Chapter Text
For the past ten years, Harry Potter has lived at number four, Privet Drive, and he could say that honestly, his life wasn't too bad.
Harry lived with his auntie and uncle, Mr and Mrs Dursley, as well as their son Dudley. His own parents had died when Harry was very very young, and so he was given to the Dursleys to be taken care of. Harry himself could barely remember his own parents. Mrs Dursley would sometimes complain about her sister and her husband, saying harsh things about how they deserved their fate. Harry would think hard, trying to force the memories he had as a baby to come back to him. He was sure they were in there, deep in his head. He wasn't sure if he believed Mrs Dursley, at least not fully, and wanted to check what he knew. Alas, the memories he could remember didn't tell him much. Sometimes, they made him more confused, because they didn't fully make sense.
Harry would imagine a house by a beach. It was sunny and warm and had many nice things in it -- but not lavish in the way the Dursleys house was, which was overflowing with nice things all with the tags still on them. The beach house had many rooms for many residents, and was personalised for each one. Harry's room was cozy, somewhat like his bedroom under the stairs in real life, but much nicer. He imagined tiny lights on the walls and ceiling, like stars, so he could be comfortable in the darkness but still have a low glow to see. The lights would turn on and off whenever he needed them to, so he didn't have to struggle and squint, like he needed to do in his real bedroom, which didn't have any lights. In real life, Harry needed to rely on the slits of light that filtered through the gaps in the wooden door just to fumble around and find his things.
And while this beach house was nice in his mind, Harry was certain it couldn't be a real place he had been to before. He had never been to a beach before, after all! When people talked about the beaches in Britain, they talked of tall cliffs and strong winds, rocky shores and the freezing spray of water. The beach in his mind was a blinding, glittering blue. The water was calm and still, reflective like a mirror. If he focused steadily enough, he would be able to pick out the fish in the water, darting around like colourful specks. The sand was fine and spotted with colourful shards of glass, worn smooth and translucent from the waves. A rainbow of a landscape. In the distance, birds soared over a pastel horizon. A flying motorcycle leaves a trail of vapour in an otherwise cloudless sky.
Harry thought his imagination was kind of neat. Maybe a little troublesome, though. Mrs Dursley would always catch him unawares, pulling at his ear and jolting him out of his fantasies.
"Pay attention," she would sneer at him, and Harry would feel a flush of shame that his daydreams would pull him so deeply out of the real world. Mrs Dursley would rant loudly about his lack of focus which caused him to mess everything up, and Harry could kind of understand where she was coming from, which made it a little worse.
He didn't like it when his imagination ran so far away from him that time seemed to pass in a blur. It was handy sometimes -- he would be so caught up in his head while doing chores that when the next time he looked down at his hands, the clothes were folded or the floors were mopped and he could just carry on.
There was just the allure of the beach house, that was sometimes so real it frightened him. It was a haven, it was a dream, but sometimes Harry worried it was going to become realer than real life.
Would that be a bad thing, though?
The shared living space of the beach house was full of storybook, with colourful pictures. The kind Harry always wanted to borrow from his primary school library, but couldn't because if Dudley found it, he would rip it to pieces and Harry would be the one in trouble. Within the world in his head, Harry could just imagine the books he wanted to read, and they couldn't be destroyed by anyone else. He made up stories of a kid with a magic teddy bear, of a cool girl-next-door that solves mysteries in her neighbourhood. Of a magical moose that stood for honour, of a boy that grew up on the streets that was sneaky, but strong. It didn't really matter what their life was like, so long as it was interesting. So long as he could focus on their lives, instead of his own, in number four, Privet Drive.
Because maybe Harry really was the troublesome kid that Mr and Mrs Dursley had good reason to be wary of.
Sometimes, when Dudley was being more physical than Harry was comfortable with, Harry would push back with a frightening temper and swear with words he didn't even know he knew. Sometimes, Harry felt like his feelings would whack him over his head out of nowhere, and he would begin bawling like a freak for no reason.
Sometimes, Harry felt the sudden and inexplicable need to take something. Something small that no one would miss. It was stealing, he told himself, but the urge would remain.
Once, while cleaning Dudley's room, he found an opened packet of black liquorice that the bigger boy had dropped in between his bed and nightstand. Harry stole the rest of the packet, squirrelling it away in a hidden alcove underneath the stairs. When he first found it, the liquorice had tasted so earthy and sweet and victorious, and he decided that they were his favourite lollies in the world.
Harry then decided to attempt to get a packet for himself. He didn't get an allowance like Dudley, but he always stumbled across loose change while cleaning. These ones, he rationalised, didn't count as stealing because obviously Mr Dursley didn't want the lint covered five pence coin that was slotted between the couch cushions. This was the equivalent of finding a penny on the ground outside. He was working for his keep! He worked until he saved up enough to get his own bag of sweets at the lolly shop, just for him.
But when Harry bit into the stick of liquorice, he nearly gagged at the flavour. The remainder of the packet still sits tucked between his mattress at the wall.
He's not sure what happened -- he remembers how much Dudley's sweets tasted like victory, like joy.
Harry wonders, did he only like that liquorice because he stole it? Did the new ones taste worse because he worked hard and bought it with money?
Maybe he was a bit of a bad kid. Maybe they were right.
But then, but then --
But then magic is real.
Harry's life turns very quickly into a flurry of owl feathers and letters, a sudden journey, a visit to a real beach (that really sucks compared to the beach in his head). A homemade birthday cake, a trip to a magical alley, and shopping. Oh, Harry had no idea about this part of himself, but it turned out that a piece of him really loved shopping.
But the main thing that this magical world had brought him was this:
It felt like... Harry was finally present.
Up until that point in life, Harry sometimes felt like his body was like a car, and he was sitting in the passenger seat. Not quite driving, but not quite uninvolved either -- it was like he was reading the map, and making small talk with the actual driver so that they didn't fall asleep and run off the road. He thought it was fairly normal and honestly didn't have a lot of complaints about it. It meant he got to daydream a lot, as if he's looking out the window of the car and watching the scenery go past.
But, in the moment of time when Harry first grabs his magic wand, sending a burst of sparks into the air -- he couldn't explain it, but Harry felt like... Harry. This was him. Magic was him. Maybe this was what it was like to live life, grow up, be himself.
For the first time, Harry could stand in this world and feel real. That the imaginations and his fantasies in his head -- they were great, and he still loved them, but this was a life he actually wanted to be in. Be here. To keep going.
He couldn't wait to see what comes next.