Suppression

The Next Day

As was his custom now, Harry quickly fixed breakfast for Dudley and left the house immediately. The cool morning air had done wonders for him after each nightmares and he found that he rather enjoyed the quiet peacefulness of his neighborhood as he meandered about the sidewalk.

On most days, he would walk well beyond the outskirts of the neighborhood and simply explore the rest of Little Whinging. Usually, there were barely any unique events as everyone in the area seemed committed to doing the same monotonous routine with each passing day. As a child, he thought them mad, but now he wasn't so sure that they were mad. In fact, he wished for the normalcy and monotony of normal life.

The tired wizard walked for hours until he happened across a rusty structure that simply laid across the street, abandoned by whoever that put it there. He inspected it closer and found that it closely resembled a motorcycle, albeit one without any wheels.

Kneeling before the destroyed motorcycle, Harry ran his hands through the rusted metal and pulled the bike to stand up. Oddly enough, he thought, it could probably be fixed with magic. There was still the matter of the missing wheels, though.

He desperately wished for the permission to do magic outside of Hogwarts as he watched the beat-up motorcycle. A project like this would do more than just take his mind off of the beyond traumatic visions he was forced to endure nightly and, if he was successful in fixing it, he would have his own means of transportation around the neighborhood and wouldn't have to walk in his hand-me-down trainers anymore.

"Like that's ever going to happen," he responded to his hopeful mental wish to perform magic outside of school. He wryly chuckled to himself before reverting course and beginning the long trek to his relatives' home, never once noticing that he was being followed the entire time.

The air had grown hotter as time passed and Harry was nearly drenched in sweat by the time he had made it to the house to prepare lunch for him and Dudley. He quietly stepped foot into the house and called for his cousin only to find the boy hunched over the table eating a bowl of cereal. "Shit, Dud, I'm sorry I'm late," he apologized quickly, feeling guilty for having his cousin eat cereal for lunch.

He half expected his behemoth of a cousin to lash out and prepared himself for a beating when the boy snorted at him. "It's fine, Harry, cereal's good," Dudley responded before taking another spoonful of cereal.

His cousin was full of surprises dating back to last night. Harry didn't expect Dudley to have done a complete one-eighty turn over the course of one night but decided not to question it further. He knew that the boy was likely feeling a bit of pity for him given that he had witnessed him being drenched in blood.

Harry quickly got to making lunch for the larger boy and allowed himself to be swept away by the task in front of him. If nothing else, Harry found that he could at least find some form of suppression against his trauma if he was hyper-fixated on a particular task. With each new duty, he could easily be consumed by it and forget about his aches and pains. Of course, that would all fade away at night when there was nothing left to do except lie in his bed.

"Oh, forgot to tell you," Dudley interrupted Harry's rumination, "some guy dropped off a letter for you."

"What?" Harry left the skillet of bacon as he took the letter from Dudley's hands, "Who was he?"

Dudley shook his head negatively. "Some guy, dressed weirdly, think he might be one of your kind," he nonchalantly spoke, "he just told me to give you this and left without saying anything else."

"That's...weird," Harry admitted as he looked at the letter. He tossed it aside, deciding to open it later after he finished lunch.

Using the cooked bacon, Harry assembled four sandwiches filled with lettuce and tomatoes before handing them to Dudley on a plate. He set out to clean his utensils when his cousin called him back.