Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Yuletide Yearning - A Curious Carol	By : Andreas Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 1566 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Stave Two

STAR SPIRIT

Harry awoke into darkness. Considering that it had been equally as dark when he fell asleep, this didn�t engender any greater surprise. He rarely, if ever, slept through a whole night of nightmares. What was surprising, however, was the nature of his awakening. Normally shaken out of sleep by the cold clutches of dread, this time it was a cold tongue coaxing him ungently from one darkness to another.

There was a huge, shaggy black dog in his bed, licking his face. Harry cried out in surprise and repulsion. He slid up against the bed�s headboard, escaping the overenthusiastic tongue and, in doing so, put the dog in perspective. A perspective shifting drastically as the dog morphed into�

�Sirius?� cried Harry in astonishment.

�Merry Christmas, Harry,� grinned Sirius Black, godfather of one Harry Potter and quite as dead as a coffin-nail. �But,� he quirked an eyebrow, �you don�t find it merry, do you, Harry?�

Harry, mouth gaping, frowned. �Are you the first spirit?�

Sirius jumped off the bed, his white fur coat billowing and glittering. �That�s me! Ghost of Christmas Past!� He beamed and twirled, as if to show off what a very healthy and agile dead man he was. �But enough of that,� he said, grabbing Harry�s arm, �we need to be off!� And then he dragged Harry across a snow-laden field outside a small, glittering village.

�But,� said Harry, staggering and stumbling and not quite feeling the cold of the snow through all the layers of bubbling emotions and muddled thought, �they said you wouldn�t come back. As a ghost.�

�Oh, this is just a one-night haunt, Harry,� laughed Sirius, running towards the lights.

�But, why?�

�I�m doing it for you, Harry. I�m concerned for your well-being, my boy!�

�In that case,� said Harry, teeth chattering, �could you, like, slow down? I�m � not exactly dressed for midnight skiing � without skis.�

Sirius stopped. Harry ran into his back and fell backwards into deep snow. Sirius turned around, and had the relative decency to look mildly shame-faced. �Sorry, Harry. I�m just,� he lifted up the hem of his coat, �in a bit of a�� Harry thought he detected a hint of �hurry� in the inarticulate growl escaping Sirius partially morphed mouth as he bit off the lower part of the coat. Harry couldn�t help but wince. It wasn�t a pretty sight.

�Here,� said Sirius, proffering the torn-off piece, �wrap this around yourself. And jump up.� This was said by an enormous and surprisingly articulate black dog. Harry stared, mouth falling open. �It�s one perk of being dead. You can ignore reality,� grinned the dog, gleaming canines on display. �Now, jump up!�

Harry did, though crawl and clamber would perhaps have been more accurate descriptions. And when they reached their destination, a large house at the edge of the village, he not so much leaped as tumbled off.

Wiping snow from his face and blinking blearily, Harry plodded after Sirius up towards the looming building. He didn�t recognise it, and was slightly put off about being hauled through snow in the middle of the night to visit someone else�s past, when all he really wanted to do was talk to Sirius.

But Sirius didn�t even look at Harry as he rushed down some stairs and entered the cellar of the house through a small and dirty door. The problem facing Harry as he reached the bottom of the stairs was that Sirius had walked through the door in a highly unmetaphorical manner.

�Eh,� he said. Sirius hand shot through the door and yanked him through it. Harry flinched back from a solid wall of empty darkness, ungraciously wondering why the snow had chosen to pay such close attention to him when the door obviously didn�t.

�Where are we?� he asked, blinking rapidly in a vain attempt to make his eyes adjust more quickly to the darkness. �This isn�t my past.�

�In a way,� said Sirius, lighting the tip of his right forefinger, �it is.� His finger shone a bright blue, and suddenly there were shapes all around; walls, caskets, gardening tools, dead rats, a carton that had likely contained a generous helping of rat poison, and a young, dark-haired boy, shivering in a corner, oblivious to their presence.

Harry peered at the boy. �Who is it?� he whispered.

�He can�t hear you,� said Sirius. �Haven�t you read the story? We�re not really here. That�s how it works.�

�Right,� said Harry. �Who is he?�

�It�s Christmas, you know,� said Sirius, gazing at the ceiling. �They�re having a bit of a celebration up in dorm five.�

�Who is he?�

�But they threw him down here, without even a candle.�

�But who is he? Why am I here?�

Sirius turned to him. �Do you know why they locked him in the cellar, Harry?�

�How could I?� exclaimed Harry. �When you won�t answer my questions!�

�He�s a bastard and a freak. Believes in magic. The matron doesn�t.�

Harry glanced towards the boy, features softening.

�Glasses explode in his presence, Harry,� said Sirius, gazing at the shuddering boy, face sombre. �And we wouldn�t want all the pretty glass ornaments to shatter, would we? They�re so terribly expensive. Besides, he scares the other kids. So, of course, they bully him. And if he fights back, he gets thrown down here.�

Harry looked around again. It was bigger than his old cupboard, but at least he�d only had dead spiders. Poisoned rats were in another league entirely.

�What�ll happen to him?�

�Oh, he�ll go to Hogwarts, be a star pupil,� said Sirius, �but he�ll never quite escape this cellar.�

Harry sighed. They stood in silence for a while. Then Harry remembered his unanswered question. �But, who is he? Do I know him?�

�Oh, yes. He�s Tom Riddle.�

Before Harry had time to process this sudden shock to his compassionate sensibilities, the cellar around them shifted, walls moved, the floor swept itself clean, and the rats went to the great sewer in the sky. Tom Riddle, the Boy Who Died, was nowhere to be seen. Sirius hurried up wooden stairs and through another door, taking all light with him.

�Great,� muttered Harry, fumbling his way up the stairs and falling through the door into bright light and onto the floor, coming face to face with himself, crawling on all four and grinning like a mad thing, or like a baby, which is quite possibly much the same thing.

There was a marked absence of flashy scar, so how did Harry know he was looking at a younger version of himself? Was it the bright green eyes staring straight at him? Was it a facial structure that would one day harden into what he had witnessed in the mirror the previous morning?

Whatever it was, there was no doubt: The tiny being reaching forth in an apparent attempt to grab Harry�s red nose was Harry Potter, baby edition. Harry jumped up with a look of confused horror on his face, experiencing a moment�s darkness as he tipped through the door and almost fell back into the cellar. Sirius grabbed Harry�s sleeve, pulling him out of the infant�s nose-hunting path.

�I think he saw you. That can happen with babies,� whispered Sirius, not wishing to attract the attention of the prowling child.

�That�s me!� said Harry.

�Well, you, then. I think you saw � you.�

Harry paid him no attention. He was too busy staring at the laughing young woman who bent down to pick up his younger self. Behind her, a man with familiarly tousled black hair was decorating a large Christmas tree.

�Mum. Dad.�

�Yes,� said Sirius, softly, �that�s them.�

You couldn�t have created a sweeter, more idyllic scene if you�d covered a pastoral landscape in three feet of frosting. Baby Harry laughed as James Potter hoisted him up so he could take a closer look at the gleaming top spire. In pointed contrast to the sweet smiles of his parents, a salty tear trickled down Harry�s teenaged cheek.

Sirius sighed. �I�m sorry, Harry, but we have to move on.� He disappeared through the cellar door. Seconds later, Harry was pulled backwards, stiffly, through the door into a very familiar, and exceedingly cramped, cupboard. They were under the stairs. All was quiet outside. A solitary candle fluttered weakly atop an overturned cardboard box. On his rickety cot, seven year-old Harry sat sniffling, knees under his chin. The scene was eerily familiar.

�At least you had a candle,� said Sirius, reaching out to pat, in quite a disturbing manner, the inside of young Harry�s head.

�And no dead rats,� added Harry absently, stooping over the candle and finding the cupboard much smaller than he�d remembered. �They were at some party, weren�t they?� he asked, suddenly remembering more than a life-lasting vaccination for claustrophobia.

�Yeah. You begged them to take you, didn�t you? Even Dudley dipping your head in eggnog would have been better than this, wouldn�t it?� said Sirius, spreading his arms straight through the walls.

�Yes,� said Harry. The moistness in his eyes refused to dry up. �But I didn�t know about Voldemort then, or my parents. Didn�t realise the pointlessness of it all,� he muttered. He turned an accusing glare to Sirius. �This isn�t exactly making me merry, you know.� His face contorted. �Voldemort killed my parents. I don�t care about his bloody cellar! If not for him, I wouldn�t be sitting there!� he shouted, plunging his forefinger into his younger self�s forehead. �I won�t ever be merry until he�s DEAD!�

Sirius put his hands on Harry�s shaking shoulders, shook his head, slid his hands down, and hoisted Harry up through the stairs. Having seen a sprightly termite flash by, Harry found himself sitting on the uneven stairs of the Burrow, next to himself and his old friend Ron Weasley, conducting a quiet conversation against the backdrop of the loud Christmas feast downstairs. The moistness in Harry�s eyes spilled over and he cursed the cruel Carol he�d been dragged into.

�I,� said Ron, fiddling with his frayed sleeve, �I think � I think you�ve become �obsessed, Harry. With killing Vo� You-Know-Who.�

�If you felt the weight of the Wizarding world on your shoulders, you�d be obsessed too, Ron,� muttered Harry, staring into his lap.

�Yeah, well, I might not understand exactly � exactly how it is to � to be you, but do you have to point that out every time I � I just want to know�� Ron looked away, face pinched with pain. �You don�t talk to me anymore, Harry.�

Harry glanced up at his old friend. �I do talk to you.�

�Well, yeah, but,� Ron turned to Harry, �you never tell me what�s wrong! We used to talk about everything: Quidditch, school, girls, V-Voldemort.� He sighed. �I miss you, Harry.�

They searched for a connection deep inside each other�s eyes, and then Harry, having taken rather too keen an interest in Molly Weasley�s eggnog, kissed Ron. The red-haired boy flinched back, turned ashen, staggered to his feet, fled down the stairs and out through the front door. Behind him, two Harrys rose to chorus a hopeless cry.

�RON!�

But only the older of the two (one seemingly endless year) dashed down the stairs, through the open door, and into an empty white field just outside the Hogwarts grounds.

�NO! NOOOO!� Harry howled into the moonlit night, falling to his knees in the pristine snow. �Ron! Ron,� he sobbed, rocking back and forth. A dog�s head nudged his arm, nuzzled his cheek, but he wouldn�t, couldn�t stop crying. Sirius crouched beside him.

�It wasn�t your fault, Harry. They would have got to him one way or another.�

�I scared him into the woods. He was safe at the Burrow.�

�You couldn�t have known.�

�I should have.�

�Why?�

�Because I�m supposed to be a hero.�

�No, you�re not. You�re supposed to be Harry.�

�Well,� sniffed Harry, sitting back in the snow, heedless of the wet cold, �what if I don�t want to be a freak who gets anyone he fancies killed! At least as a supposed hero, people don�t � ridicule me or call me names.�

�What about Draco Malfoy?�

�I said people.�

�Oh. Not disturbingly sexy bullies with anger control issues, then?�

Harry squeezed the snow in his hands and gritted his teeth. �If you know that, then you know it�s true: I�m a freak. I�ve gone completely nuts. I have to kill Voldemort or my life will never be � normal!�

�Do you know why I�m dead, Harry?�

Harry blinked, befuddled, and peered at Sirius. �What? Of course I do. Bellatrix killed you.� He sniffed.

�No, that�s why I died, not why I�m dead,� said Sirius, placing his hand on Harry�s shoulder. �I�m dead because I lived when I died. I spent too much of my life locked-up, not living, but when I tried to save you at the Ministry, I lived. I did what I wanted to do, I fought for what mattered to me, and I was true to myself. I lived, Harry. And now I�m dead.�

�But, everybody dies.�

�Yes, but not all find peace,� said Sirius, leaning closer. �And the saddest thing is, Harry, that even tonight, you�re more of ghost than I am.� He shook Harry by his shoulders. �And I�m dead!� He pulled his godson into a tight hug. �I�m dead.�

Harry couldn�t relax into the embrace. It was good to touch Sirius again, but his words had cut deep and even the soft fur felt prickly and rough.

�Remus loved me,� Sirius continued, �like you loved Ron, perhaps even more. But he�s moved on, and you�ll have to do the same.� He pulled back, twisting his sincere features into a mischievous grin. �You can�t sleep with the dead, you know. And I wouldn�t suggest trying.�

Harry took a deep breath, glaring at Sirius. How could he laugh at this? �You�ve no idea what it�s like! No one ever expected you to be a hero!�

�No, it seems they expected me to be quite the opposite,� chuckled Sirius.

�Just, go away. It�s not as if you could stay anyway.�

�No, Harry. You�re the one who has to do the living.�

�Just, go.�

�If you��

�GO!� Harry felt a small stick beneath his fingers. He picked it up, rose, and threw the stick as far as he could. �Fetch!� And much to his surprise, Sirius morphed into a large black dog and bounded after the soaring stick, barking with glee.

Harry turned and ran towards the distant castle. Tears streamed down his face and however hard he tried, he couldn�t shut out the far-off yaps of a life that could have been.

Unwilling to face those returning from the Hogsmeade festivities, Harry skulked into the Quidditch shed and shivered to sleep against a pile of frosty House flags.
- 1
- 2
- 3
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

Yuletide Yearning - A Curious Carol