Chapter Text
Harry didn’t mind dogs, really, when they weren’t Aunt Marge’s pets- Ripper, her newest dog and still fresh out of puppy age, was the worst so far. Unfortunately, with the woman visiting, he had a rule to never trust any dogs hanging about, just in case she had trained them.
This one, though, had been spotted by the woman herself just the day before, and that night had been full of loud complaining, for once not completely centred on how awful a boy Harry was. He featured, yes, but the conversation was overridden with Aunt Marge’s complaints about ‘Good breeds’ being ‘Ruined’.
It was no doubt, then, that the dog staring at Harry in the back garden, politely sat right in the middle of the yard, was not one of Aunt Marge's. Still, he had no idea whose it was, and it certainly looked like it had rabies, with long fur all matted in places, dirt caked on making some spots look more brown than black. Sharp grey eyes watched him from where he stood, half in and half out of the glass doors leading from the house to the back.
“Uhm,” He glanced behind himself, sort of wishing he hadn’t put off his chores until after the family had left for a fancy dinner at a restaurant. He looked back at the dog, gulping to see it had shifted forward a bit- It was big enough that its shoulders were as tall as Harry’s own, his head pretty much level, “Er- Good doggy? Just, uhm… shoo, now, shoo,”
The dog did not, in fact, shoo. Instead, it tilted its head at him, watching him with enough intelligence that Harry’s skin crawled. Suddenly, the dog moved, flopping down to its side with a soft fwump as it hit the manicured grass of the lawn. Harry blinked, shifting from foot to foot with indecision. Was it… nice, then? It didn’t look mean, like Ripper did, and it didn’t look dim like the bulldog. But this one was much larger than the other dog, and its teeth were surely bigger to match the large snout…
Still, Harry couldn’t just not do his outdoor chores for the day, and he had been lucky enough to push them off until the worst of the summer heat had subsided… He had to go out. Hesitant despite his decision, Harry shuffled further from the door, his hands clenched in small white-knuckled fists around the gathered fabric of shirt’s hem. It was something to twist in his anxiety, slowly inching towards the dog still laying frozen on the ground, watching him.
He froze, too, his breath hiccuping as the dog moved, though it was slow enough that he didn’t immediately bolt back to safety. The dog moved to be laying on its stomach, shuffling forward only a couple inches before it dropped its head onto its paws in front of it, letting out a loud whine. Harry blinked, his breath returning to him in a rush.
Maybe the dog really was just very nice. Inching forward just enough that his arm might reach, Harry crouched down slowly and even slower, moved a trembling hand forward. The dog didn’t move, until his hand landed incredibly gently between its ears, and only then did its tail begin to thump against the dirt. Harry’s shoulders relaxed as nothing more happened for a moment.
Hoping to keep the dog placated, he began petting in earnest, a small smile slowly forming as the tail only continued beating powerfully against the grass. Somehow, the puppy's eyes looked happy to be pet, and he felt an odd kinship to the mangy dog. After all, hadn’t Harry’s eyes lit up the same way the time Ms. Penny, his old teacher, had given a hug when he turned seven? That had been years ago, but with his tenth birthday coming up, it was a memory that wouldn’t leave his head.
Maybe the dog was more than nice, maybe it just wanted someone to be nice to it, like Harry wanted someone to be nice to him. Maybe the dog needed a friend as bad as Harry did.
But, unfortunately, wanting friends was no excuse for slacking off on his chores, so Harry whispered a sad apology to the puppy, carefully stood so as not to startle it, and trotted off to the shed to gather his tools. Strangely, the dog didn’t leave even now that Harry wasn’t petting it, and though it sat up again, it didn’t follow as Harry set up his things by the far right flower beds. It moved a bit closer as he worked, though, something Harry only noticed when he almost bumped into the dog, now sitting to his left and watching his work as if curious.
“Oh,” Harry blinked, tensing up to see if the dog would bite him for getting too close. Was he imagining the confusion in the dog's eye? Imagined or not, the gleam stuck around as it did nothing but cock its head, Harry relaxing again and gave a hesitant little smile, “I’m uhm… I’m weeding, see? And then I’ll go back to the beginning and prune and then I’ll do another round to pick up all the scraps to throw in the bin for the local compost and then it’s watering. I just uh… I need to get past you…”
As though it had understood, the dog stood and slowly moved to be by his right side, where they wouldn't bump into each other as Harry slowly made his way to the left. Harry blinked. Maybe he was imagining the confusion, but the dog seemed smart enough that maybe, he just might actually have been confused.
Either way, he had work to do and only a few hours to do it, so he threw himself back into the cuttings. It was methodical, tiring work, but he found it was much better when he would catch flashes of black fur in the corner of his eye, and by the time he had started on the pruning, he had begun talking to the dog as if it could understand him. He explained, as if teaching him, why he was cutting each large leaf at the bottom ‘Aunt Petunia wants these ones to grow more up than out,’ and why he was snipping some of the ones at the top ‘See how there’s yellow on the leaves? That means they’re dying, it needs more water,’ and why he wasn’t cutting others, ‘These aren’t doing too well, but we can just add some minerals to the soil and they should be fine!’
It was nice, and the one sided conversation kept on even after the pruning, through the weeding, and even the watering. Having put the things away, Harry lingered in the yard, an unusual thing for him. Instead of rushing into the air-conditioned house to take a quick, blessed shower while the Dursleys were out, he paused. The whole time he had worked, the dog had kept step with him, trotting at his side or sitting nearby and looking for all the world as if it was listening, and he wanted to repay the kindness, as odd as it might be to feel indebted to a dog.
“Here,” Harry moved over to the hose, turning it on and putting the stream out, “Go on, you can wash all that dirt off. Come on,”
The dog moved under the water with little more prompting, bringing back legs up to scrape at itself, though it wasn’t terribly effective. Slowly, Harry reached forward, and began rubbing out the mess with the tip of the hose close to his target, washing the dog inch by inch as best he could without soap. By the time they sat side by side on the steps of the back porch, the dog was dripping wet, but the water running off him was impressively clear for what it had started out as.
“You can’t stay, you know,” He told it seriously, then glanced at the house, “But… But you can visit, when the Dursleys aren’t watching. Sometimes, they let me stay outside all day, and go to the park or something, and you could find me then?”
The dog gave a small sound, the first he had made, and though he jumped at the slight;
“Boof”, Harry grinned widely, deciding to pretend it had been an agreement. It was like making plans with a friend, the way Dudley did often with the kids from school.
“Alright,” Harry nodded, then paused, “But you’ll need a name if you stick around. And I don’t see a collar…”
The dog shuffled forward to nudge Harry’s hand with his nose. He began petting it agreeably as he thought, gently untangling whatever knots his fingers came across on its repetitive track from its head to the thicker fur at its neck.
“Hmmmm,” He ducked his head, checking to see it was a boy, and then scrunched his face up in thought as he looked to the sky, “Maybe… Maybe Max? I’ve got a classmate, he’s got a pet lizard named Max. You’re not a lizard, though…”
The dog didn’t bark or anything, apparently willing to let him take full control of the naming job so long as he continued petting him. Dirty as his trousers were from his job with the flowers, Harry didn’t stop the dog from resting his head across his knees, laying down to do so.
“How about… Well, your fur is black, I think, so maybe something like that? Uhm… Like… There are black berries, and… Black licorice… Coal… Pepper… Black birds… Uhm… The sky is black, at nighttime,"
The dog raised his head suddenly, and Harry’s eyes snapped down from the sky -The sun was slowly lowering, which meant the Dursleys were probably about ready to come home- to blink at him.
“The- The sky? Something sky related, d’you think?” The dog gave another soft bark, and Harry grinned, “Okay, uhm. Sky names. There’s the sun and moon, and clouds and stars-”
Another soft bark, his tail waging, now. Harry felt like he was playing a game of very odd charades, where the only sign he was on the right path was the soft ‘Bwoof’ sounds the dog would make. Really, it was probably a coincidence, but he couldn’t help the way he talked to it like another person. He had always wanted to be talked to like he was actually a person, and not just some machine or something made to dust and clean and cook and things.
“Stars?” He asked excitedly, though the tone had drained from his voice just a tad as he went on, frowning, “Uhm… I don’t know many, really…”
Before either of them could do anything more, the dog’s head turned, ears twitching, and a moment later Harry heard it too. He had a much more intense reaction, jumping up so fast he nearly ran into the dog, his heart in his throat.
“I have to go, puppy,” He told in a hurried whisper, hearing doors shutting. He gave the dog a few more quick scritches and then pushed it as gently as he could off the porch, more like he was guiding the confused steps, “You can’t be seen! Go! Run away, okay? I- I’ll try to go to the library or something tomorrow, but you have to go away now, okay?”
Without waiting to see if the dog was smart enough to listen, he decided he had no choice but to hope for the best, darting inside and shutting the glass door behind him, yanking the curtains over the door. He was just in time for Aunt Petunia to come into the house, the front door a straight shot of sight from there to the back door.
“Boy!” The woman scowled fiercely, “Have you only just finished up? Did you finish up?”
“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” He replied, lowering his head to his feet, his voice completely lacking the open excitement he had shown with the puppy outside. The woman huffed, and then came a long tirade in which all the adults ranted and raved about how slow he was with his work, how stupid he must be to be bad at even the weeding, and how he smelt even worse than usual. No one said anything about how the pruning and weeding had been perfect, even after his aunt had checked his work and came in complaining only of the mess he had left on the back porch.
He tried to tell them he hadn’t dawdled in the work, but all it had gotten him was a shove from Uncle Vernon, namely shoving him into his cupboard. He landed awkwardly, his wrist sending spikes of pain that were almost drowned out by the pain in his ankle as he uncle slammed the door around his shin. He yanked it into the cupboard, the second slam hitting the frame true as he locked the door behind him.
All in all, Harry thought as he gingerly moved his wrist around and then checked his ankle to be sure it wasn’t bleeding- All in all it wasn’t all bad a day. He had made a friend, after all, and that made his day the best one of the summer, though it had only just begun.