Chapter 12 - Home

Harry woke smiling, glowing with joy in his heart for the first time in many long years. His various aches and stiffness didn't bother him for once, and even the phantom pain from his missing arm was gone. Nothing would spoil today. He had waited a long time.

He walked to the last remaining painting and brought it to light. Vernon looked at it strangely – it was a sleeping portrait of Harry himself. But a young Harry – somewhere around 16 years old, before the arm incident, or the leg incident, or the cut-up face incident. The sleeping Potter had a peaceful, almost childlike look to his face. This Harry Potter wasn't crazed from years of pain and anguish. There wasstrength, scarring,and wisdom that stemmed from abuse and lack of a childhood in the portrait's demeanor, but Vernon wasn't sharp enough to pick up on that. Hedwig was on his shoulder, gazing at the living Harry with sympathetic eyes.

"Why don't you wake yourself up, then, boy?" he snarled at his nephew.

"Can't" was Harry's simply reply. "He'll wake up automatically when I die.

"Well, that can't happen too soon" Vernon spat.

"Careful what you wish for, dear Uncle" Harry turned and smiled at him. It was an oily, evil smile. "I am the only one who can free a painting, or control its abilities. I can turn them off or on. I can grant access for them." His smile grew wider. "I can't do any of that once I'm dead."

Petunia paled. "All right, Harry. You've had your laugh. Perhaps we weren't the best guardians, but you survived, and as Vernon pointed out, it made you strong. I think you owe us enough to let us out of here or at least give us a cottage." Vernon nodded dumbly in agreement, and Dudley, lying on his side, gazed in hope from across the room.

With a snort Harry ignored the Dursleys and gazed at his own portrait. Ginny entered it and looked at him with soft pity and love. "This was the age I first truly loved you, Harry" she spoke at last, hand on the sleeping Harry's shoulder.

He watched the portrait Ginny with sorrow. "It took me a while to realize you really loved me and not The-Boy-Who-Lived, Gin."

"This was a good time in your life – you hadn't been so abused that your heart turned bitter." She stroked the cheek of the sleeping Harry and looked pointedlyat the living one. "I don't want you to die – you know that."

"I'm already dead" was the answer, punctuated by a sob.

He limped over to the Dursleys, casting one longing look back to Ginny. Giggling, drooling, and cackling, he conjured a comfortable chair facing them, back turned to Ginny and the wall of paintings. He conjured a low screen that blocked the view any portraits on the far wall might have of the back of the chair and the insane person that sat in it. He conjured a table with a feast upon it. He glared, then smiled at his aunt and uncle and sat down. They stared back, uncomprehending.

"You don't even regret how you treated me, do you?" Hetooka deep drink from aglass of wine and studied his relatives. The haughty, prideful look on his aunt's face, the mean glower of his uncle gave him the answer. Calm now, he smirked and extinguished the torches. The chair he sat in glowed faintly, so in the dim light the Dursleys could see him clearly. The paintings across the room each gave off their own brightness so Petunia and Vernon couldwatch every detail of each canvas. But other than that, the room was dark as a tomb.

He waved his hand over the food on the table. "Now, dear Aunt, dear Uncle – this food will never rot, never go away. It will last probably forever. I say probably, because perhaps someone may find my underground hideaway some day in the far future. But I doubt it. Perhaps the magic in these paintings will fade with time. But Hogwarts had portraits over a thousand years old, and they are as fresh and new as if painted yesterday."

"W-w-where are you going, Harry?" Petunia screeched in alarm. "Don't leave us!"

Harry ignored her. Just as she had ignored him all those years.

"That's quite enough, boy" Vernon shouted at him. "You've had your fun – now get us out of here."

Harry ignored him. Just as his uncle had ignored his pleas for mercy all those times.

"This, dear Aunt, dear Uncle" he waved a small bottle in his hand, "is a very strong poison. I will now join my family and friends over there. I will live forever with them, young, healthy, having fun. We will be confined to our personalities of the time of the paintings, so we can not grow old, discontented or bored. We will all be very happy." He flicked the cork off of the small glass vial with his thumb. "You, on the other hand, will have nothing to do for eternity, but watch me decompose,listen toDudley whine, andobserve my friends and I have fun."

Vernon and Petunia gaped in horror. "No" she whispered. "At least kill us!"

"I told Ginny what I was going to do. Every one of my friends and loved ones have agreed not to tell my new/old self that I'm rotting over here, armless and broken. As far as I will know when I awake, I died a hero and intact. As far as I will remember, I had a loveless and thankless childhood, but I wasn't the victim of a deranged psycho." He glowered darkly at Vernon.

"You don't even have a clue what you did was wrong." He shook his head sadly. "If you had shown the least amount of regret – any of you – I would have turned off your painting, or given you a cottage. If there was any humanity in your hearts, you could have had access to the rest of the paintings." He gazed at them with pity. "There is nothing in you – you truly are soulless animals."

With a swift movement he downed the poison, leaned back in his seat and smiled at his Aunt and Uncle. With his dying breath he could hear Dudley shouting across the room "What's going on? What's the freak doing Mum?" He could barely hear Petunia and Vernon shouting at him, demanding that he not die and free them.

And so he left the realm of the living.

The Dursleys stared, dumfounded, at the body of their nephew. They heard a commotion on the far wall and watched the many beings from many paintings shouting with excitement "he's here! Harry's coming!" People started running canvas to canvas toward the sleeping Harry that was stirring and yawning. He blinked his impossibly green eyes and looked up into Ginny's welcoming smile.

"Welcome home, my love" she crooned, kissing him firmly.

"What happened, Gin? Where are we?" The younger Harry looked around with curiosity. "Did we die?"

"Yep – but you took care of Moldyshorts" she took his hand and pulled him out of the chair. "We've all been waiting for you."

Petunia and Vernon watched dully – shock rendered them numb for the time being. Petunia kept glancing over at her nephew's dead body, peaceful yet somehow still insane looking. How long before it started to rot? How long before it got disgusting? How long before it was nothing but a skeleton forever and ever and ever?

"What's going on?" Dudley whined on the top of his voice. "I can't see anything! What's all the noise?"

They couldn't answer yet – the shock was too new, too real.

Like an impoverished child gazing through the window of a candy store, where the rich children were spending their money. Like the sad, sobbing child who use to lay by the door of the cupboard, wishing to join in a family. That ishow the Dursley's felt.

Had they been there a month? A year? Fifty years? There was no way of knowing. Harry's corpse had gone the way of all flesh, and nothing remained but a grinning skeleton, smiling accusingly at them. The seat Harry had conjured was tilted just right so its head remained firmly in place, and hadn't fallen to gravity. Petunia tried not to look.

Dudley and they tried to talk, but they swiftly found their boy was indeed stupid, spoiled, and vapid. Without the television to baby-sit his stilted brain, the boy ended up turning his back to the glass wall facing his parents and slept most of his time. It was punctuated with occasional bouts of outrageous temper tantrums.

Harry was as good as his word – the other portraits seemed oblivious to them. They tried to get the portrait Harry's attention many times, but either they were too dimly lit or they were shielded magically from the far wall. It seemed Dudley was the only one who could hear or see Vernon and Petunia.

Vernon and Petunia sniffed in disgust at the skeleton facing them. No – they had no regrets. Because the Petunia and Vernon Dursley created from the snips of hair collected from the trash basket had no regrets. A painting never ages, never grows, never changes. They live that moment in time forever. With no regrets.

THE END

Yes, this is dark and unhappy. I said so at the start. It does end on a somewhat optimistic note – that the portrait Harry, painted from a happier time in his life, will now last indefinitely with his loved ones. No, it's not the 'real' Harry – the soul has gone on to whatever after life, but this was the only escape that Harry's tortured brain could come up with – his only reason for carrying on. A created happy escape, and a way to get back at the Dursleys.

Just to clear it up, when Harry tells Ginny in this chapter "I'm already dead", he meant emotionally. He wasn't dying, he wasn't a ghost or zombie or anything like that.

A few random thoughts on magical paintings. I love Rowling's moving portraits – they figured heavily in my story Manipulator of Destiny, and I have a fanfic in the works about a witch portrait painter. Love the whole concept! I feel that paintings are like an interactive doll for the most part. The world's most sophisticated Furbee. I would think that a portrait would not be able to learn very much or grow and change with the times at all – it would destroy the purpose of having a portrait made. They seem to be a way of capturing a person in a moment in time so you can always talk with them or ask them questions about what had happened, and get feedback based on that point in time. In M.o.D. I have portraits with their souls, but that is not the case in this story.

I feel part of having a painting made would have to include changing the subject's personality to some degree – remove the chance for insanity, boredom, etc. If it was a real person in a portrait, they would go quickly over the bend from claustrophobia, frustration, boredom, etc. There would have to be a built in feeling of contentment and wish to serve. A glaring exception to this is Mrs. Black at Grimmauld place. She was insane to begin with, and either she or a warped relative decided to create her portrait to bother people indefinitely.

There is a definite difference between Dudley's eternity and Petunia & Vernon's'. Dudley was cruel to Harry, but Harry felt to some degree Dudley was a victim himself. He didn't want Dudley watching the other portrait's enjoying themselves to add to his torment. He gives Dudley a mattress and room to sleep. But in a conflicting gesture, Harry knows that Dudley only likes bullying and the telly – now he doesn't have either to do, and watching portraits would be like having TV again. Keep in mind, Harry is 'one taco short of a combo platter'.

Harry also wanted Dudley separated from his folks. He wanted them to feel how he felt apart – able to see relatives but not 'feel' them. He certainly wanted his aunt and uncle to see Harry happy and whole, and see the contrasting corpse before them. He wanted them to feel the hunger and see the food before them, but didn't feel Dudley needed to be tortured as much.

Why don't Harry's friends disapprove of what he is doing before he commits suicide? There is mild disapproval – we are left with the impression that Remus refuses to learn the spell to ravage the Dursleys on the full moon. Hermione gently rebukes him. Ginny gently points out she doesn't want him to do what she realizes he plans on doing (commit suicide). But again, if a portrait does not have submission and contentment built into the creation, they would not hang around for hundreds of years talking and helping the living. The headmaster's portraits in Hogwarts deliver messages, spy, advise, and remind (they are the world's coolest daily planner!) the current headmaster. The entry portraits to the common rooms do the same. If I was stuck forever in a limited space or spaces like they are, I would grow surly, depressed, and very unhelpful, I'm sure. So in example, even though the real Hermione might really nag away at Harry and try to turn him light again, the painting Hermione gently rebukes as a reminder of what Hermione was, but essentially remains his loyal friend.

Yes, the chapters in this story are short. I was aiming for an emotional mood, and didn't want detail to slow it down. It was written primarily from the Dursley's point of view – they don't understand the magical world or what is going on. They don't feel they've done anything wrong. They are not bright enough to have deep thoughts or philosophical debates. I originally aimed for a long one-shot, but felt the chapters help to add dramatic pause and gives the reader a chance for emotional breaks. I felt it would be far too depressing in one chunk.

Flamers. I don't understand them. This is my third fanfiction and I just don't get it. If you don't like it, and have nothing constructive to say, stop reading it and move on. My favorite flame is "I just wasted my time reading 10 chapters of your trash". Um, at least I'm bright enough to know a couple chapters into a story that I don't care for it and move on. "You can't write". Um – yes, I can. Now am I a good writer? That's simply opinion. If you don't like it, write your own stories. Then you get to deal with flames of your own.