Chapter Text
23rd June 1993
The brand-new broom at Quality Quidditch Supplies looked so, so enticing.
Today was the third day that Harry James Potter, a temporary resident of Leaky Cauldron’s twelfth room, having been kicked out from Privet Drive Number Four those three – and a half – days ago, spent much time ogling the coveted broom. He was never alone in his useless longing, and the shopkeeper of the Quidditch store couldn’t be smugger and happier because of it.
Days spent idly was an alien concept for the almost thirteen-year-old boy, though. Even sleeping in was a novel luxury that he had been trying these three days. All the demands made by all the grown-ups in his life thus far – and, ironically, from fellow teens, too, at Hogwarts – had never allowed him much time for himself to do anything, let alone enjoy himself.
He’d used to find shelter in books in any library that he could’ve found, particularly those of fiction and – owing to the interesting diagrams and illustrations – science, but Hermione – one of his best friends – had killed his love of them since his first year at Hogwarts.
He’d found sheer joy and release in simple flying, in that first day of that disastrous flying lesson. He had even enjoyed the thought of belonging to a team, although Quidditch had seemed complicated and a little bit restrictive at first. And then Oliver Wood, the captain of Gryffindor’s Quidditch team, had revealed his inner taskmaster…
He’d found pride of mastering skills and knowledge in his first days of primary school. However, the Dursleys, angry with his achievements, had swiftly and thoroughly killed the desire for such, by the end of that first semester. And with his Hogwarts best friends standing at opposite points of the extremes, he doubted he could revive it.
He felt pretty much like a husk of a person being discarded, being idle like this, and he hated it.
The broom on the display window looked so, so, so nice, though. Maybe he could afford filling in some of the emptiness with such glorious torture that was the Firebolt…