Number Four

It was strange, but he found that everything was going blank and it was hard to concentrate on the words being said to him anymore.

Harry glanced down at his hand, clenched tightly into a fist around his wand. It was shaking and his knuckles were white. It was hard to swallow and his mouth was dry. Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hermione, and Ron were all staring at him, concerned.

He couldn't remember being this angry in a long time. He had no clue that this would be his reaction, that he would feel so intensely for people he had loathed and who had loathed him for sixteen years.

Harry remembered a piggy face and jeering comments, blows and insults directed at his frail form. He remembered forced labor, imprisonment, hand me downs and insufficient food. He remembered the yelling and the slurs and the mistrusting looks. He had no place in that spotless, sterile world. There he was a freak.

He could picture a cold, unfriendly house, waiting formidably for him to return to. He could picture being yelled at and ignored again.

But try as he might, he couldn't picture it being a pile of charred rubble.

Harry wondered dimly if Aunt Petunia's garden was destroyed. She loved that garden.

Silly question, really. Of course it was destroyed.

He remembered the hate and the anger well enough. But unbidden, he began to remember other things as well.

They loved Dudley, they really did. They adored him and poured every ounce of extra love and affection into that huge hulk they called a son. And they loved each other.

Harry remembered one night when he walked in on them in the living room, standing close with their arms around each other, whispering something. Reflecting back, that was the only time he had seen Uncle Vernon look pleasant, the only time he had seen Aunt Petunia relaxed.

They had seen him and glared and yelled, and he had thought it a rather disturbing episode on the whole.

But now…

He hated them, he really and truly did. And he had no doubts that they hated him just as completely.

But they were people who loved and laughed and, like it or not, Aunt Petunia was his mother's sister. She was blood, and they were the people who had fed him and clothed him for sixteen years, even if they despised him all the while.

Now they were gone. Utterly eradicated by a maniacal man who loved murder and hated Muggles.

Harry looked up to face the worried people in front of him. If he had seen through their eyes, he would have been taken aback as they were, shocked to see pure unadulterated hatred and anger pouring out of his brilliant green eyes.

He was shocked as well. Shocked to realize that suddenly, he felt capable of murder.