Battered

I'm back again! Finally! Sorry it took so long to update this but here we go:

It had now been nine years since that fateful day and much had happened in the life of Harry Potter. He had, after much persuasion from his newfound friends in the muggle world, opened up to somebody and married that special lady too. After falling owner to an especially large cottage house, they had also had a beautiful daughter which they had named Chloe Marissa Potter; Marissa after her mother.
Things didn’t stay that perfect for long though. About a week after Chloe was born, Marissa developed some severe internal bleeding and shortly after, died.

Things had gotten pretty bad for Harry after that; Chloe fell ill and Harry was just about ready to close himself off from the world forever but once again, his friends seemed to pull him out of it, convincing him enough to look after himself so he could look after Chloe.

As Chloe slowly started getting better, things started to cool down for our hero.

At present, he was with Chloe in the large lounge and they were playing some new game the energetic four-year-old had thought up.
But their fun was stopped as the doorbell rang. With curiosity plainly etched on his face, Harry slowly made his way to the door. Bewildered as to how someone had found his home as it had the strongest concealment charms on it (the wards seemed to recognise his newfound friends and they never knocked anyway) Harry opened the door only to find Ron, Hermione, Pansy, Blaise and Malfoy shivering out on the lawn.

The two parties just stood there staring at each other for a while in a deafening silence until a bubbly voice broke through the background.

“Daaaddyyy! We didn’t finish playing Runny Bun-Bun yet! Daddy? How come you haven’t let those people in yet? Daddy…”

Suddenly snapping to his senses, Harry turned around, picked up his over-excited toddler and spoke to the ‘intruders’ as he would like to call them.

“Well you might as well come in then…” he spoke resignedly, “Chloe, it’s past your bedtime. Go get ready for bed sweetie”

As the toddler pouted off to get ready for bed Harry walked off to the lounge giving no signal that he wanted the intruders to follow but they did anyway.

As he motioned for them to stay in the lounge, Harry went off to tuck Chloe into bed.
By the time he came back down again, most of them were seated, Malfoy being the only one who was not; he was standing by some of their photos and looking at one in particular; the one of Harry and Marissa side-by-side, laughing up at the picture and holding the new-born Chloe in their arms. It was a simple muggle picture but it was one of Harry’s favourites.

“Harry, who’s this?” asked Draco, breaking the new trend of silence.

“Not that its any of your concern Malfoy but that was my wife, Marissa” he replied coldly, cutting into their hopes of being welcomed back, “Now I doubt you came here purely for a social call to look at photos and ask about my wife; what the hell do you want?”

“Just to apol” began Hermione earnestly before Harry cut her off.

“That’s a complete load of bullshit and you know it Granger. Don’t take me for a fool!” he hissed with pure fury behind his eyes.

As most of them had never seen that look on Harry before, they gulped and shut their mouths; well all except one.
Draco Malfoy of all people suddenly stood up.
“Look Potter, I know we’ve never been on the best of terms and I know that what we did to you never exactly improved that but for goodness’ sake, all of us just came here to apologise for everything that happened all those years ago. We would have apologised a long time ago if you hadn’t been so friggin’ hard to find!”

There was dead silence in the house as Draco and Harry started at each other, one with impatience, and the other only with pure hatred in his eyes.

For a couple of minutes there was dead silence in the house as Draco and Harry just stood and stared at each other and the rest of the ‘intruders’ looked nervously between the two of them, obviously anticipating a fight.
No one however anticipated the terrified scream or crashing that came from upstairs.

Immediately breaking out of his trance, Harry sprinted up the stairs so fast that everyone else had to actually use a spell to track him down.
Harry meanwhile had already reached Chloe’s room and as soon as he opened the door a little bundle of green ploughed straight into his legs almost knocking him over. He soon recognised this green bundle that was crying on him as his daughter.

“Chlo? Chloe, what happened?” He asked the crying toddler.
Receiving no answer, he attempted to look past her and what he saw made his blood run cold. At first he saw some sort of mutant bunny creature but as soon as the thing looked at him it changed. At once, Harry knew this was a boggart but he couldn’t seem to react fast enough.
As time itself seemed to slow down for Harry, he watched it change into people he thought he knew; people he thought he loved; people he thought loved him.

At first it was Ron and Hermione, both yelling at him for betraying them; then it was his parents screaming about how he was an unworthy son; that they wished they had lived instead of Harry.
Next it was the Gryffindors yelling about how he wasn’t worthy to be one of them; how he was a Slytherin coward.
Then it was the smirking Slytherins, the Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, the teachers of Hogwarts, Dumbledore, and the Weasleys.
The people seemed to get less and less significant all the time yet one thing remained the same; none of them liked Harry at all and none of them were holding back their thoughts on him.

Choking back tears as so many painful memories from his past resurfaced, Harry was forced to his knees, trying desperately to tell these people that it wasn’t him; he was innocent.
As his vision became blurry, Harry knew he was losing consciousness from the impact the emotions took on him and the only noises he could hear were calling to him. Chloe and everyone else were trying to get to him and the last thing Harry heard before he blacked out was a familiar voice yelling, “Riddikulus”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Harry had no idea how long he had blacked out for or at the moment, why he even blacked out. All he knew was that he was alive and awake.

“Harry?” he heard a female voice calling. It seemed familiar yet he couldn’t seem to place it. “Harry”, the voice called again, “Wake up”

Opening his eyes slowly, Harry barely recognised a mass of brown hair towering over him and another warm hand covering his own.
He registered that he was in his bed but who these people were he had no idea. Thinking it over for a minute, it all came rushing back to him and he sat up at such a speed that most of them gasped.

Before he could say anything though, his daughter climbed up on his bed, beaming from ear to ear.
“Yay! Daddy’s awake! You had a really long nap daddy. Daddy? Who were all those people who kept changing? I didn’t like them. They were mean and they almost made you cry. Do you want a hug daddy?”
Smiling to himself at how much like her mother she was, Harry tucked her soft blonde curls behind her ears and said, “No thanks sweetie, I’m fine”

Standing quietly in the background, Harry now recognised everyone else but didn’t say anything to them. He knew they had seen everything the boggart changed into and he wasn’t proud of it.
“Chlo, why don’t you go play with Ruffy for a while. Daddy needs to do some things.”
Ruffy was their small brown sausage dog that absolutely loved Chloe to bits so Chloe was only too happy to go play with him.
Running off with her curls flying all over her face, she could be heard yelling the dogs name all down the stairs.
When her footfalls had faded, Harry was left in the room with everyone else. Nobody was saying anything, not even Harry.

“How are you feeling?” asked Pansy softly after awhile.
“Fine thank you” answered Harry, distractedly running his hands through his hair.

“Um, I suppose I should thank you for… well… you know, stopping the… boggart and all so… well… thanks” finished Harry awkwardly.

“No problem,” replied Ron softly.

With a small inclination of his head, Harry slowly slid off the bed and walked into his wardrobe; someone had apparently changed him into his nightclothes that were lying on the chair in his room and he wanted to get out of them.

While he was still picking out his clothes he heard someone call, “Harry, can we please talk to you downstairs when you’ve finished. Just hear us out?”
Harry gave no answer to their plea but he heard them walk down to the lounge anyway and sighed to himself. Just when he thought life was getting normal, his past seemed to kick back at him again.

With a sigh to himself, Harry started getting dressed as slowly as humanly possible, if only to delay the inevitable. Inwardly kicking himself, Harry berated himself for becoming such a coward that he didn’t even want to have a conversation, though as a part of him was reminded that he had due reason to delay this particular conversation.

Dressing in a pair of simple black pants and a plain white shirt which he hadn’t even bothered to tuck in properly, Harry was quite unaware of the fact that he still looked quite handsomely rugged even when he was trying to get rid of someone in a none-too-subtle way.

Slowly trudging down the stairs, Harry finally made it to the lounge again.

As he entered, he saw all of them look up at him and the room once more fell into an awkward silence, the only noise in the background being that of Chloe and their dog in the playroom.

“Harry,” spoke Hermione softly as he subconsciously walked over to the window, the exact position Marissa was in the last time she was thinking hard, “I don’t mean to … intrude or anything but, did you say before that Marissa was your wife? Just curious…”
Turning around, Harry noticed that everyone else was staring at Hermione with wide eyes too; clearly that wasn’t in the planned question list.

Harry had a couple of things planned that he wanted to say right then but he figured they might be a bit too inappropriate so settled for just a “yes I did Granger.”

“Oh,” she replied softly, “I’m sorry”

Harry didn’t say anything right then for fear of doing something he’d regret… Oh wait, who was he kidding? Like he’d ever regret saying anything to these people…. Right?

Shaking those thoughts from my head he turned fully around.
“Well, what did you want to talk about?” he asked coldly, already knowing the answer to his question but wanting to delay as much as possible.

Silence was once again in the room as everyone figured how to start.
“The boggart first of all I think.” Supplied Draco quietly from the back.

Harry stared at him for a while before saying just as quietly, “What about it?”

“Harry you know none of us would say something like that to you… erm… again…” spoke up Hermione timidly.

“Yea well how the bloody hell can I be sure of anything at the moment Granger!
You tell me! First I trusted you! And you not only let me down; you destroyed everything I had to live for!” roared Harry suddenly, “then I tried to start my life over again, forget about all of you, and just when I thought things were finally looking up for me my wife dies and I’m left with a child I didn’t even know how to take care of! At first I thought I might come ask one of you for help but then I remembered, Oh yeah! They’re all freakin’ fools!” he continued, making everyone wince at the memory.

But he wasn’t finished there, “So finally I think I have my life back on track when guess who shows up in my office? The very people I despised and tried to forget. Then those very same people come up with some bullshit crap that they’re ‘sorry’” finished Harry sarcastically, looking quite dangerous.

As Harry finished his tantrum if you will, there was once again silence in the house which was starting to really get on Harry’s nerves.
“Look, if you came here to say something then bloody well say it! I can’t stand all this silence. What’s wrong with you? Can’t talk now?”

“…Potter,” began Draco cautiously, “There’s something you should know about what happened all those years ago…”

Author’s Note:
Sorry! I haven’t updated in sooo long and then I go and leave it at that! *ducks* Hopefully I’ll try and update again in the near future!

Please Review – I would love some constructive feedback!
Also, I'm thinking of doing another edition to this story that will have a far less violent first chapter... I just want to scope out how popular the idea would be before I began writing it...