Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6545698.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry_Potter/Tom_Riddle_|_Harry_Potter/Voldemort
  Additional Tags:
      Goblet_of_Fire_AU, Implied/Referenced_Torture, Aftermath_of_Torture,
      Implied/Referenced_Rape/Non-con, Dark_Lord_Harry_Potter, Dark_Harry
      Potter, Necromancer_Harry_Potter, Implied/Referenced_Cannibalism, Sane
      Voldemort, Possessive_Voldemort, Good_Voldemort
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-04-13 Chapters: 1/? Words: 2544
****** A Silent Scream To Shatter Glass ******
by MacabreMoth_(orphan_account)
Summary
     The summer prior to his fourth year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter is
     kidnapped after the Dursley's kick him out for threatening to sic
     Sirius on them. He is set free only after he is pushed to the end of
     his sanity and forced to do terrible unspeakable things, just in time
     to meet his friends for the Quidditch World Cup. Determined to
     pretend nothing happened, Harry struggles to cope with the aftermath
     of his violent summer, but things take a dark turn when he is forced
     into a deadly tournament. The betrayal of his friends abandoning him
     in his hour of need pushes the boy-who-lived to the breaking point,
     and he finds himself taking comfort in the darkness he has long
     denied his affinity for.
                ****** A Silent Scream To Shatter Glass ******
                           **** By Macabre Moth ****
 Chapter One - Unraveling The Web Of Lies
1994 -1995 School Year | Fourth Year
----
It is necessary to realize that there lies within every person, the potential
for darkness and violence beyond what our own limited imagination can think up.
It is through the experiences that shape who we become that determines whether
or not we will ever touch that level of cruelty in our short lives. A few
exceptions are made, of course, as there are in all instances. An example would
be a person with a perfect life who burns an entire city to the ground for fun,
or the one who's life is hell but still retains the kindness no one has ever
shown them. Most never reach that level violent darkness, but those that do
never return the same after it. Then there are those who come to that level of
ultra-violence by the order of another, and they do not care if they have to
slaughter every single person they come across if it means pleasing the one who
gave them the order.
--
The man who kidnaps Harry Potter at the beginning of the summer before his
fourth year, is that last kind, though it is unclear whether he was a Death
Eater in the first war, only given a place because Voldemort was in need of
people capable of mindless violence as the end of his reign drew near, or
simply a sympathizer trying to destroy the one who defeated the dark lord since
none of his followers had the guts to do the violent deed. It makes more sense
for him to be the former than the latter, a Death Eater out to please his
master, spurred on by the spikes of burning his Dark Mark has been
experiencing. It is a kinder reason then the later at least. Whatever the case,
it does not change that he is a lunatic of a man, his magic lost to a broken
vow, and he would do anything if it meant he could have magic once again,
including torture and destroy a group of children.
He steals the boy-who-lived from the street on the first night of his summer
vacation, the tenth of June, where Harry had been irately pacing the asphalt as
he tried to figure out what he could do to survive, since his relatives had
kicked him out without his wand or belongings. He is not the only one captured
that night, nor is he considered any more or less important than his fellow
stolen children, despite who he is to them, and despite the fact that none of
the others would have been taken if not to cover his tracks. Not that anyone
ever came looking for any of them. He is, however, the only one to survive as
long as he does.
The things that happen in the white room are terrible, unspeakable, and it
breaks them all. Harry Potter is the only one to walk out alive and stay as
such, and it takes him years to come to a point where he is even partly willing
to tell his story to more than one, and only to those who he had come to trust
after the terrible events. In the end, though horrible the events were, it does
not matter what they did to him. Not really. It does not matter that seventeen
people caught between childhood and adulthood are tortured in every conceivable
and inconceivable way possible, or that they were forced to do unspeakable acts
to each other and others to keep their captor's insistent hands to himself, or
even that in the end not one of those seventeen come out the same, most dying
in the white room or committing suicide after they gave in to the man's demands
and were set free.
What matters is that Harry Potter is set free. Time in the white room moves
differently, so while for Harry it has been a little over two years, outside of
the room only sixty-eight days, a mere two months and seven days to be
exact, have passed by the time he is set free. His shackles are removed and he
is pushed out the door, the man who would haunt every dream to his dying day
laughing in the background, triumphant and harsh as he sets forth the boy he so
utterly destroyed. Harry walks back home then, to get the things he left
behind, determined to put it all behind him, determined to forget the feeling
of hands and hot breath as the man hurt him, or the feeling of blood washing
over him, or the taste of raw flesh on his tongue. It is his decision to
pretend it never happened, and with this though in mind he walks back to where
it began, and he knocks on the door of number four Privet drive, hoping his
relatives did not move. No one comes, so he knocks once more, aware it is late.
Petunia opens the door with eyes that go from narrowed in annoyance to wide
with shock and what looks like fear. He doesn't blame her. He can only
imagine what he looks like right now.
"Hi." He whispers. "Can I come in?"
He doesn't expect her to actually let him in, but he is grateful when she does.
--
It is just a few minutes before midnight when the knock comes, and Petunia
Evans Dursley frowns as she looks up at the door. She should be in bed at this
hour, but she has been up all night trying to sort her affairs, what with the
divorce and all. Vernon has Dudley tonight, and she only has tonight and
tomorrow left in this house before she has to find a friend to stay with. The
prenuptial agreement says that Vernon gets everything, the house, the car,
Dudley. Petunia will leave with nothing but her possessions, only able to see
her son on the weekends. Another knock brings her back to the present, and she
stands and walks to the door, prepared to tell whoever is out there to go away.
The words die on her lips, and her eyes widen in horror. Her nephew stands on
her doorstep, but he looks horrible. His skin is pale as snow and stretched
over his bones, making him look like a skeleton. Dried and wet blood, too much
to be just his own, bruises, fresh cuts, scars, and dirt cover his skin and the
tattered shorts that are the only thing he is wearing. His left eye is dead,
pale, foggy, and the pupil is milky, a starburst of fresh scaring surrounding
the socket, and Petunia knows he is blind in it. His hair is dirty and greasy
and longer than it should be since it has only been a month, with a few dried
leaves, twigs, and something that looks suspiciously like a human finger in his
tangled gravity-defying locks.
"Hi." his voice is a harsh rasping whisper. "Can I come in?"
"Yes." She says, not sure what else to do. Vernon kicked him out after he
threatened to set his escaped convict of a Godfather on them, and Petunia had
honestly expected he would show up two days later to get the stuff he left
behind. Vernon burned it all that night of course, but nonetheless she still
expected Harry would show up. She voices this thought, and he give a harsh
bitter cough of a laugh. She thinks it sounds more like a death rattle than a
laugh.
"I've been busy." he says, and he laughs once more as if he is joking about
something that isn't even all that funny. "Better late than never." he shrugs.
Petunia shakes her head sadly. "Vernon burned everything." She reveals, and she
feels guilty when he turns his emotionless eye, or rather eye, on her.
"What?" he snarls, and his voice is still just as quiet as it has been since he
first showed up.
"After he kicked you out, Vernon took all of your stuff from the closet and
burned it in the fireplace before he installed the new electric one." She says.
"I'm sorry."
Instead of yelling, or crying, or reacting to that in any way, he simply nods.
"Did he find the loose floorboard in my room?" He questions.
"Loose floorboard?" Petunia asks.
Her battered nephew grins, and it is not a pretty sight. His cracked, dried
lips split apart with the harsh movement, parting into ugly deep cuts that drip
thin lines and bubbles of blood down his chin, as his lips spread into the
grin, and his teeth are dirty and sharpened to wicked raptorial points. The
grin itself can only be likened to the smile the devil might give someone after
they just unwittingly sold their soul to him.
"I'll take that as a no." He says and walks off. Petunia follows after him,
despite the fear making her heart beat fast as a jackhammer behind her ribs,
because she is too curious for her own good. In his old room, Harry moves his
old bed and pulls up the floorboards, revealing a small cache of treasures. It
isn't much, as far she can tell, an odd silvery bunch of fabric, a black piece
of parchment, some ink and a quill, and a small black leathery bag the size of
a wallet. He removes all of these things, then digs around in the bag, and
pulls out some soap and clothes that she knows should not fit inside it. "Can I
borrow the bathroom?" He asks. "I need a shower."
Petunia can only nod, and she wonders what the hell happened to him as he
pushes past her and slams the washroom door shut.
--
Four hours later, the two are sitting on the couch, side by side, sipping tea.
They have been silent for three hours, nothing but a few meaningless words
exchanged between the sound of pens scratching at paper. Shortly before they
sat down Petunia had given him the letter his friends had sent, and she doesn't
know what it said, but Harry told her that he would be leaving tomorrow to go
to his friends house, so she suspects it was a good thing she saved it. He sent
the letter off with an unfamiliar owl, and then joined Petunia on the couch,
where neither one of them has moved from since. Petunia sneaks short glances at
her nephew from the corners of her eyes while she works, or over the top of her
tea cup while she sips. Cleaned up, he looks no better than he had covered in
dirt, blood, and god only knows what else. The cuts are all crudely stitched
up. The scars are all an angry purple-pink color, only barely healed, and very
new. Their are bruises of varying degrees of healing, including some sickening
ones like hand prints on his hips peaking out over the top of his trousers. He
isn't wearing a shirt, but Petunia doesn't blame him with as many injuries as
he is sporting. It's surprising that he's wearing trousers at all, to be
perfectly honest.
Harry lets out a sudden put-off sigh, and turns to stare at her. "Stop." He
says.
Petunia blinks. "Stop?" She parrots in confusion.
"Stop looking at me like that." He answers. "I get it. I'm a terrifying mess.
You won't have to see me after tonight, so do me a favor and pretend it doesn't
bother you for one bloody night, or just fucking ask. I really can't stand
being watched like a fish in a bowl."
Petunia gets that, so she nods. She points to a black tattoo on the inside of
his left wrist, a depiction of a snake eating its tail no bigger than a Irish
Two-Pence coin. "What's this?" She decides to start with.
Harry sighs. "A reminder." He whispers. "The ouroboros is a symbol of infinity,
resurrection, and some say immortality. It's hard to explain if you weren't
there."
Another long uncomfortable silence, and then Petunia tries again. "What
happened to you?"
He laughs then, and it sounds strangled and harsh, almost like someone has
grabbed his vocal cords. "Nothing I am willing to explain to you." He answers,
and then he gets up and leaves the room.
Petunia sighs when she hears a door slam shut upstairs, and she turns back to
her paperwork. She can't concentrate, so she goes to bed as well. When she
wakes up at eight in the morning, there is a plate of oddly piping hot food on
the table, clean dishes in the rack, and Harry is no where to be found.
His lack of presence is more of a shock than it has any right to be.
--
Harry sits in the Leaky Cauldron, patiently waiting for the Weasley's to come
pick him up. He had not mentioned anything about how he spent his summer,
instead lying to them that the reason for having them meet at the pub had to do
with the move and the divorce. He should tell them, but he doesn't want to
think about it. He doesn't want to speak about it. As imprudent as the decision
to keep them in the dark seems, it is the very foundation of his plan to act as
if nothing happened to him. A few vastly illegal potions healed quite a bit of
the effects of two years, or two months depending on the point of view, of
starvation and torture easily, although Harry would be in much more pain right
now if it were not for the, also extremely against the law, pain potions he
took shortly after he took the potion. He will have to take these same potions
once a week for the next four months or so to heal all the effects, but with
the addition of his brand new actually fitting clothes, and the fact that it is
a slow process, the first of the potions he took having been sped up by another
potion so the Weasley's would not freak out on him, he hopes everyone will be
too distracted to realize.
The floo roars to life, and Harry looks up at the sound like he has been doing
for the last hour. His group steps out of the floo one by one, first Arthur,
then Fred, George, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. They look around the pub for him,
and completely overlook him, sitting all alone in the shadows, just like
everyone else has been doing since he arrived. It's kind of freeing, to sit
amongst these people and not be mobbed for something he didn't even do. Sure,
surviving the killing curse is a pretty impressive feat, but he didn't defeat
Voldemort as a fifteen month old infant, no matter what these fickle bastards
seem to think. After watching ten minutes of them being almost painfully
oblivious of him, Harry decides to take pity on his friends.
He walks up to the six, and he taps the girls on the shoulder. Both turn and
look at him with wide eyes. "Miss me ladies?" He grins, and he almost feels
like himself again.
[Linear] [Moth] [Linear]
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