Chapter Text
Harry Potter lived on Number Four, Privet Drive, in a cupboard under the stairs.
It was, as Aunt Petunia often reminded him, the only place in which Harry could be roomed. Except sometimes the way she said it made Harry doubt that, even though he knew there to be no bedrooms downstairs and he certainly couldn't go upstairs with his wheelchair after all. However even if that was the case, Harry never understood why he had to be banished away to the cupboard with scarcely anything at all. Dudley wasn't ever told to remain in his room - no he came and went as he pleased through the house at all hours - while Harry sometimes spent days in the cupboard if he made the Dursley's mad enough. And Harry knew that it was different between them - him and Dudley - but it still sometimes made him frown when his aunt said, unprompted by any sort of behavior from Harry, "There's no where else to put a freak like you besides here."
There wasn't, Aunt Petunia, Harry always agreed as was expected of him to say. But privately he always thought that she could sound a little less happy about it. Well, as close to happy as she ever got, that was.
This morning was not very much different than any other mornings. Aunt Petunia woke him up by her shrill yelling at him coming through the cupboard door as she hammered on it. "Up! Get up now!" Harry started and then blinked quickly into awareness. "Up!" She knocked again furiously and then he heard the sound of the cupboard being rattled once more and then her sharp footsteps walking away.
Harry had been dreaming about something good, something that felt familiar like he'd had that dream before, and he tried to hold onto the dream's image - that feeling - for as long as he could. He thought maybe that the dream had involved a flying motorcycle but he couldn't quite remember the dream, which was disappointing; he hoped that he dreamed it again soon. It had been a nice dream, he was sure.
After a moment, Harry began to ready himself for the day as he always did. Harry turned slightly and reached for his glasses on the small ledge that overhung his cot and put them on. Next he pulled off his pajamas; sometimes he was able to stand up and pull them off and put on his outfit, but today wasn't one of those days, so he remained in his cot while doing so. He folded the pajama and placed them next to him on the bed, and went to grab the shirt folded on the seat of his wheelchair to pull it on instead. A spider was on top of the shirt because the cupboard always had spiders, so Harry brushed it away and it skittered to down the side of Harry's wheelchair and off of the clothes he had folded yesterday night for today.
"Are you up yet?" His aunt was back.
"Nearly." He finished pulling the shirt over his head and pushed his arms through the sleeves.
"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon and don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday."
Harry groaned. He had forgotten somehow that it was Dudley's birthday! Dudley's birthday meant things were bound to be worse off than normal and it meant that later on he had to go to Mrs. Figg's house, which he hated.
"What did you say?" Aunt Petunia demanded.
"Nothing! Nothing..."
He reached for the pair of Dudley's old jeans also folded upon the seat of his wheelchair. And he one by one took his legs, bent them up, and tucked his legs into the too large waist band of the jeans as well as Dudley's old underwear simultaneously, which were lying inside of the jeans; then he grabbed on the jeans with one hand - making sure to ensnare the waistband of the underwear as well - while lifting one thigh with both hands - clothing still clutched in the the fingers of one hand - and quickly slid the jeans upwards a bit. He repeated the maneuver with his other thigh, and then finally he was able to pull the too large waistband of both his underwear and jeans up and over his hips with minimal effort. He tied off the bit of rope he used as a belt to secure the jeans.
Then he hoisted himself into his wheelchair. Most days, he hit his head or, mainly, he hit his limbs while doing so because the cupboard was so small. But today he didn't hit anything at all and so he had a tiny smile as he sat. Because he always entered the cupboard, the wheelchair was facing the wrong way to leave. So he rolled the wheels the opposite way they normally went, moving himself backwards, and the cupboard of the door was pushed open by his back.
When he had managed to roll all the way out of the cupboard, he stopped rolling the wheels the opposite way and then rolled one wheel to turn himself - which was tricky because sometimes he had to roll the other wheel to adjust, otherwise he'd end up not moving at all but if he moved both wheels too much, sometimes he went forwards and backwards in a weird sort of stumble.
So he turned and made his way down the hall to the kitchen where he knew Aunt Petunia expected him to be.
The kitchen table was loaded with presents, and Harry eyed them curiously as he passed by. Some things were too large and had been left unwrapped like the new computer, the exercise bike, and the second television Dudley had all demanded to receive on his birthday. Harry didn't know why Dudley had even asked for an exercise bike at all since the only exercise Dudley ever enjoyed was punching people - but especially punching Harry. In fact, Harry's round glasses were only held together by lots and lots of Scotch tape because all of the many, many times Dudley had punched him in the face.
Harry was much skinnier than anyone his age that he'd met. And while he'd never actually stood beside any of them to compare, he had the feeling that in addition to being skinnier, he was much shorter than them too. He looked even skinnier, he knew, because he wore Dudley's cast off clothing, which was the only clothing he ever had to wear. The only thing about himself that Harry actually liked was the scar on his forehead that branched out in the shape of lightning.
He had had Aunt Petunia once where he had gotten it. It was one of the first things Harry remembered ever asking her. "In the car crash when your parents died," She had said. "And don't ask questions." Don't ask questions — that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursley's. There were many rules that Harry had learned to try and keep to a quiet life with the Dursley's, some told to him and some figured out through time and experience.
Cooking the bacon was Harry's least favorite chore. He had to strain to reach the stove and he had long learned to be very, very cautious while doing it because the frying pan was heavy and once he'd nearly spilled hot oil all over himself the first time he'd reached up and pulled it over the stove's ledge - it'd sunk straight down; he'd manage to catch the pan with both hands to only burn his hands that had caught the hot pan without any protection and part of his face where the oil had splashed - which was much better than his whole body, in Harry's opinion, but not at all ideal.
Now he was much better at it. He had a pretty good sense of how long it needed to cook and when he needed to flip them. And he had two dish towels at the ready - one draped across his lap and one layered over his hands - for when he needed to pull the pan down to check or flip the bacon. He used one towel to grip the handle of the pan with both hands and then he set it on his lap, where the other towel was, and quickly went to work before the heat began to become too uncomfortable even through the towel's protection.
Uncle Vernon walked in to the kitchen when Harry was turning over the bacon, pan hot across his towel-covered lap.
"Comb your hair!" He yelled angrily toward Harry. Uncle Vernon hated Harry's hair. At least weekly, he'd grow fed up and cut it off but Harry's hair always just grew back and, by the next week, Uncle Vernon would furiously do it all over again. Sometimes Harry wasn't sure what Uncle Vernon hated more: Harry himself or Harry's hair - the answer to that, Harry always determined, was Harry himself since it included his hair which his uncle so thoroughly despised.
By the time Dudley entered the kitchen with his mother, Harry had moved on from the bacon and was almost done frying the eggs. Fried eggs were much more difficult to plate than bacon, and Aunt Petunia actually grabbed the spatula and plated the eggs, lest Harry crack the yolks like he'd accidentally done a couple of times before. So Harry watched Dudley count his presents while Aunt Petunia snatched the plate of bacon from Harry and used it to serve the eggs on as well. She walked the plate over to the kitchen table and went to set it down but, due to all the presents, there wasn't much room at all for it.
"Thirty six!" Dudley said and looked to his parents. "That's two less than last year!"
Harry rolled his chair forward to reach where Aunt Petunia had set down the plate.
"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, it's here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy." Aunt Petunia tried to placate him.
"All right, thirty-seven!" Dudley's face turned red, and Harry definitely saw an impending Dudley tantrum coming on, so he quickly grabbed some bacon in case Dudley overturned the table in his fit. It had happened several times before and Harry wouldn't dismiss it as the very real possibility it was.
"And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today!" Aunt Petunia promised very quickly.
Dudley thought the offer over; Harry shoveled more bacon into his mouth just in case he thought it wasn't good enough and continued on with his tantrum. Finally Dudley said slowly, "So I'll have thirty ... thirty..."
"Thirty-nine, sweetums," Aunt Petunia said.
It seemed to placate Dudley, who sat down and grabbed for the nearest present. "Oh. All right then."
The whole display made Uncle Vernon chuckle. "Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father! Attaboy, Dudley!" And he ruffled his son's hair. Just like how the Dursley's thought that everything Harry did was wrong, they equally thought everything that Dudley did to be right. No matter how ungrateful Dudley acted, he was never yelled at for it. In fact, Harry was the only one who'd ever been called ungrateful at all - never Dudley. Harry thought that to be ridiculous but apparently the Dursley's did not agree.
The phone rang and Aunt Petunia stood to answer it. Dudley tore through his presents. In between serving himself an egg and eating it, Harry watched him. Dudley barely stopped to even look at what it was that he held before he'd greedily tear into the wrapping of the next one.
Aunt Petunia came back to the kitchen table with an angry expression which never meant anything good for Harry - but she also looked worried. "Bad news," She said which Harry had guessed. "Mrs. Figg's broken her leg. She can't take him." She jerked her chin towards Harry in inclination of whom she was referring to even though there could be no other.
Dudley paused in between ripping open presents, his mouth dropped in horror.
Harry, however, began to get excited. Every year on Dudley's birthday, Dudley and his best friend were treated to go somewhere cool while Harry had to stay with their mad cat neighbor Mrs. Figg, whose house was two streets away and smelled entirely of cabbages. Harry hated it there. It was always bad enough that he didn't get to go to the cool, exciting places that Dudley got to - but to have to go to her house on top of it made it even worse. Harry wanted to go to somewhere cool and exciting too but simply not having to go to Mrs. Figg's house was more than enough to make him happy; he supposed he should feel bad that she had broken her leg, but it wasn't easy not to get excited about not having to see her, her house, and her cats for a whole year!
Aunt Petunia glared at him like it was somehow Harry's fault that Mrs. Figg had broken her leg; he wouldn't have been surprised if his aunt actually thought so because, to her, everything tended to be Harry's fault. "What now?"
"We could phone Marge."
"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy." The Dursley's often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn't there — or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug.
As Uncle Vernon argued back and forth, Harry had an idea. "You could just leave me here." His suggestion was met with horror.
"And find the house in ruins?"
"I won't blow up the house." He might watch a bit of television for once but he wouldn't ruin the house. He didn't understand why they always thought he would - besides that he wouldn't do that, he lived there too! It wouldn't even make any sense for him to do it!
Aunt Petunia hesitantly suggested taking him with them to the zoo and Harry's heart beat harder in his chest. Even though Aunt Petunia wanted to leave him in the car, at least it wasn't with Mrs. Figg or Aunt Marge! Except Vernon didn't want to leave him in the car, since the car was new and, like the house, they for some reason thought that Harry would ruin it.
Dudley began to fake sob and Aunt Petunia was immediately fooled and went to comfort him. "I... don't... want... him... t-t-to come!" He pretended to cry dramatically. "He always sp- spoils everything!" Between his loud, pretend sobs, he shot a nasty grin at Harry while Aunt Petunia cooed at him in an attempt to comfort him.
Dudley could have gone on for ages like that, Harry knew, but then the doorbell rang and with his mother in walked Piers Polkiss, Dudley's best friend who held peoples' arms behind them whenever Dudley wanted to punch them. Immediately, Dudley stopped pretending to cry, which Aunt Petunia chalked up to her cooing comfort having succeeded.
And, with the arrival of Piers, that was the end of that. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia exchanged a look - but they had exhausted their options and Harry was going to the zoo.
Before they left, Uncle Vernon bent and shoved his purple face close to Harry's. "I'm warning you now, boy — any funny business, anything at all — and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas!"
"I'm not going to do anything! Honestly!" Harry was never quite certain what it was, exactly, that Uncle Vernon though he would do, only that Uncle Vernon was very vehemently against him doing whatever it is.
Except sometimes Harry thought maybe he knew because funny business tended to just happen around Harry, even though Harry wasn't the one doing it.
Like how no matter how many times Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon cut his hair, it just grew back - once overnight even! Strange things just happened around him! Once, in attempt to get away from Dudley and his gang, he had somehow ended up on the school's roof! His principal had shouted at him and had sent home an angry letter to the Dursley's saying that Harry had climbed on to the roof and that clearly they didn't have any need to further accommodate Harry's wheelchair, seeing as Harry obviously didn't need one if he could climb roofs; they'd had to send a letter back saying that, while Harry physically was something of a cripple, the wheelchair was mostly used because Harry was mentally deficient. It had satisfied the principal enough that the school stopped yelling at him about not actually needing the wheelchair even though he did need the wheelchair and not because he was mentally deficient.
In any case, sometimes Harry wondered what on Earth the Dursley's thought he'd do. But sometimes he thought of hair that grew back, landing on roof tops, and the time he had turned a teacher's hair blue when she was being particularly nasty to him - and so, sometimes, he got the feeling of what the Dursley's feared so much even though none of those strange things were Harry's fault. Strange things just sort of happened around him.
When Uncle Vernon reached for him, Harry tried to brace himself but there never really was any bracing for it. Harry hated having to travel by car and this was why. Uncle Vernon seized his arms with his large fists that squeezed too tightly, hoisted Harry upwards into the air, and then threw him into the awaiting car. Harry righted himself with a wince as Uncle Vernon slammed the door and then made to roughly shove the wheelchair in the boot of the car.
"The freak is ruining my birthday!" Dudley complained even though Harry hadn't even done anything. Harry ignored him and buckled his seat belt.
"I know, snookums," Petunia soothed in a ridiculous sounding voice like Dudley was a baby animal or something. Dudley quickly shut up since Piers was in the car as well. Harry turned toward the window and rolled his eyes.
Uncle Vernon complained the whole way to the zoo, as he usually did when he drove. He liked to complain about all sorts of things while he drove. His current complaint of the moment was about motorcycles.
His uncle's ranting reminded him. "I had a dream about a motorcycle." Harry said. "It was flying."
That had been the wrong thing to say. The Dursley's hated anything at all that wasn't natural - and especially unnatural things that were around Harry; they seemed to believe that Harry would get freakish ideas, although Harry wasn't quite sure what those were. Uncle Vernon's face turned purple and he turned around in his seat to yell at Harry. "Motorcycles don't fly!"
Beside him, Dudley and Piers snickered.
"I know they don't," Harry promised, having regretted saying anything about it. "It was only a dream."
And so Harry shut his mouth for the rest of the car ride. The only one who spoke was Uncle Vernon, who continued to rant and complain - but no longer, Harry noticed, about motorcyclists.
The zoo was crowded since it was a lovely Sunday, full of families and sunshine. Before the zoo entrance, a woman sold ice cream. The Dursley's bought Dudley and Piers two large chocolate ice creams and, due to the kind woman specifically asking Harry what he wanted, the Dursley's ended up being him a cheap lemon pop to keep up appearances. The Dursley's cared very much about keeping up appearances. And it would look terrible to be called out for buying ice cream for two of the children and not the third one who was crippled no less. Harry was more than familiar with the concept of how it looked to people because so were the Dursley's, who often just gave in and yelled at Harry later for it. But the yelling would come later and for now Harry had a nice frozen treat.
The lemon pop gave Harry the perfect excuse to go slowly through the zoo, since one of his hands was occupied and rolling the wheelchair with one hand was somewhat like rowing a boat with one oar. In any case, it let him keep some distance between himself and Dudley and Piers, who were quickly bored with the zoo. Harry didn't want them to become more interested in him and tried to keep that distance even after he'd finished the lemon pop.
It was a wonderful morning.
Harry had never seen such animals before and it was really cool to go from exhibit to exhibit and peer at these new and fascinating creatures. Sometimes he couldn't quite see past the people who stood in the front and sometimes the information plaque was place too high upon the glass that Harry couldn't read it; still, it was the most exciting place Harry had been. Ever.
Even when Harry only got to watch as the Dursley's and Piers ate at one of the zoo's restaurants, he thought that it was a wonderful morning. And when Dudley was halfway through his dessert and whined that their wasn't enough ice cream on it, the Uncle Vernon ordered him a second one and even let Harry finish the first one.
Everything was so much better than being at Mrs. Figg's house!
After lunch, they went to the reptile house, which was cool and dark and felt really refreshing after being in the sun for most of the day, almost like the lemon pop from earlier had felt. There were all sorts of lizards and reptiles in the reptile house - but Dudley and Piers only were interested in finding the most dangerous snakes and beholding their wild and furious glory. Which, when they found the largest snake in the place, its furious glory wasn't actually all that much, nor was it wild, since - from what Harry could see as he craned his neck to try and see around the bottom halves of the people in front of him - the snake was sleeping.
"Make it move!" Dudley commanded and Uncle Vernon tried to do so by knocking on the glass. The snake mustn't have woken up at all, let alone have moved, because Dudley whined, "Do it again!" So Uncle Vernon did. The snake still did not wake and still did not move, much to Dudley's annoyance. "This is boring!" He declared in a moan and then stalked away to look at something else.
Which allowed Harry to wheel himself closer to take a look at the snake himself.
Asleep, it looked like it could have died of boredom, and Harry would've totally understood why. He felt great sympathy to the snake. Aunt Petunia was the only who knocked on Harry's cupboard, but here? The snake must've had loads and loads of people who knocked on its glass. And at least Harry got to leave his cupboard, unlike this snake who was trapped there in his exhibit behind the glass with nothing to do. Harry wasn't sure what it was giant snakes did for entertainment but he supposed that the answer wasn't 'nothing.'
Harry didn't think he'd very much like to be on display and gawked at. He felt very much like the snake must when it was awake. Because people stared at Harry all the time. Either that, or they looked away from him, almost as if fearful that wheelchairs were contagious and if they made eye contact they'd be next. So Harry thought he could understand how the snake must feel. Harry would much rather nap too than have to deal with all the people who stared at him; the snake had the right idea of it, he thought in sad amusement.
But then, right before Harry's eyes, the snake woke up! It lifted its head, and then tilted it so that the snake was looking directly down at Harry, and then it winked - it winked right at Harry, who could scarcely believe it. Quickly he looked around but no one was close by or paying him any attention. So, somewhat awed, Harry winked back.
The snake moved its head toward the direction of Uncle Vernon and Dudley and then it looked up to the ceiling, almost like a human rolling its eyes, and then looked to Harry with an expression that said that people did that all the time.
"I know," Harry quietly agreed even though he wasn't sure if the snake could hear him through the glass; still he didn't want to raise his voice and risk having someone human hear him. "It must be really annoying. I always think so."
The snake - incredibly - nodded.
Since clearly it could hear him and understand him, Harry continued. "Where are you from, anyway?" The snake used its tail to point toward a sign. 'Boa Constrictor' and 'Brazil' it said. "Brazil, huh? Was it nice there?" Harry wondered. The snake pointed again to the sign and so Harry kept reading beyond those first three words. It said that the snake had been bred and hatched in the zoo. "Oh I see — so you've never been to Brazil?"
The snake shook its head, which Harry thought to be somewhat sad, but then a sudden, loud shout made both him and the snake startle.
The shout came from Piers. "Dudley! Mr. Dursley! Come and look at this snake! You won't believe what it's doing!"
Dudley hurried over.
"Out of the way, you!" Dudley ordered and didn't wait for Harry to move but instead punched Harry in the ribs, which sent him and his wheelchair reeling backwards into the exhibit opposite of the boa constrictor and thus moved him for Dudley.
And suddenly - Harry didn't know how - but suddenly the boa constrictor wasn't in its glass exhibit. Except, more accurately, there wasn't glass in the glass exhibit, and the boa constrictor took full advantage to slither out. All three of the boys gasped and people immediately noticed the giant snake that was quickly exiting its useless cage and they all started screaming. People started running desperately away, trying to exit the long reptile hall.
Over the screaming, Harry could have sworn he heard a hissing voice say, just as the snake passed him by, "Brazil here I come..... Thankssss..... amigo."
There was much fanfare regarding the whole incident. The director of the zoo personally apologized - several times - to Aunt Petunia and the rest of them while Dudley and Piers made gibberish noises in the background.
Uncle Vernon was so focused on attending to the petrified Dudley that Harry had to transfer himself from his wheelchair to the car seat, something that typically the Dursley's did not allow because while on some days he could do it, it brought about too many weird stares from passer-biers who didn't understand how someone in a wheelchair might be able to sometimes do that and so they had forbidden him from exhibiting such nasty behavior in public.
Later on in the car when the two boys had recovered enough to speak anything beyond noises, they began to lie outrageously. Dudley claimed that the snake had tried to eat his leg, and Piers claimed that the snake had nearly squeezed him to death. The only thing Harry had seen the snake do, besides escape that was, was snap quickly and playfully at their heels but certainly not anything close to what the two boys claimed at all.
The day had been much too good to last. Harry should have realized that earlier.
Because Piers, who always ignored Harry outside of Harry Hunting, paused in his retelling of his claims of near death to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"
Harry looked up to the car's mirror. In the mirror, Uncle Vernon's purple and furious face reflected back purple. Harry needn't have checked the mirror after all because, after a moment, the entirely of Uncle Vernon's neck turned the exact same color.
But the Dursley's, above all else, cared about keeping up appearance. And so with Piers in the car, Uncle Vernon held his tongue and turned more and more purple.
Harry was not surprised to have been once again banished to his cupboard without meals, for who knew how long this time. He'd have to wait until he was sure it was late enough that all of the Dursley's were asleep and then he'd sneak some food from the kitchen.
He never knew what time it was while in the cupboard, so he always preferred to wait longer than to risk encountering any Dursley. The long wait for nightfall gave him time to think.
He'd been living at the Dursley's for ten years - ten miserable years - and for as long as Harry could remember, ever since the car crash that had given him his scar and had killed his parents. Sometimes he tried to remember his parents but he only could recall a green light - which must have been the car crash, he supposed.
Sometimes he tried to imagine what his parents were like. What they had looked like, what their favorite things were. He didn't know any of it. Which was lonely and made him sad, but it also allowed for him to create many, many versions of what his parents could have been like and indulge in those fantasies unendingly with all sorts of different combinations of scenarios.
Sometimes he didn't bother with details, he just liked to imagine that his parents had loved him. And that, had they been alive, they still would love him.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursley's were his only family.
Harry liked to think sometimes that - and this was completely different to the people who stared at his wheelchair with sad eyes - that people actually recognized him and smiled at him, even if they too stared at his wheelchair with something akin to puzzlement and sadness. One man just within the last week had even shaken his hand! Those people were all very strange looking and always sent Aunt Petunia in a right tizzy if she was nearby to see it happen. Harry wasn't sure if those smiles were actually intended for him or not, but sometimes those odd strangers helped him believe that things wouldn't always be like this, here with the Dursley's. That, yes, while it was true that the Dursley's, all of Privet Drive and probably all of Little Whinging, and everyone at school hated him, there were people who smiled at him on the street. Who waved. Who shook his hand.
Harry knew he was alone. But sometimes... it was just nice to imagine that he wasn't alone after all.