Chapter Text
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were proud to say they were perfectly normal, or at least they tried to appear as the pinnacle of normalcy. In their eyes, they were the last people anyone would suspect to be involved in some sort of mysterious and illegal activity.
Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and, in their opinion, there was no finer boy anywhere.
But they had another boy in their house, locked inside the tiny cupboard under the stairs. He was anything but normal in their eyes. He was the son of Petunia’s sister, who, to Petunia, was a miserable memory—so anything related to her was just as miserable. If the boy’s freakishness wasn’t reason enough to dislike him, his very genetic makeup was anything but ordinary.
The boy had bright green eyes and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. If that wasn’t enough to raise eyebrows, he had multicolored hair. It wasn’t obvious at first glance because the outer layer was normal black, but hidden beneath that curtain of black, at the back of his head, was a layer of red.
People often stopped petunia when that boy was literally to ask about him.
She hated the attention that boy get.
Petunia had tried everything to get rid of it. She had tried to cut it all off, but the very next day it would grow back again. So she did what she thought was the only usable option: she ordered the boy to cover his hair completely with a beanie.
Petunia had never wanted this abnormality in her house, but she hadn’t had a choice. His parents had decided to die one day, leaving the boy in their care.
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To Harry Potter, who was just ten years old, he knew he lived with his relatives—but relatives never meant family.
Because families don't hurt each other or hate each other.
They made it obvious they hated him. Even if they didn’t make it obvious to others, they made it obvious to Harry. Harry had seen his classmates who lived with their relatives, but they were never sad. They all had presents for their birthdays; they always had clothes that fit them.
Sometimes he asked himself why me? But it was not like anyone would answer.
Harry couldn’t remember the last time his aunt had bought him anything. He had tried everything to make his aunt love him. He learned new recipes, he helped her clean, he never talked back.But not once had his aunt looked at him with anything close to compassion.
With every day that passed, Harry had grown quieter and sadder.but he learned how to live too .
He learned when to speak and when to not .
He learned how to do things.
He now never complained, never shed a tear, even when his uncle hit him or Dudley punched him.
He knew he was different—people had often told him so—but that might have been because his relatives had done their very best to create a negative image of him.
Even if he told anyone they didn’t treat him right, everyone thought he was a liar.
Harry had not known his own name until he was six; he had always thought it was “boy” or “freak.”
It was June 23, early morning.
Harry was in his small cupboard where he had to bend his legs just to sleep properly.
He knew it was Dudley’s birthday.
Dudley had talked about nothing else yesterday.
“Hope he gets a brain for his birthday… not that anyone’d notice the difference.”
Just yesterday that good-for-nothing cousin of his had broken his glasses. He wondered if they were even usable now, but he used some more tape to fix them.
He could hear footsteps. He knew it was time for his aunt to arrive.
“One, two, three...”
The door of the cupboard was flung open.
“Get out here this instant and help me with breakfast, boy! I’m not running a hotel for lazy little freeloaders!”
Harry muttered something under his breath but came out of his cupboard.
It was the same daily routine now; no need to get angry .
While he was cooking food for them, Dudley—the no-brain cousin—was having a tantrum about getting two fewer gifts than last year.
Stabbing the bacon with the spatula like it had personally offended him, he muttered under his breath, quiet enough that Aunt Petunia wouldn’t hear:
“Thirty-seven presents and he’s still crying for more. I’ve never had even one… and he gets thirty-seven.”
After fifteen minutes of constant tantrum, it finally grew a little quieter—until his uncle decided to ruin Harry’s already not-so-good mood and started a conversation about him to his aunt.
It appear his aunt can't throw him at Mrs figgs house because she has broken her leg and they fear if they leave the boy here in their house harry would destroy it.
What do they assume me to be a ticking bomb or something harry thought
“Boy!” he barked, jabbing a sausage-sized finger at Harry. “You’re coming with us to the zoo after all. Mrs. Figg’s gone and broken her leg. Can’t have you staying there now, can we?”
He did want to go to the zoo, but going anywhere with the Dursleys was more punishment than fun.
Harry stared at his uncle for a moment before putting their food on the table.
His aunt put some some bread on his plate too.
At least he got to eat some today.
Dudley’s friend was coming too, and both Dudley and his friend did their absolute best to poke Harry with their elbows the entire time.
It was not like he could hit them back , once he had done it and we'll the circumstances were not very good.he was locked in his cupboard without food and blues on his skin.
Harry wondered what the charges were for murdering two ten-year-olds and how he would run away—but he kept his sanity in place and his conscience working. Murder was not the answer even if they victim deserved it.
Harry sighed.
They visited all around the zoo.
Harry admitted to himself that Dudley surely resembled a well-fed pig.
They ate there too, and Harry got the leftovers.
Their final stop was the reptile house.
Harry, finally free from the eagle eyes of his dear aunt who had warned him continuously, “No funny business”
he would never choose to do anything weird. Things just happened; it wasn’t like Harry wanted them to happen.
Sometimes he wondered if he was some sort of hero from a wicked fairy tale where people had magic, but then he thought someone like him would probably be the villain or a side character with a tragic backstory.
Now that his aunt was busy with yet another of Dudley’s tantrums about wanting to make the snake move , he sneaked to the boa constrictor enclosure.
Harry stood in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself—no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake him up; at least he got to visit the rest of the house.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were level with Harry’s.
It winked.
Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t. He looked back at the snake and winked too.
“Hello, little speaker.”
“Hello, Mr. Snake.”
The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, who were knocking on the glass trying to make it move.
“I get that all the time,” the snake hissed.
“Must be boring and annoying,” Harry murmured, not sure if anyone else could hear him. “Where are you from?”
The snake jabbed its tail at the sign.
“So you were born here… but do you want to go back to Brazil?”
The snake nodded.
Harry thought how wonderful it would be if this snake could go free, but before he could do anything—
A deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump.
“DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT’S DOING!”
Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.
“Out of the way, you,” he said, punching Harry in the ribs.
Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard onto the concrete floor.
What came next happened so fast no one saw how—one second Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next they had leapt back with howls of horror.
The glass front of the boa constrictor’s tank had vanished.
The snake slid swiftly out onto the floor—and Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, “Brazil, here I come… Thanksss, amigo.”
The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.
“But the glass,” he kept saying, “where did the glass go?”
The zoo director himself apologized to the Dursleys again and again, but Harry knew what was waiting once they got home.
He knew it had been him. He was almost certain—after all, he had really wanted that snake to be free. He knew weird things happened around him, but now he was sure.
It was real magic.
And he was really magical like the wizards in the stories.
But as much he was happy to think that he knew what he was going to face once he reached home and that was not going to be pleasant.
Uncle Vernon was quiet all the way home, but he certainly wasn’t once Piers was gone and the front door closed behind them.
The moment they stepped inside, Harry was grabbed by the collar, thrown to the floor—and that was the last thing he remembered before everything went black.