Chapter Text
The institutional quiet of Millfield was nothing like the silence of Privet Drive. Here, quiet meant the soft shuffle of night staff making rounds, the distant murmur of voices through thin walls, the occasional cry from someone lost in nightmares. It was the quiet of caged things, restless and watching.
Harry lay on his narrow bed, still in the grey tracksuit they'd given him, staring at the ceiling. The mattress was thin but clean, better than his cupboard but carrying the weight of every child who'd slept here before him. Their fear had soaked into the fabric like old sweat.
Through the walls came fragments, not thoughts exactly, but emotional echoes. Anxiety from the room to his left. A dull, medicated haze from somewhere down the hall. And underneath it all, a current of barely contained violence that made his scar throb with familiar warning.
A key turned in his lock. Harry sat up quickly, his heart hammering.
A woman entered—short, stocky, with the kind of practical shoes that suggested long hours on her feet. Her name tag read 'S. Morrison - Night Supervisor.' She carried a small paper cup and wore the expression of someone performing a routine task.
"Medication time," she announced, holding out the cup. Inside were two white pills.
"What is it?" Harry asked.
"Doctor's orders. Help you sleep, keep you calm." Her tone brooked no argument. "Down the hatch."
Harry stared at the pills. In the courtroom, Dr. Carey had mentioned medication for his "delusions." These pills were meant to stop him from hearing thoughts, from understanding the wrongness that lived in his chest.
"I don't want—"
"Wasn't a request." Morrison's voice hardened. "Take them now, or we'll have to do this the difficult way."
Harry's newly developed survival instincts screamed warnings. He reached out carefully, testing the edges of Morrison's mind. Her thoughts came through clearly: Routine. Get the psychotic kid medicated. Fifteen more minutes until rounds. Hope this one doesn't fight like Jenkins did last week.
Someone had fought. And lost.
Harry took the pills, placed them on his tongue, and accepted the cup of water. He made swallowing motions while palming the medication against his cheek.
"Good boy," Morrison said, checking his mouth with the cursory glance of someone who'd done this hundreds of times. She noted something on her clipboard and left, locking the door behind her.
Harry spat the pills into his hand the moment she was gone. They dissolved partially, leaving bitter residue on his palm that he wiped on the bedsheets. Whatever those pills were meant to do, he needed his mind clear and sharp.
The building settled deeper into its nighttime rhythm. Footsteps in the corridor grew less frequent. And just after ten o'clock, when the official sounds had faded to almost nothing, the unofficial sounds began.
Soft knocks on doors. Whispered conversations. The careful scrape of something being dragged across linoleum.
Harry pressed his ear to his door and caught fragments of a hushed discussion in the hallway:
"—new kid’s in twelve—" "—heard he killed someone—" "—wonder if he's like Jenkins was when he first got here—" "—Marcus said to leave him alone tonight—"
The voices faded as their owners moved away, but the mention of Marcus's intervention made Harry's chest tighten with a different kind of anxiety. Protection offered always came with a price.
Hours passed. Harry dozed fitfully, jerking awake at every sound. The institutional darkness was different from his cupboard, less crushing but more uncertain. Here, he didn't know what was coming.
Near dawn, he was awakened by the sound of someone crying. Not loud, not attention-seeking, just the quiet, hopeless sound of someone who thought no one could hear. It came from the room next to his, muffled by thin walls but unmistakably real.
Harry pressed his hand against the wall, wondering if the person on the other side was someone like him. Someone who'd done something terrible and been sent here to be fixed. Someone who'd learned that being broken was the only way to survive.
As grey light began to filter through his small window, Harry understood that this place would be different from Privet Drive in every way that mattered. Here, survival wouldn't be about staying invisible. It would be about learning to navigate a world where everyone was damaged, everyone was watching, and everyone had their own idea of what the new boy who'd killed someone might be capable of.
The lock clicked open. A different staff member this time, a young man with tired eyes and a careful smile.
"Morning, Harry. I'm Dave. Time for breakfast, then you'll meet Dr. Whitmore."
Harry stood slowly, his legs stiff from the narrow bed. Through the open door, he could see other children moving through the corridor—some alone, some in small groups, all wearing the same bleak uniform.
As he stepped into the hallway, several faces turned toward him. Some curious, some wary, some with the flat, evaluating stare of predators sizing up potential prey. But none with the open hostility he'd expected.
Marcus appeared at his shoulder, falling into step beside him with casual ease.
"Sleep well?" he asked quietly.
"Not really."
"Gets easier. Or you get used to it." Marcus glanced around the corridor, noting which other residents were paying attention to Harry's movements. "Dr. Whitmore's decent, as staff go. Doesn't talk down to you like some of them. But don't trust her either."
"Why not?"
"Because her job isn't to be your friend. Her job is to fix you. And sometimes what they think needs fixing..." Marcus shrugged. "Well, that's between you and your head."
The dining hall was a long room lined with tables, each seating eight. The walls were painted the same institutional green as the corridors, and high windows let in filtered daylight that made everything look slightly sickly. The air smelled of industrial food and industrial cleaning products.
Harry accepted a tray from the serving line, porridge, toast, and a cup of tea that tasted like dishwater. He followed Marcus to a half-empty table near the back, aware of the eyes tracking his movement but grateful for the older boy's tacit protection.
"That's Sarah," Marcus said quietly, indicating a pale girl of maybe thirteen who sat alone at the next table. "Poisoned her foster family. Didn't kill anyone but came close. "
He continued his quiet commentary, pointing out the other residents with the casual efficiency of someone who'd learned to catalogue threats and allies.
"Jenkins—the one with the scar on his face—he's the one Morrison mentioned last night. Fought the medication for weeks before they broke him. Now he's so drugged up he can barely remember his own name."
Harry watched Jenkins, a boy about his own age who moved with the slow, unsteady gait of heavy sedation. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, and drool gathered at the corner of his mouth.
"What did he do?" Harry asked.
"Does it matter?" Marcus replied. "Look at him now. That's what happens when you fight too hard."
The warning was clear. Resistance had consequences.
"But," Marcus continued, lowering his voice further, "complete surrender has consequences too. The staff like compliant patients, but the residents... well, they don't respect weakness."
It was a careful balance, Harry realized. Submit enough to avoid Jenkins's fate but maintain enough strength to avoid becoming prey.
After breakfast, Harry was escorted to a different wing of the building. The corridors here were painted in warmer colours, and actual artwork hung on the walls, children's drawings and inspirational posters that felt aggressively cheerful in the institutional setting.
Dr. Sarah Whitmore's office was designed to be non-threatening. Comfortable chairs instead of institutional furniture. Soft lighting instead of fluorescent glare. Bookshelves lined with both professional texts and children's literature. It felt like a trap disguised as a sanctuary.
Dr. Whitmore herself was younger than Harry had expected—maybe mid-thirties, with kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and the sort of gentle smile that suggested she genuinely cared about helping children.
"Hello, Harry," she said, gesturing to one of the comfortable chairs. "I'm Dr. Whitmore, but you can call me Sarah if you'd prefer. I know this is all very overwhelming."
Harry settled into the chair cautiously. It was soft, welcoming, the first comfortable seat he'd experienced in months. But comfort, he'd learned, often came with hidden costs.
"I want you to know that this is a safe space," Dr. Whitmore continued. "Nothing you say here will get you in trouble. My job is to help you understand what happened and work through the trauma that led to it."
She opened a file, Harry's file, he realized. It was surprisingly thick for someone his age.
"I've read the reports from your evaluation," she said gently. "The police interviews, Dr. Carey's assessment, the court proceedings. I know you've been through something terrible."
Harry said nothing. Every adult who'd spoken to him recently had claimed to understand, to want to help. But understanding seemed to involve convincing him that his own experiences weren't real.
"Can you tell me about the night your aunt died?" Dr. Whitmore asked.
"I've told everyone already," Harry said quietly.
"I know. But I'd like to hear it from you directly. Sometimes talking about traumatic events helps us process them."
So, Harry told the story again. Aunt Marge's visit. Her cruelty about his parents. The rage that had built inside him until something snapped. The impossible thing that had killed her.
Dr. Whitmore listened without interruption, taking occasional notes. Her face remained neutral, professional, giving nothing away.
"That must have been terrifying," she said when he finished. "To feel so angry, so out of control."
"It wasn't about control," Harry said. "Something happened. Something I didn't understand."
"What do you think happened?"
Harry hesitated. Every time he'd tried to explain, adults had looked at him like he was delusional. But Dr. Whitmore's expression remained open, encouraging.
"Sometimes I can hear what people are thinking," he said carefully. "And when I get really upset, things break. Windows, lights... people."
"That sounds very frightening," Dr. Whitmore said. "Feeling like you have that kind of power."
"I don't want it," Harry said desperately. "I never asked for it. I just want to be normal."
"What does normal feel like to you?"
The question caught him off guard. Normal felt like... like nothing he'd ever experienced. A family that wanted him. A home where he belonged. Safety.
"I don't know," he admitted.
Dr. Whitmore made a note. "Harry, I want you to understand something. The things you've described—hearing thoughts, making things happen with your mind—these aren't real abilities. They're ways your brain has learned to cope with trauma."
"But—"
"When we experience severe stress or abuse, our minds can create very convincing experiences that feel completely real. It's called dissociation, and it's actually a very clever survival mechanism."
Harry stared at her. She was using the same gentle, reasonable tone that all the other adults had used. The tone that meant she thought he was crazy.
"I'm not making it up," he said.
"I don't think you're making it up," Dr. Whitmore said. "I think you genuinely experienced these things. But that doesn't mean they happened the way you remember them."
She leaned forward slightly, her expression intensely sincere.
"Harry, you've been through terrible abuse. Your mind found ways to protect itself, to give you a sense of power and control in situations where you had none. That's not crazy—that's human."
"Then how did Aunt Marge die?"
Dr. Whitmore paused, consulting her notes. "The medical examiner found evidence of a previously undiagnosed heart condition. Combined with her obesity and the stress of the argument... It's possible she had a massive cardiac event that caused internal bleeding."
"That's not what happened," Harry said.
"What if it was? What if your mind, trying to protect you from feeling helpless, created the memory of having this power? Wouldn't that make more sense than actual mind-reading and telekinesis?"
Harry felt something cold settle in his stomach. The way she explained it, it did make sense. More sense than the alternative.
But he could still feel the wrongness in his chest, still sense the edges of her thoughts pressing against his consciousness. Even now, sitting in this comfortable chair, he could hear her thinking: Classic trauma response. Delusions of grandeur mixed with magical thinking. Textbook case.
"You think I'm crazy," he said.
"I think you're a very intelligent boy who's survived terrible circumstances by developing some very creative coping mechanisms. There's nothing crazy about that."
The session continued for another thirty minutes. Dr. Whitmore asked about his life with the Dursleys, his experiences at school, his relationships with other children. She was thorough, professional, and genuinely seemed to care about his answers.
But underneath her kindness, Harry could sense her certainty. She had already decided what was wrong with him, and these sessions would be about convincing him to accept her diagnosis.
When he was finally escorted back to his room, Harry sat on his narrow bed and stared out at the exercise yard. Other children moved around the concrete space—some playing, some sitting alone, all wearing the same grey uniforms that marked them as damaged goods.
Dr. Whitmore's words echoed in his mind. Delusions of grandeur. Magical thinking. Trauma response.
But even as part of him wondered if she might be right, another part—the cold, watchful part that lived behind his ribs—knew better. The wrongness was real. It pulsed with every heartbeat, whispered with every breath. It had killed Aunt Marge, and it was growing stronger.
Tomorrow, there would be another session with Dr. Whitmore. More gentle insistence that his experiences weren't real. More medication to dull the edges of his abilities. More pressure to accept that he was delusional rather than different.
But tonight, in the institutional quiet of Millfield, Harry made a decision.
He would learn to play their game. Say what they wanted to hear. Pretend to get better, pretend to accept their version of reality.
But he would never stop knowing the truth about what he could do.
And he would learn to control it.
The cold in his chest pulsed once, like agreement.
Like a promise to survive whatever they tried to take from him.
The days at Millfield blurred together in institutional sameness. Wake at seven. Breakfast in the dining hall, where conversations died when he approached tables. Sessions with Dr. Whitmore, where he learned to give her the answers she wanted while keeping his truth locked away. Medication time where he perfected the art of hiding pills under his tongue. Lights out at nine, listening to the sounds of other damaged children settling into restless sleep.
But within the monotony, Harry was learning.
He discovered that the constant press of other people's thoughts, which had overwhelmed him at school, could be controlled with concentration. Not stopped entirely but filtered. Like adjusting the volume on a radio, he could tune out the background noise of casual thoughts and focus only on what he needed to hear.
The technique came to him during his third week, during a particularly intense session with Dr. Whitmore. Her thoughts had been loud, insistent—still maintaining delusions, possible increase in medication needed—when Harry felt something shift in his mind. Like closing a door. Suddenly, her thoughts became whispers instead of shouts.
He could choose what to hear.
The discovery was intoxicating. For the first time since the wrongness had awakened in him, Harry felt truly in control of something. He began practicing deliberately, testing the boundaries of what he could do.
In the dining hall, he would listen to Marcus discussing which new residents might be vulnerable. In group therapy, he would read the counsellor’s notes before she spoke them aloud. During medical examinations, he would sense exactly what the staff were thinking about his "progress."
But it was more than just listening. Harry discovered he could push, too. Gently at first, encouraging a staff member to look away while he palmed his medication, suggesting to another resident that they didn't really want to sit at his table. Small nudges that felt like thoughts but weren't quite thoughts.
The other residents began giving him a wider berth. Nothing dramatic, just a subtle reluctance to make eye contact, to sit too close, to engage him in conversation. Even Marcus became more distant, though he still offered occasional advice.
"You're getting a reputation," Marcus said one evening in December, his voice carefully neutral. "Kids are saying you know things you shouldn't know."
"What kind of things?" Harry asked.
"Sarah told everyone you knew about her hidden stash of sleeping pills before the room search found them. Jenkins swears you whispered his real name even though he's never told anyone here what it is." Marcus studied Harry with those careful eyes. "True or not, people are starting to think you're... different."
Harry said nothing. What could he say? That it was all true? That he could slip into their minds like walking through unlocked doors?
"Different can be dangerous in a place like this," Marcus continued. "Makes people nervous. And nervous people do stupid things."
The warning proved prophetic.
The Test
It happened on a grey January afternoon during free time in the common room. Harry sat alone in his usual corner, pretending to read while actually practicing his mental exercises—reaching out to touch the surface thoughts of the other children, exploring deeper into their minds. They never noticed his intrusions, never showed any sign that they felt him rifling through their memories and fears.
Three boys approached his table. Harry recognized them—Tommy Morrison, age thirteen, in for assault. Kevin Price, fifteen, suspected arson though never proven. And Danny Walsh, fourteen, who'd been caught torturing neighbourhood cats.
Not the facility's worst residents, but not its best either. The kind of boys who survived by finding someone weaker to target.
"Potter," Tommy said, sliding into the chair across from Harry. "We need to talk."
Harry looked up from his book. Through the thin barriers of their minds, he could sense their intentions, not specific thoughts, but emotional currents. Anticipation. Excitement. The particular flavour of cruelty that came before planned violence.
"About what?" Harry asked quietly.
"About you thinking you're special," Kevin said, taking the chair to Harry's left. "Thinking you're better than the rest of us."
Danny remained standing, blocking Harry's exit route. His thoughts were the loudest images of what they planned to do, where they planned to do it, and how they'd explain any injuries to the staff.
"I don't think I'm better than anyone," Harry said.
"No?" Tommy leaned forward. "Then why do you sit alone? Why don't you talk to anyone? Why do you act like you know things the rest of us don't?"
"Maybe because I do know things." The words slipped out before Harry could stop them.
The three boys exchanged glances. Kevin's grin widened.
"Like what?" he asked.
Harry felt the cold in his chest stirring, responding to his rising anxiety. The temperature in the immediate area began to drop, though the boys hadn't noticed yet.
"Like Kevin's not here for arson," Harry said quietly. "He's here because he set fire to his little sister's bedroom while she was sleeping. Only she woke up and jumped out the window, broke both her legs."
Kevin’s face went white. “That’s not—” His voice cracked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
"And Tommy's not just here for assault. He's here because he nearly beat his stepfather to death with a cricket bat. Would have killed him if his mother hadn't called 999."
Tommy's chair scraped back. "How the fuck do you know that?"
"And Danny..." Harry's voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Danny doesn't just hurt cats. He keeps pieces of them. In a box under his bed at home. Ears. Tails. Things that don't rot as quickly."
Danny's face had gone grey. Around them, the common room continued its normal activity, but the air at their table had grown noticeably colder. Other residents were starting to glance over, sensing something wrong.
"You're lying," Tommy said, but his voice shook.
"Am I?" Harry met each of their eyes in turn. "Should I tell them what else I know? About the things you think about at night? The things you dream about doing?"
The boys were backing away now, but Harry was just getting started. Months of suppressed power, months of being afraid, months of pretending to be something he wasn't-it all came rushing to the surface.
He thought about the cold in his chest. Really thought about it. Welcomed it. Called to it.
Come on, he thought. Show them what I can do.
The response was immediate and devastating.
Every light in the common room began to flicker. The temperature plummeted so quickly that everyone's breath became visible in seconds. Ice began forming on the windows, spreading inward in intricate fractal patterns.
The table where Harry sat began to vibrate, then shake violently. The chairs around it scraped across the floor as if pushed by invisible hands. Books fell from shelves. The television went haywire.
And in the centre of it all, Harry sat perfectly still, his green eyes reflecting the flickering lights like mirrors.
"This is what I know," he said, his voice carrying clearly through the chaos. "I know that I'm not like you. I know that I can do things you can't understand. And I know that if you ever threaten me again, you'll find out exactly what those things are."
Tommy, Kevin, and Danny ran. Not walked, not backed away—ran, stumbling over chairs and each other in their desperation to get away from whatever Harry had become.
The cold snapped back into Harry's chest like a rubber band. The lights stopped flickering. The ice on the windows began to melt, leaving only water trails as evidence of what had happened.
But the silence in the common room stretched on. Twenty-three other residents stared at Harry with expressions ranging from fear to awe to outright terror. Even the staff member on duty, a tired-looking woman named Mrs. Chen, stood frozen by the door, her hand still reaching for the radio she'd been about to use.
Harry looked around the room, meeting each stare with calm indifference. He’d crossed a line, and there was no going back. They’d seen what he could do and now, they feared him.
He’d spent his life alone. But this time, it wasn’t because no one wanted him.
This time, it was because he’d made them afraid.
He picked up his book and continued reading as if nothing had happened. Around him, the common room slowly returned to normal activity, but the conversations were different now. Quieter. More fearful.
Marcus appeared at his elbow sometime later, sliding into the chair Tommy had vacated.
"Well," he said quietly, "that was stupid."
Harry looked up from his book. "Was it?"
"You just showed them what you can do. Now they'll never leave you alone. They'll be too scared to ignore you, but too curious to forget about you."
"Good," Harry said simply.
Marcus studied him for a long moment. "What are you, Potter?"
Harry met his eyes. "I'm exactly what they all think I am."
He turned back to his book, but not before catching the edge of Marcus's thoughts: Jesus Christ. What have they brought in here?
It was, Harry reflected, an excellent question.
Outside his window, January snow began to fall, covering Millfield's exercise yard in pristine white. But in the common room, the temperature remained several degrees colder than it should have been, and would stay that way for hours.
Harry had learned something important today. The cold thing in his chest, the wrongness that had killed Aunt Marge—it wasn't just something that happened to him.
It was something he could choose to use.
And that changed everything.