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The crack under the cupboard door let in a strip of light in the mornings.
Harry had spent a long time thinking about that strip of light. It moved across the floor as the morning went on — slowly, the way things moved when you were watching them, the way the minute hand on the kitchen clock never seemed to move until suddenly it had. By the time it reached the far wall, Aunt Petunia would be calling for Dudley to come down for breakfast, and Harry would lie still and count to twenty before opening the cupboard door, because it was better to be already at the sink washing up than to be seen coming out.
He was good at that. At timing.
He was good at a lot of things that didn't have names.
Breakfast at number four was a loud thing. Dudley ate with both elbows on the table and the television going and his trainers squeaking against the chair legs, and Uncle Vernon read the paper with the particular rustling of a man who wanted everyone to know he was reading the paper. Aunt Petunia moved between the counter and the table in her dressing gown, refilling things, smoothing things, saying yes, Diddy-kins in the voice she reserved only for Dudley.
Harry ate his toast standing at the counter.
It wasn't a rule, exactly. No one had told him to stand. It was just that the table had four chairs and there were four of them, and three of the chairs were already occupied, and the fourth was where Uncle Vernon put his briefcase in the mornings, and somewhere along the way Harry had understood that the counter was where he went.
He was good at understanding things that no one said out loud.
The toast was slightly burnt on one side. He ate that side first because it was better to get it over with, and because if he left it Aunt Petunia would press her lips together in the way that meant he was being ungrateful, and he didn't want her to press her lips together. It was not a comfortable thing to be on the receiving end of.
Dudley said something and Uncle Vernon laughed — a short bark of a laugh, the paper lowering briefly so he could look at his son with the expression Harry had catalogued as proud. He'd looked it up once in the dictionary Dudley had thrown at him, which had seemed like a useful book to keep. Proud: feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's own achievements. He wasn't sure that was quite right for the expression, because it was also the face Uncle Vernon made when Dudley broke something and found it funny, but it seemed as close as he was going to get.
He ate his toast. He watched the strip of light move across the kitchen floor, which was easier than watching the table.
After breakfast there was washing up, and after washing up there was whatever Aunt Petunia needed done, and after that there was the garden if it was warm enough or the cupboard if it wasn't. Today it was warm enough. Harry sat on the back step with his knees up and watched next door's cat pick its way along the top of the fence with the composed expression of something that owned everything it surveyed.
He liked the cat. The cat didn't look at him any particular way.
Most things looked at him in particular ways. The neighbours looked at him with the slightly uncertain look of people who had been told something about him without being told quite what, so they'd filled the gap with something unflattering. The kids at school looked at him with the cheerful contempt of people following Dudley's lead, because Dudley set the lead on most things and Harry was the sort of thing you followed the lead on. Teachers looked at him with the resigned look of someone waiting for the next incident, which wasn't fair because the incidents were never exactly his fault, but there was no good way to explain that without sounding like he was making excuses.
He didn't make excuses. It didn't help.
The cat sat at the end of the fence and cleaned its paw and ignored him entirely, which was the best he usually hoped for.
He thought about the thing that had happened yesterday, which he'd been trying not to think about. He'd been in the kitchen reaching for the cereal — the good cereal, Dudley's cereal, but Dudley wasn't in the kitchen and Harry was very hungry and it had seemed worth the risk — and his hand had been inches away from the shelf and then the box had moved. Just slid, smooth and quiet, about three inches to the left. Away from him.
He'd stood there for a moment. Then he'd closed the cupboard and eaten toast instead.
It wasn't the first time something like that had happened. Things moved, sometimes, or broke, or a light flickered when he was in the room for no reason the adults could find. Uncle Vernon's face when it happened was the face Harry liked least, the one that was very still and very careful and promised something worse later. So Harry had learned to be careful. To keep his hands still. To want things quietly, from a distance, without reaching.
He was very good at wanting things from a distance.
Next door's cat found something interesting on the fence post and crouched over it with professional focus. Harry watched it and didn't think about the cereal box and didn't think about the way Dudley had laughed at breakfast with his father laughing back and didn't think about the strip of light on the cupboard floor that moved and moved and never quite reached him before it disappeared.
He was good at not thinking about things.
He was, he thought, good at quite a lot.
He just hadn't worked out yet what any of it was for.