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Chapter Text

September 1987 – Year 3

Harry sat very quietly on a chair in the back corner of the almost empty classroom trying to be invisible. Not that he could of course. That was impossible; magic wasn’t real, as Uncle Vernon felt the need to continually point out. Harry resented that. He might only be seven but he knew the difference between reality and fantasy. Anyway, even if you couldn’t really be invisible the world was still a safer place if adults paid as little attention to you as possible. So he stayed still and quiet, and tried not to be noticed while Aunt Petunia talked to Mrs. Smith, his teacher for Year 3 at St. Grogory’s Primary School in Little Whinging.

Harry wasn’t sure if she’d been happy or upset to be called up for a parent teacher conference about his recent poor performance on his History project. While her bitter ranting at him for the inconvenience of having to go into school suggested she was angry, her smug smile suggested she felt pleased to be justified in her consistently poor opinion of him. It seemed he could never do anything to make her happy. She was angry if he did better than Dudley on his school work, but doing poorly was making her angry too.

He couldn’t have done any better on this particular project if he'd wanted to though. He simply didn’t know enough about his family to write a proper family tree. Aunt Petunia had berated him for being a “lazy boy who should do his own work” and sent him to weed the garden at his single hesitant halting request for help with his homework. Her precious Dudders got cooed over and an almost endless supply of biscuits to sustain him whenever he grudgingly decided it was time to get his homework done, which mostly consisted of writing down whatever his mother told him the answers were.

His efforts to pretend invisibility seemed to be going quite well, for the adults were starting to talk loudly enough for him to hear what they were saying when he listened carefully. He carefully didn’t look in their direction so they wouldn’t notice he was paying attention.

“…Why should he be proud of them, they died in a car crash, his father was dead drunk just like usual…,” Aunt Petunia ranted, starting a refrain he’d heard plenty of times before.

“That as may be,” Mrs Smith interjected with a raised voice, “but an orphan is expected to idolize and miss his parents. That’s a perfectly normal response. What’s not normal is not even knowing enough about them to fill in the most simplistic family tree chart. He didn’t know his grandparents’ names, or his mother’s maiden name. And he put question marks for everyone’s middle names including his own. This is supposed to be a cooperative project done with the help of his guardians.”

“The boy’s just lazy. Dudley did his. Harry didn’t even bother about it; he did anything and everything rather than work on his family tree. He’s ashamed of his family as well he should be.” Petunia retorted stubbornly, and very unfairly, in Harry’s opinion. Not that anyone cared what he thought.

“Frankly Mrs. Dursley, I think if that’s the case then Harry should be referred to a child psychologist for counselling. The loss of his parents and his poor attitude towards them may be the driving psychological cause behind his poor performance in class and his problems in bullying other children in the playground. Would you like me to start the referral process? We can go through the school system and get a school based counsellor in, unless you’d like to make private arrangements. Goodness knows our chaplain hasn’t even been able to make Harry admit to his role as a bully or to smarten up his appearance, let alone make progress on any other issues with him. A professional counsellor will be much better at getting to the real root of any problems.”

Petunia looked put out, and Harry thought she seemed oddly hesitant in her response. “I… I don’t think that would be necessary.”

“Well something needs to be done to bring that boy into a more normal mindset and appropriate attitude to his family, his schoolwork and his behaviour,” Mrs Smith insisted.

“Yes, yes you’re right of course. The boy should have a better attitude about his parents, that would be normal. A more normal attitude… indeed. I’ll talk to him about it,” his aunt said, perplexing Harry greatly. He’d never heard her say anything ever to suggest that he should be proud of his parents. And now she was agreeing with his teacher. His teacher thought he should be proud of his family! And now Aunt Petunia agreed! It was a wonder beyond his comprehension.

Their voices dropped to a lower volume after that and Harry could only catch snippets, but there seemed to be an agreement that no counsellor was needed yet and that he’d have to redo his History project. There was some kind of complaint about his school clothes, and later something was said about a wedding that made Aunt Petunia look upset while she was talking about it, but he didn’t catch the details.

Harry wondered if there was something to be proud of about his parents after all. And if Aunt Petunia would really help him with his History homework now. And most importantly of all, he wondered why she’d changed her mind. He’d have to think about it some more.

Chapter Text

September 1987 – Year 3

Harry thought about Aunt Petunia’s meeting with his teacher as he lay in bed that evening trying to ignore the gnawing pangs of hunger coming from his neglected stomach. Freakish boys who got in trouble at school didn’t deserve to be rewarded with dinner, or so his aunt and uncle said. There wasn’t much to do in his cupboard apart from thinking.

It wasn’t any surprise to Harry that Aunt Petunia didn’t want him talking to a counsellor, the reason for that was obvious to him. She never wanted to pay anything extra for him that she didn’t have to. It’s why he had to wear Dudley’s old clothes and use his very old backpack from Nursery with the cartoon trains on it, which had one broken strap.

But changing her mind about him liking to think nice things about his parents - that was new. Why she’d even told him this afternoon that his mother was smart, and that his father had lots of friends. Mind you she’d also told him his mother wasn’t smart enough to avoid hanging around with riff raff, and would have been ashamed of how he bullied poor Duddykins by calling him nasty names and making up stories. But she said the important thing was that he could tell people he was proud of his mum for being smart. Harry thought maybe he could also be proud of her for hating bullies, though he knew better than to say that aloud to his aunt. Her nice comment about his father had also come with the disclaimer that he thought himself “above his company”, with a disdainful sniff, but Harry thought it must be nice to have a whole bunch of loyal friends even if they were “no good unemployed layabouts”. He wondered if his dad or his friends were the riff raff Aunt Petunia didn’t like his mother hanging around with.

It was nice to think that as well as being proud of his parents, that they would be proud of him too. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were never proud of him, no matter how hard he tried. It didn’t seem like aspiring to have lots of friends like his dad was a goal within his reach. Dudley and Piers’ gang saw to that. Not that anyone was trying hard to be friends with a boy as scruffy looking as him. Maybe he could be smart like his mum instead. He already didn’t like bullies, just like her. He wistfully thought that maybe she would be proud of him for that if she knew.

Harry rested his hands behind his head on the flat and stained pillow as he mused about how nothing he did made his aunt and uncle happy. Not doing well in school, not doing badly in school, not doing the entire list of chores for the day, not doing only some of them, and definitely not acting like Dudley (that plan had been a total disaster). He was always told off for being a “freak” whenever something went the tiniest bit wrong. Maybe that was the problem - that he was a freak. But how could he not be a freak when he didn’t know what it was that made him one? Then a thought hit him, a revelation dawning on him that brought new hope to his heart with a single word. Normal. That’s what Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon wanted him to be, more than anything. And that’s what had changed his aunt’s mind at the parent teacher conference; his teacher had said it was normal to admire your parents and know your family names. And Aunt Petunia had done the unimaginable - she’d changed her mind. She’d said nice things about his parents for the first time ever (not very well, but maybe she was out of practice) and told him they’d be working on his project together tomorrow.

Harry had a new goal. He was going to be normal. So normal they’d be amazed. It was going to be brilliant. This time, his plan would work for sure. And maybe they’d finally love him, just like they loved Dudley. He wouldn’t be a freak anymore.

If he could just figure out what normal was. He really wished his mother was around to tell him. If she had been smart she’d surely know.

Chapter Text

September 1987 – Year 3

Working with Aunt Petunia on his family tree History project the following afternoon was fascinating. It was so wonderful to hear about his family. And he found out he had a middle name! James, like his father’s name. His mother didn’t have a middle name and her maiden name was Evans, just like Aunt Petunia’s was. Apparently Lily was the younger sister and she had been born on 30th January, 1960. His parents’ death in a drunken car accident in 1981 he already knew about, and only had to note down the new information that the date was Halloween. He scribbled down notes quickly as his Aunt Petunia snapped out the information as hastily as she could like it left a bad taste in her mouth. He didn’t want to miss anything as he probably wouldn’t get a second chance to hear it. When he asked, Aunt Petunia said she didn’t know when his father had been born except that it was likely in 1960 as well, since his parents were in the same year at school together.

Harry started to ask, “So about their school, did-”

“Here, wedding invitation,” Aunt Petunia said brusquely, shoving into his hands a photocopy of her invitation to his parents’ wedding. It derailed Harry’s line of questioning quite effectively as his eyes fixed hungrily upon the invite. It showed his parents’ names, and his father’s parents too.

Harry’s fingers smoothed gently over the simple black and white photocopy like it was his most precious possession in the world, for now it was. A tangible piece of his family. A quick bit of mental arithmetic determined that his parents had been only eighteen years old when they married. Harry thought that seemed quite young. He hoped his parents hadn’t regretted it. Or him. He carefully set the invitation down on the table, and picked his notebook back up, writing in the new information he’d gleaned from the invitation. It would be safe enough there on the table for now since Uncle Vernon had taken Dudley out for ice cream sundaes.

Apparently it had been a quick and simple outdoors wedding. “You wouldn’t catch James Potter in a church,” Petunia said disparagingly. Harry noted down that his father wasn’t Christian. Uncle Vernon had insisted that Harry not attend his schools’ Religious Education class. Maybe that was why; he’d never said. Harry doubted it was out of respect for his father’s beliefs, whatever they were, but maybe Harry had never been baptised. He’d heard that was part of being a Christian. Maybe you shouldn’t go to classes unless that had been done. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t allowed anything nice at Christmas and Easter, too.

“Do you think I should go to church, Aunt Petunia?” he asked cautiously.

“You! You don’t belong there,” she sniffed. He’d hoped it might help him be more normal but since the Dursleys only went a couple of times a year it probably wasn’t very important anyway. He decided to let the topic drop, leaving his father’s religion a mystery. Checking his school notes about the assignment he realised he needed causes of death for his ancestors, if known.

Dorea and Charlus had died only the year before their son’s wedding, in a house fire, and Lily and Petunia’s mother had passed away from cancer only a few months earlier that same year so no-one had been in much of a mood to celebrate at his parents’ wedding. Harry quickly jotted down dates of death of 1977 for his father’s parents, and 1978 for Heather, on what was starting to become quite a respectably filled out family tree chart. It was going to look like a normal chart now just like everyone else’s, he mused happily.

“What about dad’s friends? Were they there at the wedding?” Harry asked curiously, fishing for more information about them too while Aunt Petunia was in a communicative mood, however grudging.

Petunia’s mouth pursed up like she’d bitten into a lemon. “They were. More’s the pity. Horrible hooligans. They were horrible to Vernon and I. Thought they were better than us. That didn’t stop them drinking too much… whiskey at the reception though, just like your father, and acting like idiots.”

Harry decided it might be wise to change the subject and asked after Aunt Petunia and his mother’s side of the family instead. His aunt was born in 1958 and she and Uncle Vernon were married in 1977, after a very romantic proposal in her mother’s sitting room, and they moved into Privet Drive just before Christmas that year. Harry’s mind boggled at the idea that Uncle Vernon could be viewed by anyone in their right mind as romantic, but he tried his best to keep a straight face and kept politely quiet as she reminisced about his “sweet” proposal on one knee. Eventually she got back on topic.

Born in England, his grandfather Darren Evans died in 1975 of a heart attack, and his parents were Robert and Emily. Harry’s Scottish grandmother, whose maiden name was Heather Parkinson, died early in 1978, from bone cancer. “She hung on just long enough to see us married but no-one could do anything for her. Lily didn’t even know she was sick until right near the end – said she couldn’t do anything to help her. Didn’t even try, I say,” explained Aunt Petunia, her melancholy turning into bitterness.

Harry scribbled down more notes, and thought that the conversation was veering into dangerous waters once more. Anything that got Aunt Petunia upset was best avoided. “Did she pick your names? Grandma Heather?”

“Yes, she said flower names were traditional in her family for girls. I never met anyone else from her side of the family though. She didn’t like her family and rarely talked about them. We couldn’t have afforded to travel to Scotland even if we’d wanted to. But I do remember she said her mother’s name was Daisy, and that she passed away while Heather was still young.” Petunia looked reflective. “I never thought of her as your grandmother too. Funny to think of. Mum loved gardening, you know. Had some prize winning begonias she was very proud of.” Petunia now looked like she was almost smiling, and Harry breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

Harry seized on an opportunity to try out his new plan to appear as normal as possible. If Petunia liked his grandmother, then things she’d liked must be normal. “I like begonias too. I like helping in the garden, Aunt Petunia.”

Petunia looked startled more than pleased, but since she didn’t look angry at all Harry thought it was about as good a sign as could be hoped for.

“Well… good. If you could only learn not to overcrowd the seedlings when planting just because they’re small you’d be much less useless in the garden.”

For Petunia, that was a comparatively outrageous amount of praise. Harry smiled happily. She’d called him good. And he’d already learnt that lesson about the flower seedlings. He hadn’t been able to sit down without wincing for almost a whole week, after being hit repeatedly with her wooden spoon until it broke.

Petunia wrapped up their conversation with adding that Dudley was born 23rd June, 1980, which he already knew but politely wrote down anyway so as to appear attentive and interested.

He asked if there were any pictures of his parents or grandparents in the house. “I’m not going to waste my time looking for pictures of your parents – there aren’t any. You’re lucky I even kept the wedding invitation. It got filed away with my correspondence or it would’ve gone too. But there’s some pictures of mum and dad you can look at.”

He and Petunia spent a few minutes looking at a couple of framed pictures of Grandpa Darren, Grandma Heather, and a young Aunt Petunia that were on the mantelpiece. And he prompted her to talk about what they liked, hoarding away a few snippets of information like treasures in his mind. That Grandma Heather had a vegetable garden and a flower garden, and was hopeless at cooking anything except stews and casseroles. That Grandpa Darren worked hard in a steel factory, and read stories to Petunia at night before bed even when he was home late. But when Aunt Petunia started complaining about how they favoured Lily for doing well at school Harry read the warning signs and deflected that topic with a test of his new theory.

“It sounds like your work at school was much more normal, Aunt Petunia. I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?” he asked, watching her face carefully to judge her response.

She looked surprised but definitely pleased. “That’s certainly true,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with being a bit more ordinary. No-one likes a show-off.”

Harry counted the afternoon a complete success. He’d gotten enough information to do his History project properly, learnt a lot about his family, and made some definite headway on his plans to become more normal and win the Dursleys’ approval. He’d being making a mistake in trying to copy Dudley at school. What he needed to do was copy Aunt Petunia. He needed very ordinary, average kind of results.

As Uncle Vernon and Dudley returned from the ice cream parlour he murmured his thanks to Aunt Petunia for her help and retreated to his cupboard in quiet triumph.

Chapter Text

October 1987 – Year 3 

Harry looked despairingly at the grade circled in red pen at the top of his most recent maths test. It was an A-. This was a complete disaster. He’d talked to his teacher about wanting to improve his grades to an ordinary kind of mark and she’d promised him if he studied hard and tried his very best on his tests he should be able to bring his grade up from a D- to a C. Getting A’s was not a part of his plan. Maybe his mum would’ve been proud of him, but Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia called him a freak and accused him of cheating when he did too well. Aunt Petunia had said she hated show-offs. And now to cap it all off, Mrs. Smith wanted him to stay in at lunch to talk about his grade.

“I realise Harry that you want to do better in class. And that’s a very good thing. I know you’ve got more potential than you’ve been showing because when I call on you in class sometimes you have the right answers on the tip of your tongue. But Harry,” his teacher continued weightily in a solemn tone, staring into his eyes, “cheating on a test is no way to make your guardians proud of you.”

“But I didn’t! I really didn’t! I just studied really hard - I didn’t copy off Dudley or anyone. Maybe… you could just give me a B or a C, instead?” he suggested hopefully.

“That’s utterly ridiculous Harry and you know it. No-one goes from being a D student to an A student in two weeks,” she said sternly. “I doubt it was cheating off Dudley this time; he’s not one of my A students. Just admit you were copying off Emily, who I know was sitting next to you for that test, and promise not to do it again. Then I won’t have to raise this issue with your aunt.”

Harry thought about his options. He certainly didn’t want his teacher talking to Aunt Petunia again. Just because last time had brought about some good results didn’t mean it would happen again, especially in a case like this where his teacher would be accusing him of cheating. And odds were he wouldn’t be able to convince Mrs. Smith he didn’t cheat and really did deserve an A; teachers never listened to him. Besides, he didn’t want an A. People liked to say honesty was the best policy, but in his experience no-one liked honesty.

He put on his best repentant hangdog look. “I’m very sorry, Miss. You’re right, I was cheating off Emily. But only for a few questions… the really difficult ones. I really did study very hard for this test. Maybe… maybe I could try it again? Right now? On my own so you know I’m not copying anyone?” he volunteered hopefully.

“Well Harry I’m glad you’ve been responsible enough to finally admit you have a problem with copying. That’s a very grown-up thing to do. I’ve heard a lot about your tendency to copy off Dudley and others, and I want it to stop. I won’t have that kind of behaviour in my classroom. You understand of course that I’ll have to sit you at the front of the class where I can watch you from now on. And I suppose… if you’re keen to prove how you’ve worked for this test, you can spend your lunchtime re-sitting the test. After all you certainly can’t keep that A-. I will, however, deduct half a grade from whatever result you get on the re-sit today, for the advantage you’ll have in already having seen the test before. As well as it being a valuable lesson for you - cheaters never prosper.”

Mrs. Smith printed him up a new test, and sat at her desk at the front of the class and got her lunch out to eat while he worked. Harry worried though that he might accidentally do too well again. It was a risk, but he’d just have to ask his teacher about how the grades worked.

“Can I ask a question Miss, before I start, about the grades? How many do I need to get right out of 50 for a C or a B?”

“You’d know if you’d paid more attention to Maths in class, Harry,” she chided, rather unfairly he thought. Especially as she got out a calculator to give him some answers. “You need forty-three out of fifty or more for an A. 65% is the cut-off for a B, that’s thirty-three to forty-two right on the test. And a C is 45% to 64%, so twenty-three to thirty-two. Your usual standard is around a D. You usually get somewhere in the teens on a test like this, with a lot of doodles in the margins,” she explained with a roll of her eyes at the end. 

“Thank you Mrs. Smith,” Harry said politely.

“Twenty-three to thirty two, forty-five to sixty-four percent,” thought Harry over and over again, drilling the numbers into his mind. He’d write all the figures down later. “Half a grade deducted, so I should aim for the top of that range. About thirty questions right.”

Harry worked diligently and quickly on his test, ignoring the rumbles from his stomach as best he could. He usually relied on the school lunch to make up for not getting much breakfast in the morning. Sometimes he could even tuck a piece of fruit or a breadroll away in a pocket or in his bag to eat later in his cupboard. It was a real shame to miss lunch but this was more important, and he was used to being hungry.

Carefully avoiding answering the most difficult questions on the test, which he left blank, Harry picked thirty easy questions to answer correctly. He wrote down deliberately wrong answers for another ten. With no doodles or pictures in the margins. He didn’t know that was something abnormal that his teacher didn’t like. No-one had ever said before. He didn’t mean to do something naughty, he just got bored just sitting doing nothing for half the test periods having to leave most of the tests blank like Dudley did.

After just under half an hour he was done. “Thank you Mrs. Smith, I’m all finished. There’s some I couldn’t do so I left them blank, is that alright?” he asked, standing up and passing her his paper.

“I’d rather you gave them a go even if you don’t get them right, but we won’t worry about it this time. Next time though don’t be so lazy. There’s still 10 minutes left of test time; you could’ve tried a bit harder, Harry,” she said with a furrowed brow.

“Oh, I didn’t… I’m sorry Miss, I’ll do better next time.”

He hovered anxiously while his teacher swiftly marked his test. “You got twenty-nine out of fifty which would usually be a C+, but I’m reducing it to a C due to familiarity with the test, as I warned you. That’s still a very good result. An honest result,” she nodded her grudging approval, and handed him back his new test.   

“Thank you!” he beamed at her. She shooed him out of the classroom and he rushed off to the school kitchens to grab some lunch, hoping it wasn’t too late. He circled around a couple of buildings to avoid going past the benches under the large tree as Dudley’s gang usually sat out there once they’d finished eating.

He’d have to write down all those grade percentages his teacher had mentioned and study how to quickly figure them out without a calculator, no matter how many questions were on a test. He wasn’t going to get caught again. He couldn’t afford to get too many questions right, or wrong. He would be average. No matter how hard he had to study to accomplish it.

Chapter Text

October 1987 – Year 3

It would still be another couple of months until Harry’s next report card went home and he found out for sure if his new plan to bring home more consistently average results would please the Dursleys. He was worried about it still – they usually didn’t like him doing better than Dudley. But Harry thought that possibly that was because previously he’d been overdoing it; a C average might get him the approval that his A’s and B’s hadn’t. And he was determined to get a C average. He’d looked ahead in the Maths textbooks in the library to figure out how to calculate percentages. It wasn’t as hard as his teacher had made it look. So long as the Maths tests had nice round numbers of questions it shouldn’t be too bad. Getting normal results in subjects like Music or Art & Design was going to be more challenging, but he was used to aiming for D’s to match Dudley, so he figured he should simply aim to do just a little bit better.

In the meantime Harry had been spending some time in the school library, which was always a pleasant place to hang out so long as Dudley or Piers didn’t follow him in (which they would sometimes if they spotted him going there). The librarian thought that he was the one responsible for tearing the covers off some of the books so she didn’t like him much. But she tolerated him being there if he stayed where she could see him. Harry had been reading up in the dictionary on what “normal”, “average”, “ordinary” and “freak” meant, and reading some stories from the Fiction section about ordinary families. And not one of the children in the stories lived in a cupboard. He didn’t think that was a normal, average or ordinary place to sleep. Perhaps he was a freak because he slept in a cupboard. Or perhaps (and he thought this was more likely) freaks didn’t deserve to have real rooms. But maybe, just maybe, if he could convince the Dursleys to let him sleep in one of the spare rooms, he would start becoming more normal.

It took him a week to marshal his thoughts and arguments on the topic and summon up the courage to talk to the Dursleys about it. He’d built up to it by working extra hard on his chores for a couple of weeks, especially the gardening, and talking with his Aunt Petunia occasionally about flowers. He’d been careful to be impressed and interested in everything she said, and it seemed to be going well. He’d also brought home his History report with a wonderful grade of C+, thanks to the careful inclusion of his new information, and his even more careful omission of pictures or additional information. Aunt Petunia had just nodded, which was a great improvement on her usual response of throwing things into the bin or accusing him of cheating. Uncle Vernon had grunted, “Thank goodness that bloody thing is over and done with.” It was a marvellous success in Harry’s opinion.

He raised the issue of his room at the dinner table one night, as they were finishing up their trifle, and he was nibbling the last of the flesh off the core of the slightly bruised apple he’d been given as his dessert.

“Uh, so I’ve been thinking,” Harry started hesitantly, “that maybe it would be good for me to have a more normal kind of bedroom. Instead of the cupboard.”

Dudley just snorted and ignored him and kept shovelling trifle from his bowl into his mouth, but Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia looked poleaxed. Uncle Vernon’s mouth was even hanging open; Harry could see half-chewed trifle inside it. It was rather disgusting. There was trifle in his moustache, too.

Harry started to worry as his aunt and uncle exchanged a look. Aunt Petunia was looking particularly put out. Maybe this had been a mistake. It was a good thing he’d waited to ask until after eating his dinner, he thought.

But then, something very surprising happened. Uncle Vernon beamed.

“About ruddy time!” he boomed. “It’s been damned embarrassing having you sleeping there. I haven’t been able to invite clients over for dinner for years. Can’t have you yapping away from a cupboard about how you’d like to go to the bathroom, while I’m trying to entertain the Hendersons in the lounge room, now could I?”

“You don’t want to be in the cupboard anymore?” asked a mystified sounding Aunt Petunia.

“Why would I want to sleep in the cupboard instead of a room?” responded a very perplexed Harry.

“Freaks belong in cupboards,” Dudley sneered at him.

“Ha!” laughed Uncle Vernon. “Couldn’t drag you out of the darn thing without you screaming the house down. So ruddy sure that if you just stayed there long enough, you’d be whisked away by magic.” He glared piggishly at Harry. “Which was total rubbish of course.”

Harry quickly agreed. “Of course, Uncle Vernon. No such thing as magic.” His uncle smiled approvingly. “But… I don’t remember ever doing that.”

“How long ago was that, pet?” Uncle Vernon asked his wife. “Been a while since he had one of those tantrums. Felt for a while like they’d never stop. Didn’t get a lick of sleep for months.”

Aunt Petunia looked reflective. “I suppose it would have to be about four years ago now. The boys were only 3, or maybe 4. It was that idiotic librarian who started it all,” she griped bitterly, “filling the boys’ heads with that Narnia nonsense at ‘Toddler Tale Time’. Harry came back from library storytime refusing to go to bed at night anymore.”

She turned her head to face Harry accusingly. “Every day it was the same thing. If only you could find the right magic cupboard and spent all your time there, you’d get to travel by magic back to this make-believe land where your parents were alive. And where animals were smart and would talk to you, play with you and be your ‘bestest’ friends. We ended up putting a camp bed in the cupboard, you screamed so much when we tried to make you sleep anywhere else. You didn’t want to miss the rare chance that a portal to Narnia might open while you weren’t there. So fine, you can stay in the stupid cupboard, it’s yours now.”

“Libraries are dumb,” Dudley asserted, and was promptly cooed over by his mum about how playing outdoors was so much healthier. Harry thought Dudley wouldn’t know what healthy was if it came in a box marked “healthy stuff inside”.

Harry felt really embarrassed. It was entirely his own fault he slept in a cupboard, his uncle and aunt said so, so it must be true. But he didn’t remember saying any of the stuff they said. “I don’t know what I used to say but I’m much, much older now, and I know better.”

“Well then,” said Uncle Vernon, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands contemplatively on his ample stomach, “we may as well move him back into his old room upstairs.”

Dudley’s level of attention to the conversation promptly skyrocketed. “What! But that’s my toyroom! You can’t give him my toyroom! Mum! I need that room – tell Harry he can’t have it.” Dudley’s mouth stuck out in a pout and he looked genuinely upset. Aunt Petunia popped out of her chair to cuddle him as he started crying, and she spooned some more trifle into his bowl in hopes it would help him too. Sweets usually did. “It’s not fair! It’s my room, it’s always been my room! Not his room!”

“Vernon, do you really think he needs to move?” Aunt Petunia said pleadingly. “You know Duddy has a lot of toys; he needs that space. And Harry’s so small, he doesn’t really need a big room. He’s used to it now anyway.”

Vernon looked uncertain, and Harry felt his chance was slipping away like sand through his fingers. He had to fix this and fast. Once Dudley started the waterworks his parents almost always gave in to whatever he wanted.

“Freaks live in cupboards, but I want to be normal. Normal like you, Uncle Vernon. And normal boys have bedrooms, don’t they?” he asked with his most earnest voice.

Uncle Vernon’s flabby face firmed with resolve once more. “Quite right, quite right, boy,” he said. “Petunia dear, if the boy wants to try to be more normal, more the right sort of person, I think we’d better encourage that. There’s still a chance, you know. Duddy can move his toys into the cupboard; once Harry’s out of it we can put some shelves in there.”

Dudley screamed and cried some more, and even hit angrily at his mother with his pudgy fists. But it appeared that Uncle Vernon’s mind was now firmly made up and wouldn’t be budging. Once he was set on a plan he could be very stubborn.

Harry got sent to the kitchen to start doing the dishes while his aunt fussed over a sobbing, protesting Dudley, and his uncle talked loudly over the top of the hubbub about bucking up like a man and how they’d make the room over that weekend. As Harry packed the leftovers from the table into containers for an afternoon snack for Dudley tomorrow, his cheerful humming was brought abruptly to a swift end when he caught Dudley’s eye as he was walked up to bed by Aunt Petunia. Dudley glared at him fiercely; he looked murderously angry. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the week at school, or indeed any time that his uncle and aunt weren’t watching too closely. Harry had thought about what Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon might say to his plan. Alright, he’d gotten it quite wrong but he’d at least thought a bit about it. But he’d completely forgotten to think about how Dudley might react. He’d have to plan for that in the future. And he’d have spend a lot of time running and hiding at school over the next week or two, until Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had coaxed and bribed Dudley into making peace with the new room arrangements. Hopefully that new scooter and the Disney videos he’d heard promised to Dudley would distract him a bit from his revenge.

Chapter Text

December 1987 – Year 3

It had been a good couple of months on the whole. Admittedly, the bruises and wrenched elbow he’d gotten from Dudley for taking away “his” toyroom hadn’t been fun. And Dudley, Malcolm and Dennis had tried to make him stand in the toilet, and he’d gotten one trouser leg completely soaked before he’d been let go when the bell rang for the end of lunch. The teacher told Harry off for mucking about of course, while Dudley’s gang smirked. Lately he’d also had to do extra chores (like weeding the flower beds twice a week and mowing the lawn) ever since he’d talked about how he liked gardening. But as he lay on his very own real bed at night, with the orange light from the streetlamp outside shining in through the thin curtains on his very own window, he thought on the whole he had no cause to feel regret. Life was good, and he loved having a room of his own! Dudley had demanded that all of his own things be moved out of the room lest Harry touch or ruin them. Though of course he’d left behind the things he didn’t like. There was the basket of baby toys, the broken alarm clock, a whole half a shelf full of untouched and unwanted books, and the small television set with the broken screen that Dudley had kicked in frustration last year when “Bananaman” was cancelled. (Dudley hadn’t eaten a banana since, in protest.)

Sometimes in the past when he’d been doing the vacuuming he used to wonder why Dudley’s toyroom had a bed, desk and a wardrobe in it, when they already had a spare room set up for Aunt Marge. He’d thought maybe it was in case of extra visitors. Now he knew it used to be his own room long ago it made a bit more sense. The furniture wasn’t as nice as it was in Aunt Marge’s room - the Dursleys liked things to be special for their guests. But if it had been bought for him, well that explained it all. Like the shabby old wardrobe with the spotted mirror inside the door, and the lamp with the ugly faded lime-green lampshade. Harry loved it all anyway because it was his. But most of all he loved the window. He could even read late at night with the light coming in from the street! Uncle Vernon used to hammer on the cupboard door if he caught Harry with the light on after he was supposed to be asleep.

Life wasn’t perfect of course. He’d had worryingly strange incident a couple of weeks ago when the weather started getting so cold that even Aunt Petunia couldn’t deny that Harry was shivering unstoppably from the cold. From a box on top of Dudley’s wardrobe she’d pulled out an old jumper that Dudley used to wear (under protest). It was a revolting vomit-brown woollen jumper with orange bobbles on it. He’d insisted that no-one wore jumpers like that to school and he didn’t want to try it on, but she didn’t listen to him. The funny thing was that the harder she’d tried to force it over his head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a glove puppet, but certainly wouldn’t fit Harry. Harry had anxiously speculated that maybe there was something wrong with the jumper and Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash. To his great relief, Harry wasn’t punished. He’d been so terrified she’d decide it was his fault in some way, like that time over a year ago when she was mad at him for somehow ending up on the kitchen roof at school. He’d gotten an angry letter sent home from Headmistress Roemmele and a week in his cupboard for that.

Since the brown jumper had met an odd end he’d had to wear an even older jumper of Dudley’s instead, that had a teddy bear on the front, which he got laughed at for at school. He also got another detention and lecture for not having a proper school jumper. Aunt Petunia sent a note to St. Grogory’s explaining he’d stained his brand new jumper immediately after getting it and had to wear this one as a punishment, and it seemed that was the end of that. At least it was very soft and warm, and fitted him better than most of the hand-me-downs he got, due to it being from when Dudley was only four. The sleeves were a bit short and left his hands cold, but some old gloves fixed that up fine.

Harry was nervous about tomorrow. It was the end of term and the Christmas holidays were about to start. Harry actually preferred school to holidays. In anticipation of the impending shorter rations without school lunches to rely on, he had been hiding bread rolls, apples, and one precious small sealed jelly cup underneath the socks at the bottom of his chest of drawers. But that wasn’t anything unusual (except having a new hiding place) or the main reason he was worried. He was feeling nervous because tomorrow the school was sending home the first report card since he’d started his new scheme of aiming for very average results, and he wasn’t sure if it was going to go well or not. He thought it should. But then, he’d thought many of his plans to please the Dursleys in the past would work and they hadn’t. They’d been fairly happy with his previous stance of aiming for lower marks than Dudley and he was scared now that rocking the boat hadn’t been the best plan after all.

The next afternoon, Dudley and Harry assembled in the lounge room to present their report cards for inspection. They looked at Dudley’s first of course, and Aunt Petunia cooed over his C’s in Physical Education and Geography (he’d copied off Malcolm on the test for the latter, since Harry was sitting too far away), gushed over the praise of Dudley as “a polite, well mannered young man”, and ranted over the D’s and E’s for spelling and maths. But of course the poor grades weren’t Dudley’s fault at all.

“He’s such a gifted boy. If his teachers would only understand that he needs extra time on tests, like many gifted children do. The brightest children often get distracted by other things in their environment. Don’t you worry over those results, Duddykins,” she said comfortingly, passing him a whole block of chocolate that had been his promised reward for good grades.

Uncle Vernon seemed proud of the results too. “You did fine, son. I don’t want some swotty little nancy boy for a son, anyway!” He ruffled Dudley’s hair approvingly and gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder.

Harry was next and he handed over his report card nervously. They opened the sealed envelope up and looked with surprise at his straight C’s, except for the D in Physical Education. It had been averaged with the marks from first term, and anyway, Dudley always punched or kicked him if he beat him in a race (or even walked too close to him in class). It was hard to do well at long jump when someone kicked your ankle before you started.

Uncle Vernon looked accusingly at him. “Cheating again is it, boy? Think you’re better than Dudders now, do you? Well you’re not, so don’t expect any reward. Cheaters don’t deserve rewards.”

Harry babbled anxiously, “No Uncle Vernon, I promise I didn’t cheat. You can ask my teacher too; she’s been watching me. I just tried as absolutely hard as I possibly could. I studied a lot! Maybe Dudley would do better than me if he studied as hard as he could.”

“Of course he would! My Dudders is gifted, not like you,” insisted Aunt Petunia with a sneer. Vernon nodded his agreement with this obvious statement of fact.

“That’s right, I’m nothing special,” Harry agreed, “and my marks are nothing special. They’re very ordinary kind of results. I think. Of course Dudley is smarter than me – he just doesn’t like doing schoolwork as much as I do. He could do better if he wasn’t so busy playing sport and games, right Dudley?”

“You horrible liar! You said at school I was so dumb I didn’t even know the days of the week!” Dudley said accusingly, with a sticky mouth full of chocolate.

“You don’t! You spell ‘Wednesday’ w-e-n-s, and you get Tuesday and Thursday mixed up!” he retorted, but then he saw his uncle glaring ferociously at him and quickly changed tack. “But uh, that was ages ago,” he quavered apologetically (not specifying that “ages ago” actually meant “last week”), “and I’m uh, really sorry Dudley. I’m sure you know them now.”

“Ignore the boy, Duddykins. You see? He had to study and study to get a C, and you do so well without even trying! That’s what it’s like to be gifted. If you just had a more supportive environment with an understanding teacher then you’d get better marks than him in everything. And look! You beat him at P.E.,” Aunt Petunia said comfortingly.

“He’s rubbish at P.E.” Dudley said happily.

“That’s the spirit, son!” said Uncle Vernon encouragingly.

“So, are you… happy with how I did?” Harry asked, when it seemed like their fussing over Dudley was wearing down.

“Happy! How could we be happy? You’d better not expect a reward. Slow, lazy boys like you don’t get rewards,” Aunt Petunia snarked.

“But… a C is better than an A or an E, right?” Harry asked.

“The boy’s not cheating his way to good grades, and he’s not napping his way through class leaving tests unfinished,” said Uncle Vernon to Aunt Petunia. “I suppose C’s are about the best we can expect out of one of his type. He’s a swot who couldn’t even outdo Duddy in a fair test, and he certainly isn’t the kind of athlete Dudley is. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised to see our boy go to the Regionals in another year or two’s time,” he speculated happily to his family. He clapped his son on the back proudly, blindly ignoring that his son was roughly the same shape as a pig and much less likely to win a race than one. Harry thought that if there was a pie eating competition Dudley might win it though. He knew better than to say that out loud though, at least while his uncle and aunt were listening.

Harry made a mental note to never beat Dudley at sport. That had been a bit of luck - coming home with a lower grade than he thought for that subject. Sadly it didn’t seem that the change to getting C’s had been the success he’d hoped for in getting praise and approval from the Dursleys at last. Despite them being the very definition of normal grades. But on the other hand, they hadn’t attracted the ire that A’s and B’s had, nor the same level of derision that D’s and E’s did. And Uncle Vernon had said C’s were the best they could expect from him, which was pretty good confirmation he was on the right track. So on the whole he concluded it’d been a good plan, and he decided to stick with it. Despite how much work it entailed.

Chapter Text

January 1988 – Year 3

Christmas had been as disappointing as Christmas usually was. Aunt Marge had visited again, and while Dudley had got a computerised robot, the promisingly large present for Harry under the tree for him had turned out to be a box of dog biscuits. She’d laughed at him so hard she almost spilled her glass of sherry, when he thanked her dutifully for the gift despite his woeful face. He’d tucked them away in his room for emergencies since his cache of food from school was all eaten up. He thought he might get desperate enough to eat the biscuits some time, you never knew. He’d had to go without dinner on Christmas Eve when he hadn’t finished mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, doing the ironing and folding and putting away all the washing when he was done. Harry had apologised for being so slow, but had to sit at the table while everyone else ate and he went hungry despite his efforts. Maybe his father had hated Christmas. There were probably religions that hated Christmas, and this was his just punishment for being part of that. Harry wasn’t game to ask and confirm it was his fault. It was best not to draw attention to things that were wrong with him. Sometimes, if he worked very hard, and was extra obedient, he got to pick over the leftovers. There hadn’t been many leftovers these holidays with Aunt Marge visiting. Thank goodness she was gone at last, and they were back at school.

The first week back didn’t go as well as Harry had hoped. Dudley didn’t like the school lunches as much as Harry did. It was a bit of a shock to his system to go from the massive portions his mother (and Harry) served up to him, then be limited to the much smaller school lunches which weren’t always very appetizing to boot. But this week had been worse than usual for the menu had featured international foods which Dudley hated. There had also been far too much salad, which Uncle Vernon called “rabbit food” and had taught Dudley to scorn. Dudley fell back on the usual trick he employed when he felt deprived, which was to stop by Harry’s table. When the teachers weren’t looking (which was more often than Harry would like) he’d help himself to any food on Harry’s tray that he liked the look of, especially any desserts. Harry knew better than to fight back. If he tried that Dudley tipped his tray onto the ground and stepped in his lunch. Then he blubbered that Harry had ruined his lunch. Harry got detention, and Dudley got seconds. After a week of this treatment (which had been preceded by a fortnight of short rations at home) Harry was reaching breaking point. And then, it got worse.

Dudley had broken his new robot. He’d started getting bored with its electronic beeps and how the laser was just a red light. So his latest game was to make it a “ninja attack robot” and jab its hard plastic limbs at Harry with improvised “karate chop” attacks. It was, sadly, one of the most creative games Dudley had ever come up with. The problem was that his robot was not sturdy enough to cope with the level of abuse he was subjecting it to, and “Godzilla” Harry eventually proved to be the more robust of the two. One of the robot’s arms snapped clean off while Dudley jabbed at Harry as he wrestled wet bedsheets out of the washing machine and into the dryer. As Dudley’s round moon face broke out into tears and he waddled off in search of sympathy, Harry knew he was going to be the one blamed for this. There was really no point in trying to talk his way out of it, as he was never believed, so he decided at least he should make sure he was seen to be doing well with his chores when his aunt or uncle decided to take him to task for his wanton destruction of another of Dudley’s toys. He hurriedly finished up in the laundry, and Aunt Petunia caught him in the kitchen cooking dinner, to berate him as expected.

“Do you know how expensive that robot was? Aunt Marge was very generous this year and your petty destruction of Dudley’s robot just because you couldn’t wait for your turn is unbelievable! You will have to apologise to Dudley and write a letter to Aunt Marge too, explaining how sorry you are!”

Deep down Harry knew arguing never helped, but sometimes he couldn’t help it in the face of unfair accusations. “I didn’t even touch his robot, I promise Aunt Petunia. I was just getting the laundry done like you asked.”

“Your lies and ingratitude for all we do are never-ending. Do you think Dudley wouldn’t tell me what happened? I know it was all your fault - grabbing at his robot like that. Robots don’t break on their own, you idiot boy! And there’ll be no chicken dinner for you tonight. You’ll have to make do with a slice of bread and butter and be thankful for it. And the same goes for next week, too. You’ll have to pay for Dudley’s new robot somehow, and that will have to do. You eat so much you’re a burden on this family,” his aunt concluded unfairly, considering the matter settled.

Harry fumed quietly at the dinner table that evening as he watched everyone else eat their plates of roast chicken and potatoes with gravy that he’d cooked, but wasn’t allowed to even try. His single slice of bread and butter had been eaten quickly, but didn’t fill the void in his stomach. Or heal the ache in his heart. He tried so hard to do well, to be normal, but what was he to do when Dudley got him in trouble all the time? He was so hungry. He didn’t think it was normal to be so hungry, unless you were one of those starving children in Ethiopia the Dursleys liked to talk about so much whenever he complained about his food. This wasn’t Ethiopia, it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t normal. Maybe it was time to try and fix that. Maybe, like with his room, all he needed to do was speak up about it.

“I don’t think this is a normal amount of food,” Harry started bluntly and recklessly, “I know you’re mad at me because Dudley’s robot got broken, but I don’t think other boys have to go without dinner for a week when something goes wrong.”

“Other boys aren’t freaks like you,” said Dudley smugly. “You broke my robot so you have to pay for it.”

“That’s right,” agreed Uncle Vernon, between mouthfuls of chicken. “I’m not having hoodlum behaviour in my house.”

“But I don’t think it’s a normal amount of food,” said Harry stubbornly. “Dudley always gets more food than I do, even when I’ve done nothing wrong at all. And I never get any pudding.”

“Dudley’s a growing boy who needs plenty of food,” explained Aunt Petunia.

Uncle Vernon nodded. “A big-boned boy like Dudley needs more food. Who knows what’s normal for a little shrimp like you.”

“Well I’m going to ask my teacher,” decided Harry. “I’m sure she can tell me what’s a normal amount of food.”

“There’s no need to go complaining to anyone!” said Aunt Petunia with alarm. “What you eat is suitable for a boy your size.”

“I bet it’s not,” huffed Harry angrily. “Headmistress Roemmele said last detention that I need to stop wasting my lunch, which I don’t do anyway because it’s Dudley who always eats my desserts and wrecks things.”

“I do not!”

Harry continued his rant, ignoring Dudley. “She said I look like a skeleton, all bony in horrible baggy clothes. She said I need to take better care of myself and my things, but how can I look normal or dress normal when you won’t let me even try? I’m going to tell her it’s all your fault!”

“It’s your fault for being a freak!” yelled Dudley. “You don’t deserve anything nice, Mummy says so. You make everything go wrong.”

“You’re lucky we took you in! You should be grateful for all we do for you, you ungrateful little freak!” bellowed Uncle Vernon.

“Well I don’t want to be a freak!” yelled Harry back at them all. “I’m trying so hard! And if you think I’m such a freak then you can explain to the headmistress and all my teachers and me exactly what’s wrong with me that I don’t deserve food or nice clothes!”

“That’s enough out of you! Go to your room! NOW!” yelled Uncle Vernon, who was turning purple with anger. Aunt Petunia just looked really worried. Harry pushed back from the table and hurried up to his room fearfully. He didn’t want a beating, which was usually what he got when he made his uncle that angry.

He did end up being smacked (“for disrespect and ingratitude”) after Uncle Vernon finished his pudding, but it wasn’t one of the worst punishments he’d ever had so Harry counted himself lucky.

The next morning, things were… different. Aunt Petunia said he wouldn’t have to go without dinners, but would have to work extra hard on his chores to make up for breaking Dudley’s robot. And at breakfast he was told to serve himself an egg with his slice of toast, and two pieces of bacon instead of one.

Aunt Petunia explained it to him. “Vernon and I talked about it and we think maybe you might be starting a growth spurt and need some extra food. You didn’t need as much before - but it’s true you’ve been getting a bit thin lately. Of course you don’t need as much food as Dudley - he’s much bigger than you. But a little more will be alright.” And with very little effort she extracted from a grateful Harry his promise that he really didn’t need to talk to the teachers about anything. He even thanked her profusely, to her hidden relief.

The next week he even got given some new clothes for school. They were second-hand and still a bit too big for him, but they looked worlds better than Dudley’s cast-offs. Uncle Vernon told him it was a late Christmas present - it had just taken a little time to get ready. Given it was just a pile of clothes in a plastic bag, not even wrapped up, Harry didn’t see why it would take more time to get ready than Dudley’s eighteen presents. But he didn’t want to look this gift horse in the mouth too closely. He thought maybe dropping Headmistress Roemmele’s name into the conversation had been the thing that had done the trick. Harry knew his own opinion didn’t count for much with the Dursleys, but they liked the headmistress so perhaps her thinking he was skinny had weighed heavily in his favour. Harry hoped he was going through a growth spurt. But up would be nice, rather than out like Dudley.

Chapter Text

March 1990 – Year 5

Two years had made some big differences in Harry’s life. He wasn’t so scrawny any more now he was getting regular food, and he’d even gained a little height. But since he wasn’t “big-boned” he didn’t need as much food as “precious Duddykins” so he’d fortunately escaped Dudley’s weight problems. He got a new supply of school clothes each Christmas and while they were always second hand scruffy they at least fit him reasonably well. With his improved appearance and reputation some kids would even talk to him now when Dudley wasn’t around - but he still didn’t have any real friends. His straight C report cards (except for P.E.) had won him the grudging acceptance of his academic skills by his Year 5 teacher Mr. Stevens, though he was still watched carefully for signs of cheating and bullying. Those accusations of cheating in particular had continued to haunt him. He’d thought for a while in Year 3 he might’ve overcome them when Mrs. Smith had separated him in the classroom from Dudley.

But last year (in Year 4) Dudley had started to insist Harry do all his homework for him, and then Dudley had whined sweetly to the new teacher until she’d moved Dudley to sit next to Harry for a while, until problems arose.

He’d actually had a very productive conversation with Dudley halfway through Year 4. They’d both had a particularly bad patch with both of them being told off for having identical homework, and then Dudley had started getting E’s on tests when separated from Harry again. Harry, with his school history of being a “problem child” was accused of cheating off Dudley, but Dudley was under suspicion too and being watched carefully. Neither of them had been happy with what the Dursleys were likely to say about it all.

“It’s not going to work Dudley,” explained Harry. “When you copy my homework and tests you’re just getting in trouble, and so am I.”

“I’m not getting E’s! Or detentions! I’ve got better things to do at lunch than write lines! You’ve just got to do better! You do my homework for me - I’m tired of copying anyway. And fix it so I don’t get E’s anymore,” he said, cracking his knuckles and scowling as if physical threats would somehow get him better exam results.

Harry thought about this. If Dudley wasn’t simply snatching Harry’s completed homework to copy answers off, then there was room for customisation.

“Alright…” he said slowly, “The homework I can fix. You give me any homework you don’t want to do and I’ll make sure you don’t get E’s on it. Ever. And I’ll make sure they don’t say you’re cheating with the homework – I won’t dob on you either.”

Dudley smiled a big relieved smile.

“But,” continued Harry warningly, “if you don’t start studying for tests you’re going to keep getting E’s, and then they’ll think you’re cheating no matter what I do. They’ll know something fishy’s going on with your homework if your test results are too different from your homework results. You’re really going to have to learn enough to do it on your own.”

“No way! I’m not going to be a poncy little swot!” Dudley swore angrily. “Fix it, freak!”

“You want me to help? Stop calling me a freak!” hissed Harry back.

“Fix it!” insisted Dudley stubbornly.

Harry thought some more. He didn’t think there was any use explaining how doing homework and studying helped you do well in school. Dudley just didn’t care. He’d cheat off Harry forever if he could.

“I can give you study guides,” Harry proposed. “Notes on the most important things to know for the tests. So you don’t have to read the whole textbook - just short notes. That’s the best thing I can think of to get you out of the most work possible. And you have to stop calling me a freak.”

“I suppose it’ll have to do,” Dudley grudgingly agreed. Though he didn’t stop calling Harry a freak when he was especially annoyed. Harry in return didn’t stop calling him a pig in a wig. There were still some occasional schoolyard punches from Dudley, and biting insults here and there from Harry (who stayed lean with all the running away he had to do afterwards). But at least their academic arrangement was cordial enough, and it continued smoothly for the rest of Year 4 and into Year 5.

Now they were halfway through Year 5 and while Mr. Stevens monitored both their work carefully, he noticed no problems with their homework. For Harry was careful to give different answers on each of their work and he used messier handwriting for Dudley’s work. He aimed to give Dudley D’s for most subjects, and an occasional C for things like Computing or Art & Design, where it might be plausible that Dudley would do alright on tests without studying much. He gave Dudley B’s on the rare occasions that he had written homework for P.E. to hand in. Dudley was happy and Aunt Petunia was convinced that her son was a genius who simply “didn’t test well”. Dudley had been given a computer of his own for good grades last Christmas, and was spending lots of his free time in the afternoon playing computer games and less time playing “Harry Hunting”. So Harry thought that was almost like a reward for him too.

***

Uncle Vernon glared at Harry as he cleared away the dirty dishes after dinner one night. “The boy needs a haircut again. He looks ridiculous with that stupid hair, just like his… well… it’s just like a rat’s nest,” grumbled Uncle Vernon. Harry nervously smoothed his hair down with his hands though he thought it didn’t look any different to usual. His hair still looked messy despite his efforts though. It never seemed to stay down. He figured it was humidity or something.

Aunt Petunia assented willingly though with an oddly resigned air. “I’m not sure it will make much difference dear,” she replied, as she fetched a large pair of scissors from a kitchen drawer. “It always looks like the barber never even bothered to try. I think I’ll try doing it myself – cut it extra short this time,” she mused. She pushed Harry to sit down in one of the dining chairs without bothering to address him directly, and wrapped a teatowel around his neck to catch the trimmings.

His aunt and uncle seemed happy with the haircut when it was done. And Dudley said, “It suits you.” But he laughed so hard when he said it that Harry thought he might make himself sick – Dudley was rolling around on the floor clutching at his stomach he was so amused at his own comic genius.

“It’s going… to be great! At… school! Tomorrow!” he said, between guffaws of laughter.

After Harry had finished doing the dishes he was finally allowed to go and look at himself in a mirror, and then was promptly sent straight to bed for “ingratitude” after Uncle Vernon heard his horrified shriek. The haircut was horrible. She’d cut it so short he almost looked bald… but not evenly. There were uneven patches sticking up everywhere since she was using scissors rather than clippers and didn’t really know what she was doing. And she’d left his fringe long, “to hide that horrible scar”. Harry hated it.

He choked down his tears and worries and sat at his desk to do his homework and his share of Dudley’s homework, which was Geography that night. He followed that up with an extra hour of his usual additional study, which consisted of going over what they’d been learning that week and reading ahead in his textbooks so he wouldn’t get caught out on tests.

And then there was nothing left to do to take his mind off that horrible haircut. He lay in his bed crying, and thinking of how horrible it was going to be at school. Everyone already hated or avoided him either because of Dudley’s threats or his own scruffy appearance. He was too dumb (or so it seemed) to hang out with the nerds, too much of a failure at P.E. to make friends with the sporty kids, and too scruffy for the popular kids. This haircut was going to make everything worse. Everyone would be laughing and jeering at him. He just knew that his teachers would blame him because Aunt Petunia would probably tell them he cut his own hair if someone complained to her about it. He’d surely be in detention for weeks. Harry really wished his hair would just go back to how it was – its normal messy, ordinary length. But it was useless of course. He’d just have to wait for it to grow back. He fell asleep with tears on his face.

When he sleepily went down to the kitchen early the next morning to start cooking breakfast he hadn’t done anything more than put bacon in the pan before his aunt came in and immediately started yelling at him at top volume.

“GO TO YOUR ROOM! YOU’RE GROUNDED! FOR A WEEK!” screeched Aunt Petunia.

“What?! Why!” said a very startled Harry. “What about school?” He wondered what Dudley had accused him of this time.

“YOUR HAIR! HOW DARE YOU…YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE FREAK! ROOM! NOW!”

Harry felt the top of his head. His hair – it had all grown back. His face went white as the blood drained out of it from shock. He ran to his room and slammed the door in a panic. He looked in the mirror in his cupboard. It was true – his hair had grown back. He really was a freak.

Aunt Petunia’s voice came from outside his door. “AND THERE WILL BE NO SCHOOL FOR YOU EITHER!” she yelled. “YOU’RE NOT COMING OUT EXCEPT TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!”

“GOOD!” yelled Harry back at her.

“….”

“I’M NOT COMING OUT UNTIL MY HAIR STOPS BEING FREAKISH!”

“DON’T YOU YELL AT ME, YOU UNGRATEFUL BRAT!” she said, rallying her thoughts once more.

“Sorry, Aunt Petunia,” he responded in a more normal tone of voice.

“WHAT?”

“I SAID, ‘SORRY AUNT PETUNIA,’” he yelled back through the door.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO YELL AT ME, YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE MONSTER! THAT’S IT, NO FOO… NO DESSERTS ALL WEEK! AND NO SNACKS - NOTHING! AND YOU ONLY GET ONE PIECE OF DRY TOAST FOR BREAKFAST!”

Harry thought silence might be his best bet now, lest he make things worse again. Things were bad enough already. And it seemed like it was entirely his fault somehow. He really was a freak. Or maybe just his hair. Could his hair be freakish, while the rest of him was alright? Harry thought he would rather have kept that hideous haircut, and been teased mercilessly for it, than be faced with the undeniable fact of his utter failure to be normal. Maybe he could fix it somehow, make his hair behave properly like hair should. And then everything would be good again.

Thankfully Uncle Vernon was too busy with his usual mammoth sized breakfast (cooked by Aunt Petunia for a change), needing to comfort Aunt Petunia, and getting ready for work to worry about disciplining Harry right away. He did take time out for a quick threat though; Harry would get the hiding of his life from Uncle Vernon if his hair did “anything else funny”. Harry was terrified. Uncle Vernon’s spankings when he was in a mood were nothing to take lightly. And if he flinched away or made a noise then his uncle brought out his belt and started the count again.

Harry spent all day in his room obsessing about his hair. He pulled and stretched at it – it was definitely his real hair. He tried brushing it but it just sprung back into its usual mess. Harry wondered if that was normal. He’d always thought it was, but maybe he was wrong. Wrong about everything. He angrily rubbed his stupid hair into an even messier gigantic tangle than usual, and looked in the mirror. It really did look especially hideous now. Aunt Petunia wasn’t going to be happy with that either. He wished he hadn’t done that, it was going to be awful work getting the knots out. He flopped on his bed to ponder the matter some more and stared at the cracks in the ceiling paint. He couldn’t think of any way that hair could possibly grow so fast. Maybe he should stop eating his toast crusts. Weren’t they supposed to be good for helping hair grow? Perhaps that was the answer – less bread. Or maybe someone had poured hair growing lotion on his head when he was asleep. Might Dudley have played a prank on him? He got up to check in the mirror again, to see if there was anything goopy or strange in his hair. Nope, everything looked perfectly normal and dry, just his ordinary messy hair...wait a minute…

“Ahhh!” Harry screeched.

There was a clatter outside, like Aunt Petunia had dropped something heavy on the carpet. “WHAT IS IT NOW!?” she yelled.

“NOTHING! Don’t come in!” he yelled, panicked. He didn’t want her to see that his hair wouldn’t even stay messy. The crazy tangle of knots he’d just put it in had disappeared, and it was back to its usual level of ruffled scruffiness.

Aunt Petunia came into the room despite his pleas and the moment’s relief she felt that nothing horrible seemed to have happened was obviously quickly forgotten. She vented her anxiety by yelling at him about how he’d made her drop the vacuum cleaner, and he’d better hope it wasn’t broken. She berated him about his lack of consideration for others and lectured at length on his general ingratitude for all they did for him. Eventually she ran out of steam and slammed the door behind her as she left, and Harry was left alone again with his thoughts.

Harry wished he wasn’t grounded. Maybe the school library would have something on hair that wouldn’t behave and what you should do about it. There was a boy at school with black curly hair that always stayed curly even if he stretched it out then let it go; his own hair was probably something a little like that, Harry thought. Other people probably had hair that misbehaved too. There weren’t a lot of books in the house, but he thought maybe it was worthwhile reading through the collection of Dudley’s old books on the bookshelf. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do, and he had to try something.

He read for a couple of hours without success, with a break to eat a very unappetising and dry sandwich (minus the crusts which he warily avoided) and a brown-spotted mushy banana that Aunt Petunia left outside his door. Then it was back to reading, and another hour later he hit upon an idea. One of the characters in an old picture book of Dudley’s fell into a mud puddle and after that had to take a bubble bath and shampoo her hair. It was the illustration that caught his interest – while in the bath the character’s hair lay completely flat and straight. Harry realised that his hair was like that when it was wet too. Maybe the problem was that the Dursleys didn’t let him waste their shampoo and conditioner on his own hair. And he’d never gotten to have a bubble bath. There was probably something in his hair that he’d never gotten to wash out properly. Or there might be something wrong with using soap on hair that no-one had told him about. It was time to make his case to Aunt Petunia. And fast, before Uncle Vernon got home. He opened his room door and called for her as carefully as he could - loud enough to be heard but hopefully not so loudly that she told him off again for bellowing at her. She came up the stairs and stood there frowning at him with her arms folded in front of her.

“I… I think I know what the problem with my hair is,” he started hesitatingly. Aunt Petunia didn’t look reassured. In fact, she looked more worried and cross than ever. She probably didn’t believe he was smart enough to figure it out for himself, he thought. He forged on anyway.

“I think my hair isn’t properly clean, so it’s playing up,” he explained. “If I get to have a proper bubble bath like other kids and wash my hair with shampoo and conditioner, then I think it will lie flat like it should.” He showed her the picture nervously in explanation, even though he felt a bit ridiculous trying to prove his point with a little kid’s book. “See? Her hair lies flat while she’s in the bubble bath, and mine is like that too when I’m washing. It’s just that it doesn’t stay that way and I think maybe it’s because I only get to use soap. The label on the conditioner bottle says that it helps fight tangles and makes your hair smooth and silky; but I never get any so I think that’s what the problem is.”

Aunt Petunia was silent and had a weird look on her face, like she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. But it wasn’t a cross look so it was probably because she couldn’t believe he’d hit upon such a great solution to his freakish hair problem.

“It might be bread crusts too. That was my other idea,” he suggested thoughtfully, covering all possibilities carefully. “And once it’s properly washed I think it will stay put so we should go to the barber’s afterwards. I think we need to treat my hair more normally and it will behave more normally,” he concluded nervously but optimistically. He didn’t really think the part of the plan where they went to the barber’s would make any difference at all actually – it was really just an excuse that he thought was worth a try. If it was going to stay the same after a proper wash with shampoo and conditioner then he didn’t want it to be a hacked up mess like Aunt Petunia’s last effort.

“You… don’t think there’s anything especially unusual about what your hair’s doing?” his aunt asked.

“Well,” he said cautiously, “obviously it’s not being very normal, but there must be a reason for it being so freakish. In Science class, Mr. Stevens says if you don’t know why something odd is happening then you should research it, form a theory, and then test the theory. Otherwise it’s all just guesswork or superstition. What do you think, Aunt Petunia?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied in a cautious tone of her own. “But I think your theory might be worth testing. It’s a sensible approach to the problem at least. Yes, it’s worth a try.”

Harry loved his first ever bubble bath with steaming hot water. Aunt Petunia let him use her own shampoo and conditioner, but not Dudley’s. He thought that was a shame as Dudley’s conditioner smelt like coconut whereas Aunt Petunia’s was all flowery. It was still lovely though. She told him to keep his theory firmly in mind and think about it a lot while he was washing. It wasn’t like he’d forget, but all the same he did as he was told and thought an awful lot about how great it would be if his theory was right and his hair was silky smooth and mess free once it dried. Just normal hair, doing what normal hair should. He also thought quite a bit about how he was looking forward to not getting a walloping from Uncle Vernon, if this worked.

Much to his delight and his aunt’s satisfaction his hair was unusually tidy after his bath and stayed put after being combed straight. She gave him a whole chocolate chip biscuit to eat and it wasn’t even a broken one! And they took a trip to the barber’s right away and he got to talk to the stylist about what kind of haircut he wanted. Though as per Aunt Petunia’s instructions it had a fringe long enough to cover his scar. It was still a big improvement on Aunt Petunia’s efforts with the kitchen scissors yesterday.

She drew Uncle Vernon aside for a quiet conversation as soon as he got home that evening. Harry and Dudley tussled quietly for the prime spot to listen in at the closed door but they couldn’t hear what was said – they were talking too quietly. He thought it must’ve been in his favour though because although he got glared at a bit over dinner, the threatened spanking didn’t eventuate. And the next morning, his aunt and uncle looked even more pleased when he showed up to cook breakfast with clean neat hair that sat flat - just like it had when he’d walked out of the barber’s. Harry cut the crusts off his toast that morning and didn’t eat them though. Just in case.

Chapter Text

23rd June 1991 – Year 6

Year Six had been the best school year ever. Thanks to Mr. Stevens’ reference from the year before of not having cheated on anything all year, and being a hard worker, his new teacher Ms. Mitchell was quite friendly to him. Dudley and Harry still weren’t allowed to sit next to each other in class, but that was quite alright with Harry, and Dudley was used to that now anyway (and cheated off other kids’ work when he felt the need).

The school year was almost over, and it was Dudley’s birthday today. Harry was excited! Every year on Dudley’s birthday his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to an adventure park, hamburger joint or the cinema. And every year Harry was left behind with the very tiresome Mrs Figg in her house that smelled of boiled cabbage and cat wee. But this year, she’d broken her leg, so he wouldn’t have to listen to her stories about Tibbles or Tufty or any of the other cats that shed excessive amounts of fur everywhere and always seemed to stare at him too much. This year, the Dursleys were going to take him along to the zoo for Dudley’s eleventh birthday outing.

It was such a hot sunny Saturday that the Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams. They told the smiling lady in the van that Harry was lactose intolerant so he couldn’t have anything, but she proudly found a cheap lemon ice lolly that was dairy-free that Vernon then felt pressured to buy for him. Harry didn’t think he was seriously allergic to milk – just a little bit intolerant. He was alright with cheese sandwiches, yoghurt and custard slice at school. Last year Dudley had thrown a big tantrum after Harry had eaten all of “his” mint choc chip ice cream. He’d snuck into the kitchen late one night after everyone was asleep and eaten the remaining half tub, it was true. He’d thought that Dudley and Uncle Vernon would just assume the other had finished it off, but Dudley had previously gotten his dad to promise not to eat it, so Harry was caught. On questioning, Harry admitted it was him (when it was clear he was busted), and that he had felt a little sick that night after finishing two big bowls of ice cream. He’d hoped maybe the fact he had already suffered would mitigate his punishment, but he was given extra chores anyway and no dessert for a month. Uncle Vernon had tested him for a milk allergy the next evening by getting him to drink a giant glass of milk all in one sitting. It had tasted a little funny, and he’d thrown up all night afterwards. He’d avoided drinking milk or eating ice cream ever since. Yoghurt and cheese would have to do for his daily calcium.

Harry had a great morning wandering around the zoo licking his ice lolly, and staying a cautious distance away from the Dursleys. He especially liked the peacocks and the elephants. It was amazing how such a beautiful bird could have such a mournful, unattractive cry. And he liked how smart the elephants were; it was interesting reading about elephant graveyards and how good their memories were.

He got a chicken Caesar salad for lunch (just like Aunt Petunia’s but with no cheese), while Dudley and Piers got hamburgers and chips, with a knickerbocker glory each for dessert. Dudley insisted his knickerbocker glory wasn’t big enough and the staff needed to make it again. So Piers ended up with two desserts as he finished off Dudley’s first one as well as his own. Harry got fruit salad, and some pitying looks from the waitress for his allergy.

After lunch they went to the reptile house. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place – a huge boa constrictor. Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass watching the sleeping snake and whined for his father to make it move. But despite Vernon’s best efforts to wake it by rapping on the glass, it didn’t budge, and Dudley moved on, bored.

Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He glanced around to make sure the Dursleys were out of earshot, and murmured quietly to the snake. “It certainly must be a dull life, living in a tank your whole life with nothing but ssstupid people annoying you constantly whenever you try to ressst. I know the feeling. I hope they didn’t bother you too much.”

The snake woke up, and appeared to wink at Harry. He must’ve imagined it, of course. It jerked its head towards Uncle Vernon and Dudley, with a hiss and a look that somehow seemed to communicate, “It’sss alright, I get that all the time.”

Harry took a wary step backwards. Snakes couldn’t talk. He checked the plaque next to the tank. It told him it was a boa constrictor from Brazil, and bred in the zoo. Nothing about it having been trained to do any tricks, or be especially smart. The most amazing thing a boa constrictor was listed as being capable of was swallowing a pig whole.

He thought he heard a soft hiss of “Bye amigo,” as he walked away, dodging past Dudley who was waddling as fast as his pudgy legs could carry him towards the active and thus now interesting snake. But he ignored its hiss. Snakes couldn’t talk, and people couldn’t understand them. That wasn’t normal. Clearly he was coming down with the flu, and hearing things. No need to mention it to his aunt or uncle though. It’d only result in cod liver oil and no dessert for a week. He was simply going to ignore it all, and go and look at the fish in the aquarium in the building opposite instead.

Dudley and Piers teased him about being scared of snakes all the way home. He wouldn’t admit it to them of course, but he rather thought he was. Just not for the reasons they imagined.

Chapter Text

July 1991 – Year 6

Harry wasn’t sure or not whether the fact that school was over for the start of the summer holidays was a good thing or not. On one hand, he didn’t have to maintain his gruelling schedule of study and chores. On the other hand though, there was no escaping Dudley’s gang who visited the house every single day. Which was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house - either reading at the library or visiting the park. He liked to sit a little hidden in the little cubby house or up on a tree branch and daydream about going to Stonewall High when secondary school started in September. Dudley would be off to Uncle Vernon’s old school, Smeltings. He’d whined to his mother that he wanted Harry to go to Smeltings with him too. Probably so Harry would continue doing his homework and making notes for him. Aunt Petunia had praised Dudley for being such a sweet, loving boy. But Uncle Vernon had put his foot down; it was too exclusive and expensive for Harry to go too. They weren’t wasting the money on him, so Harry was off to the local comprehensive.

Dudley sulked about it for weeks but Harry was quietly thrilled. He’d be able to get better marks if he wanted, without his grades being compared to Dudley’s. Though his aunt and uncle’s reactions would of course have to be taken into account. He was all ready with arguments prepared about how Smeltings had higher educational standards than a mere comprehensive, and thus Dudley’s D was equivalent to his B. The very best part though was that Dudley would be boarding at Smeltings so wouldn’t be around for most of the year to bully Harry, or make him do his homework for him. It was going to be fantastic.

Harry thought it was a little risky, but he’d increased his grade in Maths for Year 6 to a B. There were two reasons for that. Firstly, he wanted to satisfy his teacher Ms. Mitchell who kept encouraging him to do better – she seemed to know somehow that he was good at Maths despite his average test results. Probably he had made a mistake answering too many questions correctly in class when called on, Harry thought. And secondly, he had learned Stonewall High streamed students according to ability, and he didn’t want to be bored silly in every single class.

It would also be a good test run to see how his aunt and uncle would cope with him getting better grades than Dudley. His teacher had been pleased, but his relatives hadn’t been at all impressed. Dudley hadn’t cared though, which seemed to take the edge off their disapproval. Dudley had warned him later, however, that he’d better not start swotting up and beating him in Physical Education, Art, or Technology if he wanted to keep all his teeth. Harry had promised not to, and that was that. “Nancy boy” subjects like Maths were apparently alright for him to excel in - at least from Dudley’s point of view.

***

One day in July Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy Dudley’s new Smeltings uniform, while Harry had to suffer through a visit with Mrs Figg and her tasteless cake. Dudley was so proud of his maroon tailcoat and orange knickerbockers that he showed off to his parents, but Harry was put to some effort to not laugh out loud, and didn’t trust himself to speak for quite some time as he tried desperately to drive out a mental image of an orange and red beachball Dudley used to own. Eventually he managed to calm himself enough to join the chorus of praise with the observation that Dudley looked like “a real young gentleman.” Dudley looked suspiciously at him with piggy eyes, but his aunt and uncle seemed pleased.

The next morning he found Aunt Petunia with her sewing basket out in the lounge room, sewing up some holes in what must be his new school uniform. It looked rather grey and unattractive and he thought he saw a couple of paint stains. But at least he wouldn’t have to wait until Christmas to get a proper uniform. She’d never let him help with any mending tasks before, so he offered up thanks in the way she liked best – chores. “Since you’re so busy with sewing for me this morning Aunt Petunia, shall I start breakfast for you?” he volunteered. He was just putting the toast in the rack on the table when Uncle Vernon came in with his newspaper, and Dudley with his Smeltings stick which he’d been hitting everything with constantly ever since he got it. Harry moved quickly to avoid being tripped by it, alerted by Dudley’s grin.

They heard the click of the letter-box and flop of letters on the doormat.

“Get the post, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

“Make Harry get it.”

“Get the post, Harry.”

Harry sighed and went and fetched the post. Aside from some rather ordinary mail, there was a letter for Harry – a yellowish envelope of some kind of heavy paper, with emerald green ink. He’d never had a letter before in his whole life, not even an overdue note from the library (he was allowed to visit there but not join, lest he lose books and the Dursleys be charged to replace them). The letter was definitely for him though, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

Mr H. Potter

The Smallest Bedroom

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

But it was only in his hands for a few moments. He’d only just opened it and caught a glimpse of more heavy parchment when a curious Uncle Vernon snatched it out of his hand.

The next few days were decidedly odd. Harry wanted to know what was going on, and he and Dudley put some effort into eavesdropping on conversations but they didn’t find much out. And after the first few days Harry found it all a bit frightening. He didn’t want a letter that came into the house in an egg. It just wasn’t proper. Was someone trying to scare them? He noticed there was a bit of a numerical pattern to it as well. After the first couple of days, it became clear the number of letters doubled with every day that passed. There were six on Thursday. Twelve letters for him on Friday, pushed under the door and through the window of the downstairs toilet, since the letterbox was nailed up. The twenty-four letters hidden inside eggs on Saturday were what convinced Harry to stop trying to get a copy of his letter. On Sunday when about forty (Harry suspected forty-eight) letters whizzed down the kitchen chimney and pelted out of the fireplace like bullets Harry ducked and scrambled worriedly out of the room just as quickly as the Dursleys did.

The miserable day long drive (with no breaks for food) to a gloomy-looking hotel in Cokeworth was the last straw. When the hotel owner delivered “about an ‘undred” (“ninety-six”, thought Harry) letters for Harry at breakfast, Uncle Vernon announced plans to pack up for another long drive to an unspecified destination. Harry wasn’t going to stand for it. Tomorrow there would be almost two hundred letters, and within a few more days they’d be literally buried under massive piles of letters if the progression stayed consistent. He decided to approach Aunt Petunia about the matter, since she seemed to be taking things more calmly than his uncle.

He waited until Uncle Vernon was off buying a road map and “supplies” and went to talk to Aunt Petunia in her hotel room while she packed. “Errr…. Aunt Petunia,” he started hesitantly, “I don’t… I know it’s not up to me, but I think whoever these crazy people are who are sending all these letters aren’t going to stop. In fact, I think the number of letters is doubling each day. In a few days we’re going to be buried under thousands of letters. Wouldn’t it be better to just read and write back and maybe get them to stop? Or we could go to the police? Because this is just ridiculous. We have to put a stop to this nonsense.”

Petunia sat down on the musty beige flower-patterned bedcovers with a resigned look. “They just won’t stop,” she muttered, almost to herself.

“They will if we make them, though. We can’t have crazy people sending an avalanche of letters every day,” encouraged Harry. “I could write back, and tell them to stop if you think it will help.”

Petunia raised her head and gave him a very thoughtful look. It was unusually intent. Usually when she looked at him she didn’t really see him. She was just looking in his direction to get his attention, or looking at some flaw - not gazing like she was now. Like she was trying to figure him out.

“I’ll talk to Vernon,” she said, slowly and thoughtfully. “If he agrees we’ll let you read one of your letters. You may as well. I think… it’s possible you might be smart enough to know the right way to respond to them.”

When Uncle Vernon returned that morning from his shopping expedition with a map and a plan (that he didn’t share) he was raring to go, but Aunt Petunia pulled him aside for a quiet conference. Dudley and Harry were given some money to buy snacks from a vending machine. Dudley let Harry have the flavoured peanuts that he decided were too spicy, and spent all the rest of the money on himself. Harry wasn’t impressed, but decided it wasn’t worth making a fuss over. Dudley was cross after missing out on so many meals the day before, and was likely to be looking for someone or something to take out his frustrations on. Harry didn’t want it to be him.

When they emerged, Aunt Petunia quietly retrieved an extra couple of copies of his letter from the front desk, and told him they were going for a private talk. Uncle Vernon glared at him as they passed. “You’d better think smart about this, boy,” he said threateningly. “You listen to your aunt.” Harry promised he would. He had no idea what his aunt was going to say, but he knew better than to question Uncle Vernon any time he used that particular tone of voice.

Aunt Petunia paused and looked back at Vernon. “Don’t book us in for another night, dear,” Aunt Petunia said to Vernon. “Whether this works or not, we may as well head home. Or at least somewhere more comfortable than this horrid place.” The clerk at the front desk rolled his eyes at that, but Aunt Petunia didn’t even notice.

Once up in the hotel room, Harry at last got to open his letter, under the apprehensive eyes of his aunt. “It’s not a joke,” she said nervously, as he broke the strange wax seal on the back of the letter, which was addressed to him in Room 17 at the Railview Hotel, Cokeworth. “It sounds like it, but it’s not.”

Harry read with puzzlement about his invitation to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and quickly skimmed through the list of required supplies. He desperately wanted to ask if this was a joke, but Aunt Petunia had already told him it wasn’t. So he didn’t know what to say, really.

“So… there’s some people who think magic is real, and they want me to go to a school for magicians?” he hazarded.

Aunt Petunia looked distinctly sour about the whole conversation. “You never wondered why so many freakish things happen around you? There is… magic. It’s horrible, and useless, and brings nothing but grief. But it is, sadly, real. It stole my sister. Ruined our family. And my career. Got both your parents killed. Don’t go thinking this is a good thing. It will bring you nothing but trouble.” She leaned forward with an intent gaze. “You have dreams? Maybe to be a lawyer? A doctor? Work with computers? You choose magic and you give that up forever. Their world, their backwards bigoted world will swallow you up and you’ll never escape. They don’t even have those jobs.”

“How did you know I want to be a doctor?” asked Harry, amazed. He’d never said a word to her about his ambitions. And it seemed a safer question than asking about magic.

“You had to have something in mind, with the amount you study,” she explained logically. “You start at their school and you’ll never come back to the ordinary world. It’s not a happy dreamland. It’s not some other magical world full of rainbows. It’s just weird freaks living in their backwards ghettos hidden inside our towns, banning pens because they’re too modern and only quills will do, and never learning to drive cars. Most of them don’t even know what a car is.”

“Did you say it stole mum? Was she special? I don’t think... I don’t think I’m a wizard, Aunt Petunia. I haven’t done anything unusual,” he said worriedly. It was never good to admit to anything unusual. But he thought about the snake at the zoo. And the time his hair wouldn’t behave. And the shrinking jumper. And he knew he might be a freak, after all. Despite every effort he’d made to be normal.

“We both know you have,” she sniffed. “And yes, your mum turned out to be one of them. Oh, she got a letter just like that one and then disappeared off to – that school – and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog-spawn, turning teacups into rats.” Aunt Petunia took a deep breath before she continued. “Thought she was better than us. Our parents thought so too. There was a lot less money at home after that. That school’s even more expensive than Smeltings. After years of that there was no money for me to go to university. Not that I needed to, after I met Vernon. But the point is it all went on Lily. Learning useless spells and how to treat everyone like they were inferior to her just because she could wave a magic wand around. And then she went and got herself blown up, killed in their stupid war. Full of torture and death and wizards acting like normal people were just… just animals, either silly little animals to protect because they’re so stupid and can’t look after themselves, or dangerous animals you needed to kill but not real, nothing real that can think for itself, decide things for itself. Not anything as good as precious Lily and her boorish bully of a husband and all the other witches and wizards in the world,” Aunt Petunia was practically shrieking by the end of her rant. It seemed like she’d been wanting to say all this for years, and was all just pouring out of her like a dam had burst.

Harry’s head was reeling. Magic was real? His mother was a witch, a real witch, and she’d been what – blown up?

“It’s all real, really? And my mum was blown up? In a war? Not a car crash?” he asked weakly.

“It’s real, more’s the pity. And yes, your parents both died fighting in one of their ridiculous terrorist skirmishes over who’s the biggest lot of bigots who deserve to rule over normal people. Your father too. It wasn’t a car crash. Simpler to say that. We swore we’d raise you to be normal. And you’ve done well,” she said in a more normal tone of voice, calming down a bit. “You’re doing well in school, do your chores, help in the garden. You don’t do as much freakish stuff as you used to, either. You might not do as well as Dudley does, but you’re doing… alright. Do you want to throw all that away to learn a bunch of magic tricks from an old crackpot? They don’t care about you, you know. Dumped you on our doorstep one night without so much as a by your leave. Didn’t even bother to knock on the door to tell me my own sister was dead. Normal people don’t matter to them. So you listen to me, and listen well. You write a letter, right now. Tell them you won’t go, and you come back home with us to a normal life with normal people. Then you study hard and get a scholarship and go to university. Or else you throw it all away to live with a bunch of crazy bigoted cultists. You pick that and you forget about ever living a normal life, and we’ll wash our hands of you for good. You go live with them at boarding school year round. If they’ll pay for you, that is. They might have a scholarship for orphans, I don’t know.”

Harry had sometimes wished something wonderful would happen to take him away from the Dursleys. That maybe his parents were still alive, or a long lost relative would claim him. Now he had a chance to leave, but he didn’t know if it would really take him somewhere better or not. He asked Petunia a few more questions, about what the school was like and what really happened to his parents. She didn’t know how they died except that they were “instrumental in the defeat of the dark lord Voldemort”, which she only knew because she got a letter announcing their posthumous receipt of “Order of Merlin” medals, as the next of kin. The school was run by a crazy old man and a bunch of ghosts, and half the subjects didn’t even need you to be magical to be able to learn them. But normal people were forbidden to learn their secret wizard business, she explained with a bitter tone of voice. He thought about it some more but in the end his path was clear.

He wrote a letter, which Aunt Petunia took with a very sour face. She promised to get it to Hogwarts as soon as possible but she refused to explain how, or what it had to do with owls. Harry was handed over to his Uncle’s tender care which consisted of taking himself and the two boys to the pub for hot chips. And maybe “just a drink or two” for his uncle, and lemonade for them. Aunt Petunia reappeared after lunch and with a curt nod to Harry indicated that the “nasty business with the letter” was done, and they all packed into the car to return home. Harry looked at the frowns on his family’s faces at the whole sorry business, and knew he’d made the right choice.

***

In Dumbledore’s office at Hogwarts Hagrid was listening to Dumbledore’s explanation about Harry’s situation and how he’d like Hagrid to retrieve Harry from the overprotective clutches of his aunt and uncle that evening, and take him shopping the next day. Hagrid was beaming and nattered about his plans to bake a lovely birthday cake for Harry. Dumbledore glanced over to the door, just before it opened to reveal Snape sweeping in with a sneer and a swirl of his dark robes.

“It appears I have been appointed to the august position of being a priority messenger owl for the convenience of one of the most spoiled brats likely to ever attend this institution,” he complained, tossing a rather ordinary looking envelope addressed to “Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts, Scotland” onto Dumbledore’s rather crowded desk. Dumbledore looked at the reverse of the envelope with delighted surprise to find it was from Harry Potter.

“Well Severus,” he said merrily, “I suppose we should have considered that the dear boy might’ve been put to some trouble to locate a magical owl to carry his response! It certainly explains why we haven’t heard back yet. How enterprising of them to approach you. I had no idea you were in contact with them, hmm? I thought we talked about that long ago – for Harry’s safety.”

“I am not in contact with the brat or his family at all. This is an exceptional circumstance, obviously,” sneered Snape.

Dumbledore slit the letter open with a silver handled bone letter opener, but the twinkle in his eyes didn’t last as he read Harry’s response.

With a voice of unbelieving surprise he announced, “Harry Potter is not coming to Hogwarts.”