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Good/Bad

Summary:

Based on a Prompt from Reign | RudeHellion on Discord. Prompt: Harry Potter knows his parents were bad people. He feels it on a level too deep to argue with, the product of a dysfunctional childhood with the Dursley’s. When people praise them or compare him to them, he feels uncomfortable and angry. After he learns about Voldemort, he can’t help but wonder— could the man who killed two bad people really be all that bad himself?

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Harry had always known his parents were not Good People. Good People wouldn’t have had a baby and died in a car crash with that baby in the car. Good People would not have left him with the Dursley’s who had no need for another child. The Dursleys were Good People. The Dursleys had a stable home and a nice kid. Harry didn’t belong there, Harry was a Bad Person descended from Bad People, the Dursleys always told him so. They always told him about how all the people like him were bad and freaks. Harry was probably a Bad Person too, because he could do odd things. Things that shouldn’t be possible, like turning a teacher’s wig blue, and appearing on the roof of the school when Dudley and his friends were chasing him down. Dudley was right to be chasing him and hitting him, just like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were.

They weren’t as mean to him, they were just giving him what he deserved as a Bad Person living with Good People. The Dursleys were content to just let the fact that he was a Bad Person lie but that changed when they started getting letters and seeing people in funny clothes loitering about the house. The Dursleys told Dudley and inadvertently Harry, as he was sitting in his cupboard nearby, that they were Bad People and not to talk to them or even acknowledge them. Eventually, after a lot of moving about courtesy of Uncle Vernon, that stopped working. They were staying out in a stone cottage on the sea and everyone was trying to sleep, except Harry who was laying on the floor drawing a cake into the dust. Dudley’s watch beeped, signaling that it was midnight, so he blew out the candles on his little cake. Harry sighed and wiped the rest of his drawing away, laying his head down on his arms so he could get some sleep. Harry had just started to fall asleep when he was woken up by a loud bang on the door. Harry’s head shot up, as well as Dudley’s, they waited in silence looking at the door, when another bang sounded. Harry jumped up and hid in a small space between the door and the wall, just barely getting into his spot before the door crashed to the ground.

A tall man ducked through the door and looked around spotting Dudley on the couch. “Ah, Harry! You’ve gotten a fair bit bigger haven’t ya!”

Harry just knew that this proved that Harry was a Bad Person, because he didn’t immediately jump in to correct the man. The more Harry thought about it this man was probably a Bad Person too, because how could he have gotten to the cottage without a boat? Harry had looked through a small crack in the wall to try to see if there was another boat outside, but the only one he could see was the one the Dursleys had ridden in. “I’m not Harry, he is!” Dudley said pointing at Harry.

Harry shot Dudley a small glare for giving him away, and Dudley’s brewing fit was cut short by Uncle Vernon finally showing up at the top of the stairs with a shotgun. “I don’t know what you’re doing here but you need to leave now.”

“Well I’m here to deliver a letter it seems that Harry here hasn’t been getting.”

“You will not be giving him that! I will not be sending that boy to a school for freaks!”

“Freaks! Hogwarts is not a place for freaks!”

“I beg to differ! I’ll not be sending that boy off to be taught by some crackpot old fool!”

“Albus Dumbledore is the greatest wizard to ever live, don’t you ever disrespect him in front of me!”

“Wizard,” Harry asked, “What do you mean wizard?”

“What do I mean- magic Harry! Wizards! Witches! Hogwarts! Of course, you know all about Hogwarts.”

“Er- no, not really.”

“Doesn’t know about Hogwarts! What have you been telling him Dursley!”

“Absolutely nothing, because he is not going!”

“Oh and a great muggle like yourself is gonna stop him? Right.”

Hagrid grabbed the end of the gun and twisted the top up at a ninety degree angle when Vernon started to look like he was gonna shoot.

“I’ll not be sending that boy off to get himself blown up like his parents did!”

“Blown up? You told me my parents died in a car crash! That’s so much worse!”

“Car crash? A car crash kill Lily and James Potter!”

The argument just spiraled from there, the man, who still hadn’t introduced himself, eventually pulled Harry out to a blue motorcycle, ignoring the protests of the Dursleys. Harry didn’t say anything, fairly sure he was being kidnapped at this point, and not really sure what to do about that. He thought it seemed fitting that he was being taken to more Bad People. Hopefully there were some Good People wherever he was going.

Harry tuned out the man watching the sky as they went past, because, apparently this motorcycle could fly. If things like this keep happening, maybe it would be worth it to be spending time with Bad People. Harry wasn’t entirely sure why he had such a strong divide between Good and Bad People, but he knew he had always thought of his parents as Bad. He didn’t even have much of a reason, he just knew in the very core of his being that they were Bad People. He had no explanation for what made people Good or Bad either, they were just one or the other and he somehow knew how to categorize them.

Eventually the man landed and led him to a tavern called the Leaky Cauldron, where a man with thin, fluffy white hair was standing behind the counter. “Ah! Hagrid,” so that was the man’s name, Harry thought, “The usual?”

“No, Tom, I just need a room for Harry here and a room for myself for the night!”

“Harry? Well I’ll be! Is that Harry Potter?!”

“Sure is Tom, if you could get Harry set up in a room right quick I wouldn’t be opposed to a Firewhiskey though.”

“Of course, of course, come on then Mr. Potter follow me!”

Harry followed Tom up to a room with a small single bed, not sure if he could really do much, and stepped into the room with a nod of thanks. Harry crawled into the bed once Tom had left, closing the door behind him, and quickly fell asleep.

________

Harry went down stairs the next morning to hear Hagrid talking to Tom about a man named Voldemort, who had apparently killed his parents. The name registered to Harry as a Good Person, after all, if he had gotten rid of his parents, Bad People, he couldn’t be anything but Good.