Disclaimer: Harry Potter™ is the legal property of Joanne K. Rowling and movie rights belong to WB.
Title: Teeth
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry draws a picture. A pre-Hogwarts, slight AU one-shot. Slight horror.
Edited and appended 11/01/07.

-TEETH-

IT WAS A SUNNY DAY and the light filtered into the classroom in a dazzled of spectra through the ornate glass baubles, which had been hung there by Ms. Wentworth to as she said, “brighten up the place”. Truth be told, the combined effect of the multitude of trinkets made it rather unpleasant to even try to look out of the windows on sunny day – unless you worse extra protective gear and then it was only a bit to the shiny side.

Ms. Wentworth did try her very best to be a good and supportive teacher in whom the children could trust in. However, sometimes she tried a bit too hard and forgot things like “don't-keep-easily-breakable-items-near-small-children” and especially not children like Dudley Dursley. It had not taken fifteen minutes before the first bauble had been broken into a thousand dazzlingly shiny pieces on the floor, no longer endangering wandering eyes but in its place, fingers and toes.

She had done her best, Ms. Wentworth assured herself, she had been calm in the face of tears and assertive with gentle care and professional concern -- or was it assertive with gentle concern and professional care? Never mind, it meant the same thing regardless. She had not yelled or slapped the—the boy, not even when he had pulled her hair and kicked her in the shins when she had walked him to the Headmaster's office. She had been perfectly composed and followed the rules. What more could they honestly ask of her?

Sighing, Ms. Wentworth walked back to the classroom where she had left the other children with instructions to draw a picture of something they had recently seen. Thankfully, everything in the room seemed intact and the children were obediently working on their “masterpieces”.

In the corner of the room, next to the window, she noticed Mr. Potter -- who really did stick out like a sore thumb in the room with his messy black hair and quiet manners. He was such a sweet child, soft-spoken and quite shy. Christ, if that horri- that child had been more like dear sweet little Harry Potter she would not have to go through this for the third time this week. This was what had lead to the visit to the Headmaster’s together with the boy’s parents to “discuss” their son’s repeatedly disrupting behaviour both in class and outside of it.

Honestly, you could hardly believe that those two boys were related, and Ms. Wentworth saw herself as a kind and unbiased person who was willing to believe in most things.

Now, the nicer one of the pair sat at his desk and with measured strokes added another layer of brown crayon on the paper, nearly bent double over his drawing with his forehead creased in concentration. Ms. Wentworth watched him and the other children draw for some moments, but she could not fend off her curiosity for too long and went to see what made the waif-like child so very careful and serious in his drawing.

“Hello, Harry. May I see your drawing?” she asked him and squatted at his desk so that they were about equal in height. Ms. Wentworth had long-since learned that most children disliked being loomed at and had figured that it was easier this way anyhow. The messy haired boy looked up, ever so slightly, at her from the drawing and looked down again, shyly, as she caught his gaze.

“It’s not done yet, Miss,” he mumbled, embarrassment colouring his pale cheeks red. The child was always so coy when you paid attention to him -- it was cute, she thought, especially since most children in her class were the right opposite.

“I don’t mind. May I?” Ms. Wentworth asked once more and this time, Harry pushed the paper in her direction but opted to “look” out of the window as to avoid her gaze.

Ms. Wentworth smiled, turning her attention to the picture in her hand and nearly dropped once she saw what it was. The drawing portrayed a forest, deep and old, full of gnarly trees with hanging branches and beard-like white moss – and amid it all there was a man.

He was unnaturally tall and lanky -- but in a way that quite clearly said that it was deliberately drawn that way. He was dressed completely in black and the only specks of colour on him were his gleaming, reddish brown eyes. Moreover, Ms. Wentworth could have sworn that he seemed to move in the picture. It was quite horrible really. Not even Harry’s childlike drawing style could seem to make this man seem any less frightening – rather, and disturbingly enough, it appeared to do the opposite.

“H-how lovely,” she said to herself and tried not to feel as uncomfortable as she was, after all it wouldn’t do to upset the poor child. Harry turned to face here and smiled his thanks, he was such a sweet child really – could he really have drawn this morbid thing?

“Who is this?” she asked after a few moments of silence and pointed cautiously at the lanky man. Harry smiled for a second time, though this time his usually timid and kind smile had and edge of melancholy to it.

“I don’t know his name,” he answered simply and pushed up his glasses, which had slid down, to the bridge of his nose.

“Oh. Then where is this?” Ms. Wentworth asked patiently and gestured at the forest. Taking an interest in the child’s activities was a great part of teaching, she had learned.

“I don’t know. It’s a forest I saw in my dreams; on the other side of it are the badlands,” said Harry seriously and ran a finger along a murkily coloured tree trunk. Ms. Wentworth followed it with her gaze; there was something wrong with the picture, something other than the unknown man. She could not really see it but she knew, as silly as it sounded, that it was there.

A moment later, she turned her gaze towards the gnarled roots and then she saw it, or rather them. The creeping things.

The ground in the drawing was covered in them and as she looked closer, she could see that they were everywhere. What she had thought of as foliage turned out to be piles of writhing snakes, the funny looking bumps in the tree trunks were spiders and what she had dismissed as a fallen and rotten tree trunk was in fact heaps and heaps of dead and mutilated rodents. Then, there was the multitude of bug like creatures that covered everything else, every single nook and crook of the gnarly woods with the sole exception of the man.

“M-My…,”she stammered and covered her mouth with her hand in shock.

“He’s lost and tired, and so very, very afraid. He’s given up on searching for something. Now he just waits. I think he’s lonely,” said Harry quietly, mostly to himself really, and picked up a crayon, adding specks of red to what previously in her eyes had been a tree trunk. Once he had done this, he looked up at her with honest eyes and the same melancholic smile as before.

“There are teeth everywhere -- in my dreams. Chewing and gnawing at the trees, the little things and they try to eat him. He doesn’t sleep anymore,” he said in a morose voice and rested his left hand right next to the drawing of the man. Ms. Wentworth glanced at the lanky man in the picture, he was not standing where he had merely moments ago and now his stick figure like hand was lifted in what looked like a mocking salute. Was she imagining things?

Ms. Wentworth didn’t know what to say or what to think, they didn’t tell her at school how to handle things like this – and this was sweet, manageable little Harry Potter of all people. She was an adult and yet this little boy and his drawing where scaring her. She did not know at all what to do and she couldn’t stop shaking. (When had she started too in the first place?)

Those t-things in the picture they really did have teeth, sharp teeth, many and many again, in tight rows, all hungry and ready to chew and gnaw off anything in their way. They were going to eat her. However, it was just a drawing, yes, it was just a drawing and drawings are not real – they c-can’t hurt you. Of course not, that was just a stupid notion of hers… nothing to be afraid of.

Nevertheless, there were teeth. She could feel them on her legs, on her arms, on her face and branches were ripping her clothes off her skin and there was someone hunting her — a tall, dark and lanky man with eyes that were not, as she thought before, the reddish brown of dried blood but now closer to the crimson of fresh blood.

He would kill her if the things with the teeth didn’t eat her first.

It would be much redder in the picture once he was done and once she was dead -- and the little things with the teeth would eat her. Chew her bones bare and then bury them under the trees, under the writhing snakes and the lanky man would walk and dance all over her and laugh. Oh, how he would laugh and he would remember her blood in his mouth and the little things with the teeth would slowly eat him too; they would eat them all. Someone was laughing in the distance.

“Miss Wentworth?” a soft child’s voice said suddenly. Ms. Wentworth blinked and saw light again; the familiarity of the classroom came back into view. She was still shivering. She could not speak she was still too terrified to even imagine the words.

“Miss? Shouldn’t you look at the other children’s drawings too? Mine doesn’t matter that much,” Harry Potter said solemnly after some moments and she looked up at him (when had she ended up on the floor?) with the sweetest of relief.

With wordless thanks on her lips, she hurried off to the other side of the classroom and started frantically chatting with Annie Coppery about her picture of a very cute pony. It even had a pink ribbon tied to its mane and its fur was very glossy and white. A very cute pony, indeed. Perfectly harmless.

Moments later, she felt like nothing at all had happened. What had happened? What on Earth was she thinking about, of course nothing had happened. The only thing she had to worry about was Dudley Dursley and the occasional problems with Mickey Melham’s nervous habit of wetting himself.

Harry sat at his desk, took the white crayon and drew white lines in the ground, under the trees, under the snakes and told himself that things like these weren’t up to him. He thought that Ms. Wentworth, who tried so hard, was a very kind person. Harry liked her.

But it wasn’t up to him, not really.

“What you did was very mean; you do know that, don’t you?” he told the drawing and carefully added another line.

The lanky man in the picture now bore a wide, toothy smile.

The End