Chapter Text
Harry opened his eyes to soft cooing and worried whispers. There was a woman now holding him, her face soft and tired and though she kept her voice calm and light, Harry could tell she was anxious about something. The man she was talking to was stout and serious but, Harry thought he still looked kind. He was trying to comfort the woman while seemingly battling the same thoughts. That’s how he met the Dursleys.
Before Dudley was born, his Aunt Petunia was a psychiatrist, but she quit to be a stay-at-home mother. He knew that his aunt had two very different babies to take care of. Dudley was your normal, fussy, clingy baby that would cry if she left the room without him. He would have plenty of snacks during the day and overall seemed very curious about his environment, wanting to crawl around the nursery room floor. Harry was different. An all-around perfectly healthy baby according to the doctors but, it took the first few months of his life for Aunt Petunia to get him to eat routinely. He sat quietly, seemingly not noticing if someone was in the same room as him or not. Harry did seem curious but, he preferred to study things from where he was. The small child would occasionally study his aunt, silently watching everything she did from the baby chair he was place in. He liked her kindness and that she seemed to understand his need for quiet.
Uncle Vernon was an honest, hard-working man who didn’t seem to understand the ‘typical’ way to talk to babies. Every day at 5:30 once he came home from work, he’d sit in the living room, where the two boys sat around the floor, and tell them about his workday at Grunnings. “... and Albert, the new hire, still can’t file any of his reports properly. I tried showing him the typical way we do it but, he just won’t have it. Something about how he ‘knows what to do’ since his father owns ‘Burnings’ but, it makes you wonder why he didn’t just go work there...”
It’s all lost on Dudley, who much rather smash together his toy cars but, Harry listened to the words with fascination. He still didn’t fully understand what his uncle was saying but, Uncle Vernon felt like Harry still connected to him during their ‘talks’.
“It seems little Harry is listening to you again, deary. He might just take after you and go into the drill business!” Aunt Petunia came to deliver her husband’s tea then, picked up Harry up off the floor. “He just so curious about everything but, I worry for him, Vernikins. Children are very intuitive; he must be missing his parents.” Harry didn’t know what they were talking about but, he recognized the concern on their faces. It was a conversation that they had a lot since welcoming him in.
At night she would tell him stories of a familiar woman but, his aunt’s face was always mixed with guilt and sorrow. He watched her struggle to find good memories to tell him about the two of them. But Harry didn’t mind. He loved hearing of the mystery woman that was a wild card when she was younger and acted as a wildfire everywhere she went. Aunt Petunia loved to tell the story of how the two of them would sneak away from their mother at the market and swindle the kind, old shopkeeper into giving them ice cream. She laughed at the memory of how mad their mother got once she found them again, their faces and clothes sticky with syrup.
~
In the autumn that Harry turned 10, he and Dudley began year 6. His life was startlingly different to how it was his first time around, not that he really knew that. The brown-skinned boy was able to talk and laugh with his peers, to look them in the eyes and smile. He was the tallest boy in his class, and he secretly took a lot of pride in that, though he couldn’t quite figure out why.
Dudley was his closest friend. Aunt Petunia would joke about how odd they looked together and called the pair a lovable jock and a quiet nerd. Harry would sit on the side of the field watching him play in his rugby union after school. Well, watching was a strong word, he most likely was lost in a book or quietly talking to the local garden snakes. He didn’t know how he could do that but, he had a strong feeling that he shouldn’t tell anyone. But he would still tell his aunt the neighbourhood gossip under the guise of hearing it at the park or from classmates.
Harry found that he was actually good at school, so good that he was usually the top of his class. The words written on the board made sense and his ‘Harry sense’, as he took to calling it after reading some Spider-man comics, typically lead him to the right answer if he couldn’t remember it from his late-night readings.
But what the curly haired boy found himself doing the most was, well, nothing. He would sit in complete silence, watching. Aunt Petunia would find him staring off at dinner and wonder if this was just the boy’s nature or something more. She ached to ask what he was thinking of for hours at a time. The worried woman would watch her nephew review the world, always looking like he was keeping score of every move anyone made. And he knew that she saw, in the moments he snapped out of his daze-like state he’d give her a small smile and disappear off to his room. It took every bit off restraint she had not to sit him down in a chair and ask him to spill all the complex thoughts that plagued his mind, to ask if she could hold a piece of the burden. She thought the pre-teen knew her internal struggle too. On days that she found herself at her wits end, Harry would come into the study with two cups of tea, a tray of cookies, and tell her about his day. Petunia knew he didn’t say the things stuck in his brain but, the routine left both of them feeling lighter, so she never pressed.
The curly-haired boy planned, studied, and watched. Harry felt that something was coming in the next year, that everything would change. He wanted to say that he was ready. And he was, but he didn’t want to leave the peaceful life he found himself leading. He didn’t know what it was that would find him but, it honestly left him scared. So far, he had led a pretty sheltered life, never having to struggle or suffer with much. The worst he had ever been through was losing his parents and that now only left a hollow ache in his heart. But the feeling of losing himself to the unknown, the lingering thought in the back of his mind warning him of not being in control of his life, it threatened to swallow him whole.
So, in the quiet of the night, Harry made a vow to himself to simply make himself happy. Had lived his life going off his own whims up till now and he had no plans of stopping. He refused to lose himself to the growing fear of... whatever was coming. Harry closed his eyes and swore to anything that was listening, that he would live for himself. And as he opened his eyes, he saw a flash of light from his stomach. Felt the warmth that emanated from it and smiled.
~
Harry spent the time he had during summer break to the fullest. He teamed up with Dudley to force their guardians to take them to the city, the beach, and anywhere else the two boys could think of. He spent days at a time sprawled out on the sofa, reading comics and fiction series. He laid in the garden learning all about the best sleeping spots and houses to avoid from the local snakes he had befriended. Aunt Petunia nearly fainted seeing twenty snakes lying next to him.
But, most importantly, whenever Harry was sure he was totally alone, he would practice magic. Something in him told him it would be best if he learned to control it sooner than later. There was no incantation or spell book he could go off of but, Harry was pretty sure he could do ‘basic’ magic. He practiced floating his pens off the desk, turning off the lights from where he was lying in bed, and changing the colours on the spines of his least favourite books. In one such experimenting session, he learned very quickly that he was great at summoning fire, a little too good. He now hopes his aunt never lifts the carpet placed strategically by the end of his bed.
The day before his eleventh birthday should have been a happy day like every other. Harry found himself finding slight solace in the fact he wasn’t living in a lighthouse but, he couldn’t quite place why he felt relief in that. His aunt was placing the floor, mumbling to herself about his mum and things happening again. Uncle Vernon took a rare day off for some reason, and was now sat in his usual spot on the sofa staring at the door like it would bring news of war. The only one to act normal was Dudley, who was snacking on some sweets while watching the tele.
His guardians tried to distract him for the day, offering to take them out, catch a film, or play board games. He really was grateful for them. But the gnawing feeling only grew as the clock ticked down. There was fear and sadness festering in him, threatening to tear him apart before the unknown horrors can get to him. But there was also excitement, wonder, and happiness. Little Harry loved challenging himself, whether it was to beat Dudley's time on the track, finishing a book before the day’s end, or acing a test without studying. He wasn’t known to dive headfirst into trouble, and he didn’t think this would be any different but, there was still that tug. The want to see what was out there, to see what waited so desperately for him.
About three or four years ago, the Dursley family and Harry developed a tradition of staying up till midnight to welcome in a person's birthday. This happened because Uncle Vernon was working late one night and Dudley wanted so badly to be the first person to wish his father a happy birthday. The side effect of that was, Dursley hates being bored and can’t keep quiet for the life of him, so Harry and Aunt Petunia stayed up with him until his dad came home. Well now Aunt Petunia was cursing her past self for allowing this tradition to occur.
They all sat in the the living room, watching the hands on the clock tick down. They chatted about all fun things they did this summer, things Dudley saw on the commercials that he wanted to get, the scented soap one of Aunt Petunia’s friends gifted her last week. They talked and talked about everything and nothing, at first to distract themselves from the time but, then because they loved being together as a family. The boys talked themselves out, slowly falling asleep right on the coach. Aunt Petunia covered them in blankets and kissed their foreheads. Uncle Vernon patted their heads and turned off the lights.
And without anyone noticing, Harry turned 11. His peaceful, quiet muggle life came to an end. Several years of horror, heartbreak, and loss would be waiting for him. He would experience pain and sorrow and see some of the worst things the world has to offer.
But for right now, he was asleep on the coach next to his cousin. At that moment, he was at peace. At that moment, a letter slipped under the door.