Chapter Text
For as long as anyone could remember, little Harry Potter had never spoken a word.
That doesn't mean that he couldn't make a noise. He makes lots of noises, when he thinks nobody's listening. He hums and whistles and chirps, and occasionally, very very occasionally, he sings - albeit not in a language anyone would recognise.
But the one thing he never does is speak.
His Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon thought he was a freak anyway, so they never really thought anything of his inability to communicate. He could understand them well enough to do his chores, and could nod or shake his head when they absolutely needed an answer from him, so that was good enough for them. If anything, they preferred him not speaking - if nothing else, it meant that he couldn't go to 'that horrible school', whatever that meant.
He was glad. Normal school was bad enough, he'd hate to have to go to a horrible one.
He'd tried to speak, of course. As he'd grown up, he'd watched his relatives, and opened his mouth and tried to shape the noises into the sounds they made. It never worked. He didn't really understand why.
But Harry Potter didn't feel upset that he couldn't make his mouth do the right things, that people wanted him to do. He could make his voice do other things - things that none of the other boys and girls, or even adults could do.
See, Harry Potter knows he can do things that other boys and girls can't. His whistles and chirrups can make unexpected things happen - things that nobody could explain.
When he was four years old, his Aunt Petunia had set him to do the washing up after dinner, while the rest of them watched Eastenders in the other room. Harry didn't mind. He hummed to himself while he washed the plates, a happy little tune that he thought of as his Washing Up Song, and as the tune came from deep within his throat, it grew an invisible set of hands which picked up the cleaned plates and rinsed the soap suds off them, and dried them with a clean teatowel, and neatly stacked them in the right cupboard. It was much easier than trying to get them into the cupboard by himself - he needed a box to stand on, and his Aunt rarely bothered to find him one. He liked the invisible hands - he couldn't see them, but in his mind's eye, he liked to picture them as cartoons with big white gloves, like Mickey Mouse.
Not that he'd been able to watch Mickey Mouse on TV, but he'd seen pictures in school, and sometimes could peer around the corner while Dudley watched cartoons. He liked cartoons. They had lots of happy songs. He couldn't sing any of the words, but he liked to hum the tunes when he heard them. Those tunes didn't physically do anything, obviously - they weren't washing up songs, or like any of his other doing-things-songs. They were just songs to make you feel happy - but to Harry, songs that made you feel happy were pretty magical too.
Washing up was going well, and Harry was having lots of fun. He had made his way through all of the plates, and the cutlery, and was working his way through the teacups. He was enjoying humming his cheerful washing up tune, and giggling as the crockery span around him.
His happiness was cut short, though, by a piercing scream from behind him. It was jarring, and he had to slam his hands over his ears. It was so discordant that he completely forgot what note he was humming. The teacups stopped moving, and as one, dropped to the floor with an almighty crash.
His Uncle Vernon came stomping through, moments later, to find his wife gibbering something about floating teacups, and freaky business, and his good-for-nothing nephew surrounded by soap suds and shattered crockery.
As Uncle Vernon dragged him, painfully, by his shoulder to his cupboard, this was the first time Harry remembered being upset about not being able to talk like normal boys and girls. If he could talk, he could explain to them that it wasn't his fault that he broke all the teacups. His Aunt spoiled the tune, not him - didn't they know that? Wasn't it obvious?
He heard the heavy bolt slide across, locking the cupboard from the outside. His uncle had physically thrown him into the cupboard, and he hurt from where he'd slammed into the wall. Normally when he was locked in his cupboard, he'd could make little floating globes of light appear with a couple of quiet little chirrups. But right now, it hurt to breathe in, so he sat in darkness, and in silence, and tried not to cry, because that hurt even more.
That day, he learned not to let grown-ups know about his noises. Grown-ups didn't like them.
---
As Harry grew older, he learned that regardless of how naturally the noises came to him, nobody else seemed to be able to make their own doing-things-songs. When he was six, he tried to show a girl in his school how to make things happen with noises like he did, but she didn't seem to understand. It didn't help that he couldn't talk to her - none of the other kids would talk to him, but she was nice. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and she didn't seem to mind that he couldn't talk. She didn't talk much, either, but she liked putting her hand up and answering questions in class, so she definitely could speak.
She also seemed to understand Harry's confused looks when he got stuck, far better than any of the teachers could, and whispered little tips and advice. Slowly, he started to catch up - after all, most parents start trying to teach their kids how to read, write, and count before they start school. Harry's relatives had only really been interested in teaching him how to use the vacuum cleaner, and the cooker, and how to pull weeds out of the garden, and school was a scary time for him, to start with.
Sometimes, she'd try to hum or whistle a little tune like Harry, and Harry would smile encouragingly. But nothing would happen, no matter how much she tried.
She always enjoyed watching Harry do things, though. One time, he made her crayons dance on the table with a couple of whistles. Her favourite was when he chirped a little tune which made spinning lights that only the two of them could see. He did that one for her a lot. He loved to look of wonder on her face as she reached out and tried to touch them - Harry added a little vibrato to his tune, and they quivered like her touch tickled them and danced out of the way. That always made her giggle.
He treasured the thought that he finally had a friend.
Then, towards the end of his second year of school, he came in one morning and she was gone. The teacher told the class that her parents had moved away to another city, and she'd transferred to a different school. None of the other kids seemed to care too much - she didn't really talk to anyone but Harry. Harry had lots of questions he wanted to ask, about where she'd gone and whether they'd see her again. But he couldn't, so he stayed in his seat. He was very good at crying quietly, from years locked in a cupboard, and therefore nobody really paid much attention to the little dark-haired boy in the corner with tears in his eyes. They never really did.
He'd learned the hard way, that day, that people who liked him wouldn't stay for very long.
---
By the time Harry was nine years old, he'd learned a lot of things. He'd learned that not being able to talk was called being mute, and that the people who ran the school thought he'd grow out of it. They hired a person called a 'speech therapist' to try to help, but he wasn't much good, and Harry just got frustrated. His lips wouldn't form the right shapes, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make the word-noises come out. It was like his ability to make doing-things noises got in the way, and he couldn't explain it.
He did have a nice teacher when he was nine. Miss Marshes was sweet, and pretty in a tired sort-of-way, and had a jar of butterscotch candies on her desk for when a boy or girl got full marks on a test, or were extra-helpful in class. She understood that Harry didn't like playing outside with the other children, and often found excuses for him to stay inside at breaktime and help her setting up her classes, or tidying around.
He thought he might show her his doing-things noises, but he didn't really dare. He didn't want to upset her, and adults got scared and angry when he did that. So instead he stacked the paint bottles, and sorted the pencils by colour, and sometimes he'd sit on a bean bag at the back of class and she'd tell him stories about dragons and magic. Sometimes she'd play the radio, and sing along. He couldn't sing the words, but he could hum the tune. She'd wink, and smile conspiratorially, and pass him a sweet, cautioning him to finish it before the others get inside so they don't get jealous.
Miss Jean Marshes had her concerns about Harry, of course. She'd seen how young Dudley treated his cousin, and how small he was, and how sometimes he turned up to school with bruises. She'd even tried to raise them, but her worries fell on deaf ears. One of the school governors was a work colleague of Mr Dursley, and both he and the headmaster thought Mr Dursley to be a fine man, and his wife an upstanding member of the community. They insisted that Harry was just a clumsy boy. So she did what she could, and she tried not to show Harry how angry and upset she got when he came in with a limp.
One time, however, she brought in a book. 'British Sign Language - for beginners'. "I found this in the library - maybe we could learn it together?" She smiled at the shy, introverted, but heartbreakingly sweet young boy. He nodded eagerly and hummed happily.
She turned the page, and they started with the alphabet. She tapped her left thumb with her right index finger. "That's an 'a', for apple." Harry dutifully copied the motion. She pinched her fingers together to make circles. "That's a 'b', for book." It looked more like she was trying to make a glasses shape rather than a b, but he supposed that a capital B looked a bit like a pair of glasses on its side. Besides, he needed his glasses to read a book, so it made a lot of sense when he thought of it like that.
Bit by bit, they worked their way through, and when break ended, they were only half way through the alphabet. She kept the book in her desk, though, and most breaktimes from then on, they'd practice. Some of the gestures looked like the letters, so they were easy, and some of them were a bit weird, but he came up with ways of remembering them, and by the time summer came around, they'd read the book cover to cover more times than they could count, and during the breaktimes, they communicated almost exclusively in sign from then on.
Harry was devastated at the end of the year when he graduated Miss Marshes' class, but he gave her some wild flowers that he'd picked from the woods near the school, and a card he'd made himself with thick paper and felt tip pen. Under where he signed the card, he'd drawn five little pairs of hands, spelling out his name in sign. She took it reverently, gave him the biggest hug, and dabbed at her eyes. She pulled out a full bag of the sweets from her desk drawer for him, and told him not to let his cousin see them.
He hid them in his cupboard when he got home, and whenever his aunt and uncle locked him in there, he'd savour one of the sweets, and remind himself that not everyone hated him. They lasted the whole summer, and he kept the packet as a reminder of the first gift he'd ever been given.
---
One day, in the early summer of 1991, an envelope was pushed through the letterbox, addressed to Harry. It was the first time in his memory that a letter was addressed directly to Harry, and he hid it inside his shirt before anyone noticed it.
He didn't get chance to look at it until later that evening, in his cupboard, long after everyone else had gone to bed.
By the light of his glowing orbs, he flipped the envelope open.
'HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Mr Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress'
He frowned, and looked again at the envelope. It was addressed to:
Mr Harry Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
He sighed wordlessly, and stuffed the letter back into the envelope. Another one of Dudley's pranks. More creative than usual - and someone must have helped him with the spelling and penmanship - but who else would know he lived under the stairs?