To Be Seen - Chapter 01: The World Pretends to Go On

The kitchen at the Burrow was too full of life for how dead Harry felt inside.

Sunlight poured through crooked windows and spilled like butter over the cluttered table, where half-finished toast and crumpled napkins gathered like casualties of a minor war. A kettle hissed on the stove beside a hovering frying pan that kept flipping sausages with a stubborn rhythm. Molly Weasley moved through it all like a conductor in a badly tuned orchestra, issuing spells and small scoldings in equal measure.

“Ronald, that’s your third helping—leave some for your sister.”

“It’s not my fault Fred took mine!”

“I did not—”

“You absolutely did!”

“Oh, please,” Ginny muttered, not even looking up from her Daily Prophet crossword, “you two couldn’t lie your way out of a Quidditch penalty.”

Fred lobbed a small, bruised apple across the table with the casual precision of someone who’d practiced mischief as art. It bounced off Ron’s shoulder and landed in the butter dish, earning a curse and a motherly glare. George, sipping pumpkin juice like an innocent bystander, merely raised his eyebrows at the spectacle. Hermione, seated between Ginny and Ron, looked from one twin to the other with the patient suffering of someone who’d chosen the wrong week to maintain her sanity.

In the middle of it all, Harry sat very still, spoon in hand, the porridge in his bowl slowly cooling and congealing. He wasn’t sure if he’d taken a bite. The laughter and bickering swirled around him like warm steam, but none of it seemed to touch him. His scar didn’t hurt. His limbs weren’t shaking. But inside, something felt… stuck. Like a splinter behind the ribs. Something lodged in him ever since the World Cup, ever since the sky turned green and the screaming began.

Hermione glanced at him then, voice careful. “Harry… did you ever—at the Cup, I mean—did you actually see who cast the Mark?”

He blinked, slow, heavy. “No,” he said. His voice felt unused. He swallowed. “I didn’t see anyone.”

She nodded, but kept her eyes on him a moment longer than necessary. Behind her, the old wireless crackled faintly over the sink, its voice polite and noncommittal: “…the Ministry has issued a formal statement denying any rise in Dark activity following last month’s disturbances…”

Harry looked down at his porridge and stirred it once, the spoon carving a pale path through the gray. Across the table, Ron was going on about Viktor Krum’s “ridiculous dive” during the Cup final, his arms flailing as he reenacted the moment with a salt shaker and a battered spoon. George snorted. Ginny rolled her eyes. Hermione corrected some small technicality about broomstick regulations. And Harry sat in the middle of all of it, feeling like a ghost in someone else’s photograph.

Someone laughed—maybe Fred, maybe George—and the sound hit Harry like static. He pushed his chair back slowly, not loud enough to interrupt the current of conversation, but enough for Hermione’s eyes to flick toward him again.

“I’m gonna go outside,” he said, though no one had asked. “It's a bit warm here.”

“Take your jacket, dear,” Molly called from the sink, not turning around.

He didn’t.

~HP~

Outside, the Burrow was a mess of green and gold and wind. Morning had mellowed into early afternoon, and the sun filtered through the crooked apple trees in lazy patches that danced across the overgrown grass. Somewhere beyond the field, a grindylow-shaped wind chime clinked lazily, its tune uncertain. The garden always smelled like something was growing—earth, herbs, old broom polish—but today, beneath it all, Harry caught something sharper, something burnt and faint and carried in thin coils by the breeze.

He stood near the back wall, just past the gnome-pocked patch of soil that the twins kept threatening to turn into a swamp, and watched Ron wrestle a squirming gnome by the ankles. The thing shrieked and twisted, baring small yellow teeth before Ron hurled it over the hedge with a satisfying grunt. It disappeared into the tall grass beyond with a final squeal, and Ron turned around grinning like he’d done something heroic.

“Still got it,” he said, brushing dirt off his knees. “Tossed that one clear to the pond. Bet Fred couldn’t do better.”

Harry managed a small smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He crouched and grabbed a sluggish-looking gnome near his boot. It didn’t even fight—just blinked up at him like it knew the game wasn’t worth playing. He stared at the tiny, leathery creature for a few seconds too long, its potato-shaped head twitching slightly in his grip, before finally letting it fly with a practiced motion. It landed awkwardly, thumping into a patch of weeds with a dull, unimpressed noise.

Ron didn’t seem to notice. He was already digging through the shrubbery for another target, rambling now about Quidditch statistics and how the Irish Seeker didn’t get enough credit. Harry heard the words but didn’t take them in. They floated around him like dust motes in late light—visible, meaningless, inevitable. The same way dreams sometimes tried to cling to the edge of sleep but couldn’t hold on.

He straightened up slowly and brushed his hands on his jeans. The gnome squealed somewhere in the distance and then went quiet. The breeze picked up again, fluttering the collar of his shirt. The smoke-smell was back. Not thick. Not choking. Just faint. Lingering. The kind of thing that sat behind the tongue and made water taste like ash.

Hermione appeared near the fence, squinting against the light. She held a worn paperback of Intermediate Transfiguration, the corner of the cover curled like it had been in her bag too long.

“There you are,” she said, walking toward them. “Molly said to tell you lunch is ready soon.”

Ron groaned, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I just got out here.”

Hermione ignored him. Her eyes settled on Harry instead, quietly watchful. “How’s your head?” she asked, softer. “Any more dreams?”

He shook his head. “No.”

She frowned slightly. “You’re not just saying that?”

Harry paused. “Fine,” he said. The word felt flat in his mouth, like a tile from a game he didn’t want to play anymore. “I’m fine.”

She looked like she might press further, but Ron interrupted by stumbling into a patch of nettles and yelping. Hermione sighed and turned, wand already raised, and Harry exhaled slowly through his nose.

The air still smelled like burnt things. But nothing here had burned.

~HP~

The bell above the apothecary door gave a short, tired jingle as Molly pushed it open with one hand and ushered Harry in with the other, her large straw bag already half-full with parchment rolls and clinking glass jars. The inside of the shop smelled like crushed leaves and something bitter, maybe fluxweed or powdered bat spleen, and the air hung heavy with the weight of unspoken conversations. The man behind the counter didn’t smile when they entered, just gave a sharp nod before returning to his ledger with the distracted caution of someone who had recently forgotten what it felt like to be safe.

Harry followed behind Molly in silence, the sound of her heels soft on the worn stone floor. She spoke to the shopkeeper in her usual no-nonsense tone, politely but firmly asking about potion kits, extra bezoars, and whether they still carried wolfsbane antidote at a discount for school families. Her voice filled the space in a way Harry found strangely comforting—an ordinary voice in a world that had been so loud, then so quiet. He ran his fingers along the shelves while she haggled, not really reading the labels, not really looking. There was a bottle labeled Ashwinder Ash – Sealed by Auror Order, and another simply marked Draught for Nightmares. He paused at that one. It was empty.

When they left the apothecary, the alley was brighter, bustling with families and students loading trunks and calling out prices for used books. The cobblestones were sun-warmed and uneven beneath Harry’s shoes. Owl cages rattled from a nearby stall, and two witches in matching violet hats argued over cauldron quality outside a window display of “self-stirring pewter.” But underneath the usual hum of back-to-school chaos, there was something else. Aurors stood like shadows near Gringotts, arms folded, eyes scanning the crowd with a vigilance that wasn’t there last year. There were more of them than there should’ve been. More wands visible. Less laughter.

Harry walked beside Molly, who had started pointing out discounted wand holsters in a shop window, but his attention had drifted behind them. A flickering square of parchment caught his eye on a brick wall halfway down Knockturn Lane, brittle at the corners and stained by sun and rain. He knew it before he got close enough to see the lettering. The grainy, black-and-white photo of Sirius Black stared back at him from the wall, hair wild, eyes burning, teeth bared in that strange, furious sneer. Have you seen this wizard? it asked in jagged text, like the answer hadn’t already been shouted in every corner of the country for two years. Below it, someone had scrawled a crude drawing of the Dark Mark in charcoal. Harry stood in front of it for a long moment, long enough for Molly to turn around and realize he wasn’t with her.

She followed his line of sight, and her lips thinned as she saw what he was staring at.

The wanted poster still hung behind the glass — weathered, half-curled at the edges, the ink smeared faintly from sunlight and damp. Sirius Black's face stared out with that same half-feral expression, breathing raggedly, eyes moving like he was still trapped in the parchment.

Molly’s tone turned brisk. “No reason for that to still be up, is there? They caught him months ago. Would’ve, if he hadn’t vanished again. All that effort, and not a trace.”

Harry didn’t answer.

She gave a sharp nod, like to close the subject for both their sakes. “Come along, dear. Still need to get your robes.”

They crossed the alley in silence. The shopkeepers called out prices and charms, a brass trumpet floated by overhead playing itself badly, and the cobblestones smelled of hot parchment and stale spell ink. A hunched man sat alone on a bench near the apothecary, clutching a rolled-up Daily Prophet and muttering to no one in particular.

“They never left,” he rasped as they passed. “They never left, masks and fire, masks and fire, green in the sky…”

Molly’s pace quickened. She shifted the shopping bag to her other hand and glanced back once, then forward again.

“Don’t stare, Harry,” she murmured, quiet but firm. “You’ll only upset yourself.”

He didn’t answer her aloud. But the thought rose in his mind anyway, calm and weightless as a memory.

Too late.

~HP~

Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions still smelled like new wool and pressed lace, a scent Harry had always associated with back-to-school nerves and quietly pinching shoes. The shop hadn’t changed since his first visit before starting at Hogwarts—same wobbly mannequin in the window, same squat mirror with the slight delay, same silver measuring tape coiled in the corner like it might bite. But as he stepped inside behind Molly, something about the space felt smaller than he remembered. Maybe it was the narrowness of the light through the high windows, or the way the mannequins stood too still now, like they’d grown tired of playing at lifelessness and decided to truly stop pretending.

“Harry, love, stand up straight,” Molly said as Madam Malkin shuffled over, all pins and stiff black skirts, her pince-nez perched at a dangerous angle. “You’ve grown again—look at these sleeves! Honestly, it’s like you’re stretching on purpose.”

Harry obeyed without comment, stepping onto the low fitting platform in front of the mirror. He kept his arms at his sides and tried not to think about anything at all. Madam Malkin bustled behind him with practiced efficiency, tugging at the shoulders of his robes, humming an off-key tune that might once have been a lullaby. Her measuring tape slithered up his leg like a curious snake, then tightened just above his knee. He flinched, almost imperceptibly, but her hand was already there, smoothing the fabric.

“Sorry, dear,” she said absently. “Didn’t mean to pinch.”

“It’s fine,” Harry muttered, even though it wasn’t the tape that had made him twitch. It was the contact—the suddenness of skin on skin. Even accidental, even neutral, it jolted something loose in him. A memory, maybe. A flash of green. Or maybe just the sensation of being touched when he hadn’t been ready.

Molly stood off to the side, chatting with another witch about whether purple robes were flattering or just tragic. Harry half-listened, his eyes on the mirror. It showed him a boy with a faint line between his brows, hair falling into his eyes, robes half-finished and hanging unevenly like borrowed armor. The boy looked tired. The boy didn’t look like the kind of person a tournament would choose.

The bell above the door rang behind him. He didn’t turn, but the voice that followed—loud, nasal, overconfident—filled the small shop like a bad smell.

“I told you, I’ve already got mine fitted, I just want a set in black. Black looks better when you win.”

It was a boy, tall and wide-shouldered, swaggering into the shop with two younger friends in tow, all of them dressed in deep green. Slytherins, obviously. The leader—Harry didn’t recognize him—strode past the racks with the certainty of someone used to being listened to, and Harry caught his reflection in the glass: angular face, pointed chin, a sneer that had probably never left since birth.

“That’s Harry Potter,” one of the boys whispered too loudly.

The tall boy turned to look, eyebrows rising as if he’d just noticed something amusing under his shoe.

“Didn’t realize they were fitting celebrities during school hours.”

Harry didn’t respond. Madam Malkin did, her voice brisk.

“That’s enough, Mr. Shenton. He has just as much right to robes as you do.”

The boy grinned and tipped an imaginary hat. “Of course, madam. Just having a bit of fun.”

He walked away, and Harry exhaled slowly, realizing he’d been holding his breath.

The rest of the fitting passed in silence. Madam Malkin marked the hem with a flick of her wand, stepped back, and gave him a tight smile.

“You’re done, dear. I’ll have these delivered to you this evening.”

“Thanks,” he said, stepping down from the platform. His legs felt strange beneath him, like they weren’t quite convinced of the ground.

Molly reappeared with a bolt of midnight-blue fabric and two pairs of socks. “I found you some spares,” she said brightly. “I know you never pack enough.”

He nodded.

As they stepped out into the light, the sun had turned a bit harsher, casting long slants of shadow across the cobblestones. The noise of the alley rushed back around him—laughter, haggling, the flap of owl wings overhead—but Harry felt like he was watching it through glass.

Everything had color. Everything had motion.

And still, somehow, everything felt wrong.

~HP~

The Burrow creaked at night like it was trying to speak. The old house settled into its bones with little groans and murmurs from the rafters, and the ancient plumbing sighed behind the walls as if even the pipes dreamed here. Somewhere downstairs, a kettle rattled slightly in its cradle. Crookshanks moved in the sitting room with a soft thump, and the clock ticked too loud in a house otherwise full of sleep.

Harry lay on his back in Ron’s bedroom, staring up at the slanted ceiling. The moonlight cut long through the window, tracing pale lines over the Quidditch posters above his head. Chudley Cannons jerseys flapped faintly in a breeze that wasn’t quite strong enough to move the air. Ron was asleep across the room, mouth slightly open, snoring in quiet starts and stops like he was remembering something unpleasant. The rest of the house was a muffled hush. Outside, the wind shifted. Somewhere far off, an owl called once, then fell silent again.

Harry couldn’t sleep.

He had tried. He had turned over, stared at the wall, pulled the blanket to his chin, let it slide back down. He had counted ceiling boards. He had closed his eyes and tried to imagine things that were safe: Mrs. Weasley humming, Hagrid’s rock cakes, the creak of Hermione’s quill scratching into parchment. But his mind wandered, and every time it did, it found the same place. A spinning sky. A body suspended like a broken marionette. The green flash that lit up everything inside him until he couldn’t tell if he was breathing or screaming.

He sat up slowly, bare feet touching the cold wooden floor. The window was cracked open just enough to let in the smell of smoke from the chimney—soft, ashen, mixed with the faintest trace of apples and dust. The scent reminded him of the World Cup in a way he couldn’t explain, like a ghost of something that hadn’t yet happened, or maybe something he had left behind by mistake. He stood, crossed the room without waking Ron, and leaned his arms on the windowsill.

The stars were distant and sharp, laid out like silver nails hammered into the dark. Smoke from the kitchen chimney curled upward, thin and uncertain, vanishing halfway to the treetops. He watched it rise. He thought about what Hermione had said. About dreams. About people seeing things and saying nothing.

He thought of Sirius.

Not the photo. Not the madness in the posters. But the man who’d stared into his eyes across the flames in that fireplace last year. The man who’d told him the truth even when it was awful. Harry hadn’t written to him since the Cup. He hadn’t written to anyone, not really. Every time he started, the words came out like someone else had written them. Like he was copying an idea of how he should feel, not what was actually in him.

He touched the glass of the window with the tips of his fingers. It was cold, but not biting. Just enough to remind him he was awake. Alive. Still here.

Below the window, the garden slept peacefully. The gnomes had retreated into their nests. The swing set Arthur had repaired groaned softly in the breeze, its rope untwisting itself by slow degrees.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, breathing in the cold air, the chimney smoke, the silence. But eventually, when the moon had moved a little further across the sky and the stars had shuffled themselves slightly, he turned back to his bed. He didn’t expect to sleep. He didn’t even try to hope for it.

He lay down and stared up once more, this time without moving. And as he blinked slowly into the dim blue dark, he realized the screaming had stopped. Not because he was better. Not because it was gone.

But because even the echoes were tired.