to follow him in the business. But he always drove me mental whenever he talked about them! Boring shite, the lot of it! With Piers and his gang, I don’t have to worry about any of that stuff.” Dudley was glaring at Vernon in defiance and in that moment he looked almost exactly like his irascible father.
Vernon was turning purple again. “You…hate drills? How dare you! You ungrateful boy! Drills are what put food on the table! Drills are what put a roof over your head! Drills are what put the clothes on your back and money in your pockets! I’m betting you don’t get that from your grotty little friends!”
“No, I get respect and that’s a hell of a lot better than being treated like an idiot that can’t fend for himself or getting forced into a job I don’t want,” Dudley shot back. “Don’t touch me!” he yelled at his mother when she tried to reach for him and Petunia dissolved into blubberying tears again.
Harry had had enough. This little family drama had been entertaining. But it looked like it could carry on now without any more help from him. Amidst the shouting and wailing from the Dursleys, he walked back up the stairs unnoticed and lugged down his trunk and Hedwig in her cage. It wasn’t until he was at the front door that Vernon saw him leaving.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he bellowed. “You’re not leaving us like this!”
“Oh, yes, I am. I come of age at midnight and I’d rather not spend it with you lot,” Harry answered coldly.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Vernon snapped, stepping forward. The veins were practically popping out of his forehead and he raised clenched fists to attack the author of his current misfortunes. It was like he’d forgotten all about the lean, silent figure lurking in the darkness.
It wasn’t until he saw the wand drawn and pointed at his heart that he came to an abrupt halt. “If you come near this young man again, I will make you sorry you ever laid a hand on him. I know jinxes, hexes and curses that can plague your family for years, decades, even generations. I can do things to you that will make what happened to your sister Marge look like a sneezing fit. I can have your skin off and dangling from the rooftop should I wish it.”
Severus spoke in low, almost indifferent tones. But the menace glittering in his unblinking eyes was unmistakable. “You and the rest of your wretched family will stay away from Harry Potter from now on. Do I make myself absolutely clear?”
Vernon’s face went from purple to red to white. It was like he couldn’t decide what emotion he should be feeling and his skin was turning colors to match his changing moods. It was always interesting to watch although Harry had often wondered why the man never collapsed from high blood pressure.
Severus brought the wand up to within an inch of Vernon’s nose. “I am waiting for an answer, you disgusting pervert. Are you going to stay away from Harry Potter?”
Vernon’s throat worked and his eyes began to water from focusing on the wooden stick poised unwaveringly in front of his face. “Y-yes,” he croaked.
“Louder,” Severus spat.
“Yes. I’ll stay away from Harry Potter.”
The wand whipped around to cover Petunia and Dudley as well, causing the two to flinch and cower behind their fat shield of a patriarch. “That goes for the rest of you as well. Given the choice, I would curse you all into oblivion. Indeed, I suggested it to Harry. But he is the merciful sort and feels an obligation to family, even if you do not, which makes him worth more than the lot of you put together.
“Suffice it to say that I could have all three of you sharing a cage as furry little nocturnal beasts and give you as pets to Harry if you ever disobey me. Maybe he could feed you to that owl of his.”
At hearing herself mentioned, Hedwig let out an appreciative hoot in her cage. Her golden yellow eyes peered at the Dursleys as though contemplating them as snacks and all three of them shivered.
Swinging open the door, Harry walked through without a backward glance at the miserable trio, Severus only a step or two behind him. When they were well away from Privet Drive, Severus grasped Harry’s arm, pulling him into a shadowed section of the street.
“That was masterfully done, Harry. Worthy of a Slytherin, if I do say so myself,” he intoned, his lips curving in a malicious smile.
“I thought so.” Pausing a moment, Harry raised his eyebrows at his lover. “Nocturnal beasts? I take it we’re not talking about bats, are we?”
“I meant hamsters, Harry,” he answered. “They are active at night for 90% of their life cycles so they would be perfect meals for your snowy feathered friend. Your education has been woefully lacking. We must do everything we can to correct that.”
Another irrepressible cheeky grin. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Winding his arm around Harry and holding him close, heedless of any snooping neighbors, Severus kissed him hard and spun him in a circle.
There was a loud crack in the street. Then silence fell in Little Whinging.

THE END
- 13
- 14
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Way of the Patronus