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At six, Harry curls in his cupboard and wishes he could tear out whatever makes him different, makes him unnatural, makes him a freak. He wants to shatter himself and tape himself back together into a shape the Dursleys could love.
At seven, Harry is angry. He’s just gotten out from a week in the cupboard and already Uncle Vernon is yelling at him and Harry wants him to stop. Harry is angry and tired and he just wants quiet. He wants it so badly, he can feel it in his bones. Something dark and twisting. Something that whispers of safety and destruction in the same breath.
At eight, Harry decides he doesn’t care what the Dursleys think of him. They won’t love him, no matter what he does. He stops trying to be what they want and starts just trying to live with even a hint of happiness.
At eleven, Harry still has something heavy and dark in his bones, because there are some things you can’t recover. But he also has Hogwarts and Ron and Hermione. He has more happiness than he ever thought he would and the dark is easy to ignore.
At fifteen, the dark in his bones is joined by a slithering, dark thing in his head that croons: you will lose everything. Some mornings he wakes up thinking he’s back in his cupboard, back to the days of desperately reaching for love, because Snape tore open his mind and a terrified, angry boy fell out.
At fifteen, Sirius calls him James and then dies and Harry is seven again and angry and tired and he just wants quiet. He reaches for the dark thing in his bones because it whispers of safety and destruction and Harry wants to be safe and wants Bellatrix destroyed and--
He is a boy breaking himself to fit and a boy who thought he found safety only to find it a lie. He is a boy who has waded through destruction his entire life and has been forged into a double-edged weapon. He is smoke and wrath and the sins of those meant to love him.
He is a boy built from desperation. He is a boy built to fall.
Harry comes back to himself in the Ministry Atrium. There is blood pooling across the floor and on the walls and soaking his robes. The golden statues are twisted and broken. His tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth. He has bitten through his bottom lip because he’s half-fifteen and keep your head down, Potter and half-six and maybe if I’m quiet, maybe if I do all my chores perfect, maybe, maybe, maybe.
Voldemort and Dumbledore are there, both behind shimmering shields.
(Bellatrix wasn’t fast enough. I killed Sirius Black was the last words she ever said because after that she was screaming and then gurgling and then silent.)
“Harry--“ Dumbledore starts but doesn’t finish. He is seeing his little sister instead of the boy he loves like grandson.
(Oh, Albus. It always ends like this, doesn’t it? There is always war, whether it be in your childhood home or the Ministry Atrium, and someone young and bright always gets caught up in it. Always gets broken by it. By you, mostly. Albus, haven’t you learned? You can’t raise boys to be destroyed and be surprised when they are.)
Voldemort is laughing, high and cold and cruel. This is the boy meant to destroy him? This boy will only destroy himself.
(Somewhere, in a locket, in a cup, in a diadem, in a ring, in a snake, in a scar, Tom is slick, cold rage and something too close to grief for comfort. This is why he hates muggles. They take a gift like magic and make it a curse. They twist and break children. Or maybe, Tom is remembering the cold spray of the sea and water-dark rocks. Maybe, he is sneering I survived. I built myself strong enough they couldn't hurt me. You crumbled. You are weak. Maybe he is all of these and nothing at once. When you split yourself so many times, what is left? What are you? Tom? Do you know?)
Harry is shivering on the blood-slick, polished floor. Distantly, he can hear approaching footsteps and the rising, worried voices of his friends. Harry closes his eyes, swallows the blood filling his mouth, and wishes he had died in the dark of his cupboard.