Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 16: Dust bunnies

Aunt Petunia had left the dusting rag, furniture polish, broom, and dustpan in front of Harry's door. He found this out after he sat up, held onto his bruised knees, rubbed his wrist for a moment until the pain was more manageable and felt around, located, and identified the items he'd tripped over.

What is going on here? Why is she being so nice to me?

It was really starting to freak him out.

After his heart had settled down, he gathered up the dusting materials and awkwardly shuffled them over to Dudley's room. He carefully lined up the tools along the wall inside the door by size and started to work. He found that dusting was a much slower job without sight. He had to work methodically and think carefully as he approached each surface, find the objects, dust them, then return them to the same spot. Before, he was able to just hone in on the actual dusty surfaces and skip anything that looked clean.

As he worked, he relived the letter from Hermione. Just hearing her voice made him feel closer to Hogwarts than he'd felt in weeks. He thought about the literature from the hospital, the notes Healer Smethwyck had written, the note he'd received the night he'd arrived, and the letter from Dumbledore that Aunt Petunia had tossed in the bin.

I'm going to be able to read them!

He was itching to go to his room to read them that instant, but he could hear Aunt Petunia moving around in her room and couldn't risk that she'd overhear the anagnóstis.

He'd have tomorrow in the house alone for a while to read and (he hoped) to learn how to use his staff, work on memorizing the layout of the house so that he could move around it more easily without having to grope everywhere.

Dudley's going to beat the crap out of me. I'm not going to see it coming. He's going to think he's died and gone to heaven.

I've really got to run away if I'm going to survive the summer once Dudley's home. Maybe once school is out, I can go live with the Weasleys or with the Grangers until the fall... if they let me return to Hogwarts.

This recurring fear that Hogwarts would not accept him back kept plaguing him.

The anagnóstis means I can read my school work, at least. I wonder if there is a way to make headphones for it?

He had an image of himself in the library trying to listen to his books and Madam Pince shushing him.

Harry had just finished dusting Dudley's computer which had a set of fancy speakers and headphones attached with tangled cords. He hated dusting it, it always shocked him, even when it was off. He wished he could plug the headphones into his anagnóstis so that he didn't have to worry about the Dursleys overhearing his notes being read aloud to him.

Harry's fingers felt grimy and his nose tickled with the disturbed dust by the time he was done. However, there was an upside to it all. He'd found a small pouch of school supplies pushed to the farthest recesses underneath Dudder's bed that contained pencils, eraser, handheld sharpener, compass, protractor, and straightedge. He'd had to brave an unknown number of dust bunnies and crusted, balled up socks to find it, but it was worth it.

There's no way that Dudley would miss this... that is, except if he saw me with it.

He tucked it in his waistband, thankful for his oversized T-shirt for once. He'd have to be careful to keep it hidden.

How much stuff can I store under the floorboards...

At the doorway, Harry listened to see if he could tell where Aunt Petunia was. He was getting pretty hungry and wondered if he'd be able to sneak some lunch. Aunt Petunia usually snacked throughout the morning when Dudley and Vernon were gone but didn't let Harry make himself lunch. He had learned at an early age to sneak food into his pockets whenever he had a chance and the baggy hand-me-downs from Dudley helped him in those schemes. Now he couldn't check to see if anyone was looking and so had a much smaller stash of emergency food to share with Hedwig.

Harry remembered with an involuntary cringe the first time Ron noticed the pile of hoarded food in his trunk and teased him tirelessly about it, jumping around like a squirrel, until Ron noticed Neville's shocked face and shut up.

What he would give for a table that magically produced mountains of delicious, hot food in a single pop. And pumpkin juice.

He couldn't tell where Aunt Petunia was and that always made his skin crawl. He gathered up the cleaning supplies and started carefully down the stairs.

Maybe I should have made two trips instead of trying to carry this all at once, he thought as the broom slid down and caught on a stair.

As he tried to catch it, he slipped off the stair and landed painfully on his tailbone, sliding down a few stairs and dropping everything else as his hands went out in an attempt to grab onto something. It made a tremendous racket joined by Aunt Petunia's shrieking a string of curses at him for being so clumsy. He sat for a second, the wind knocked out of him, and tried to assess if he'd broken anything.

Not this time.

His bum was sore but not much sorer than the bruises he was still nursing from his encounter with the Basilisk and the inside of the fireplace. His knees hurt, but that was from his first spill over the cleaning supplies.

Aunt Petunia hadn't let up her shrieking, but she was picking up the cleaning supplies he'd dropped. Harry froze when he realized it.

Is she going to hit me with the broom?

He braced himself, anticipating a blow, but instead, she put everything back in the broom closet and then pulled Harry up by his elbow. He nearly fell down the rest of the stairs in shock.

Her bony fingers dug into his arm right on an already tender bruise as she pulled him into the kitchen and then thrust him into his seat at the kitchen table. Harry managed to pull up on the concealed pouch of school supplies that was threatening to fall down his trouser leg and secure it again under his waistband. He didn't think she noticed because she was rattling a glass jar with a knife at the kitchen counter. She thrust a plate in front of him with a resounding clatter. He tentatively felt around the plate and discovered a sticky sandwich.

Marmalade!

He licked the stickiness from his fingers. He paused wondering if she was trying to poison him. Maybe she thought she'd finish the job the Basilisk started. Then he inhaled it before she changed her mind and washed it down with a couple of gulps of milk, hiccuping in his haste.

He didn't know what to do. He worked up the nerve and offered a soft, "thanks" to her bustling noises in the kitchen and thought that she paused for a moment and harumphed, but it was barely detectable.

"What do you want me to do next, Aunt Petunia?" Harry asked cautiously.

"I need you to go to the market, but I guess that's impossible. So, I'm going," she said clearly inconvenienced.

I could probably do it if you let me use my staff and my anagnóstis... wait, what? You're going to leave me alone?

"You will polish the silver while I'm gone," she said.

He slumped. How he hated polishing silver. When he could see, she was never satisfied with his work, now he would polish ad nauseum and never know if it was gleaming to her specifications, and his only way of investigating was through touch which would leave fingerprints. But there was no way he was going to do anything to anger this new, almost nice Aunt Petunia. She was scarier than any other version of his aunt he'd ever encountered before.