One Day They'll Know Your Name

What a stupid name

General warning for the Dursleys being their wonderful selves, so definitely abuse. If anything triggers you, a summary will be in the end notes.

Harry groaned and rolled over, hitting a wall. He muttered under his breath and rolled the other way, only to hit another wall. He was instantly awake, trying to sit up, only to almost scream in pain. He bit his lip to hold it in and gingerly sat up, bracing himself against the wall to help. He winced as he felt the wounds on his back stretch and open again, letting the blood soak even more through his shirt. A few minutes later he heard Aunt Petunia coming down the stairs.

"Get up!" she hissed, rapping on his door and unlocking it. "Vernon wants his breakfast, and Dudley's coming home today, so dinner had best be perfect!"

Harry groaned internally and managed to force himself out of the cupboard. He got to the kitchen and began making eggs, bacon, and toast. If Dudley was coming home today, he must have been unconscious for at least a whole day. Unfortunately, Harry knew well enough how that felt, so he just quickly got back into the swing of the morning. He finished putting a huge smear of butter on the toast just as Uncle Vernon began stomping down the stairs and he quickly plated the food, putting it and a cup of coffee at Uncle Vernon's usual seat. Then he began doing the dishes. They took a little longer than usual since he was favoring his back a bit, but they were done before Uncle Vernon stomped over to Aunt Petunia for his usual morning kiss before heading off to work. Harry grabbed his uncle's dishes and glanced to his aunt to see if she was going to eat. She continued to sip her tea, so Harry finished with the plate and utensils and went to stand quietly next to Aunt Petunia.

"You'll be in the garden today. I want the tulips sorted by color, all the weeds pulled, the roses sorted by size, large ones in front, and I want you to plant the azaleas I bought yesterday. After lunch, which you may or may not get depending on how well you do in the garden, you'll be doing other outside things."

"What order do you want the tulips in?" Harry asked quietly.

"Red towards the front of the house, followed by pink, yellow, and white. Get to it!" she snapped.

Harry quickly went outside to fix the garden to her demanding standards. Padfoot bounded over as soon as he saw Harry, whining frantically, and Harry smiled down at the dog.

"Come on, Padfoot, let's go work in the garden. Aunt Petunia gave me quite the list." He continued rambling as they made their way to the garden, Padfoot prancing around, acting like the dog he was to cheer his godson up. When Harry knelt down in the dirt to begin weeding, Padfoot flopped down next to him, transforming back into his human form.

"I'm sorry, pup. I shouldn't have come in those nights. I'm not going to do it again. I'll sleep in the shed."

"Padfoot, it's fine. I just didn't wake up early enough."

"No, Harry. I'm not going to stay with you at night while we're here. I'm not going to be the reason you get a beating so bad you sleep for a whole day ever again. I know I can't stop those monsters if they hurt you, but I'm never going to be the reason for it again." He grabbed a few weeds while he spoke, putting them in the pile with Harry's.

Harry was silent for a minute, then he changed the topic. "Any idea why Professor Dumbledore was so interested in the note? We know You-Know-Who is alive. He was there both my first and second years."

Sirius growled a little bit at the reminder, then sighed. "The handwriting looked like my brother's."

"Regulus?" Harry asked curiously.

"Yeah. Reg disappeared in the last war at some point. We were never sure which side killed him. No one claimed it. There were a lot of deaths like that, especially near the end. Good ole Voldy was getting paranoid and sometimes killing off his own people. Dumbledore tried to keep us from killing people, but a bunch of us were Auror trained, and it was a war. If we're just using Stupefy and Expelliarmus while they're using Avada Kedavra and Crucio you can tell pretty quick who's going to win. We quickly started using cutting curses aimed at the neck, levitating charms on rocks and boulders to drop on our opponents, and several others. Some of our spies were able to sneak poisons into drinks undetected, or they had to poison themselves, and the other side's spies did the same. It was chaos, and no one truly knows how many died. Did you know, a Ferula aimed at the neck and face will smother someone in minutes? A slow death, but it's just the bandaging charm. You use it to splint broken limbs in an emergency."