Chapter Text
Non-deterministic Probability - refers to a process or system whose outcomes are inherently unpredictable and cannot be exactly replicated, even when starting from the same initial conditions.
"If I so much as whiff bad conduct on you when I get back—boy, believe me when I tell you you'll be staying in the car with the doors locked and the windows up!" Aunt Petunia snapped. Today was the day of her fortnightly manicure, but the threat of her house being burned down or demolished by her six-year-old nephew was far too high to ignore, so she had resolved to leave him under the temporary custody of the local bookshop. 'Out of sight out of mind' she'd reasoned to her sceptical husband.
"I'll be back to pick you up in two hours. Do not leave this store," she growled, turning and exiting the building as swiftly as her spindly legs could carry her. Harry watched as she left, making sure she wasn't coming back before eagerly venturing into the vast forest of literature behind him.
It was magnificent, all the knowledge he could possibly desire at the disposal of his nimble fingers. He only had to pick up a spine and crack it open, then every story tucked between the folds of crisp ivory would be his to know. The Dursleys could take away everything that belonged to Harry (which was nothing), but they could never take away what he knew. He was owed that much.
Carefully, Harry took his first book off the shelf. He loved reading, even if the Dursleys got mad at him whenever he did things that didn't subscribe to their idea of conventionality. Learning as much as he could was the only thing that made Harry happy. Gardening wasn't too bad, he supposed, but he somehow always managed to find new ways of getting hurt. Like that one time he got bit by a snake, or that other time he got his hand trapped between a rock and a particularly thorny rosebush, but it was relatively tolerable in other regards.
Harry didn't have any friends—he wasn't allowed to have those—so he had never learnt how to speak to people. He imagined making friends just wasn't something he was meant for, what with the way people looked at him when he opened his mouth. He always managed to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, 'ask too many questions'.
Harry had an attitude when he didn't, rolled his eyes whenever they happened to be open. Harry huffed when he breathed, slumped when he moved and affronted the universe by existing.
He was wrong, different.
But it was okay, because books didn't care. Books didn't tell him to be normal, books didn't tell him to be anyone but himself, all they wanted was to be read—and read Harry could.
So, settling himself onto a burgundy bean bag at the furthest end of the store, Harry pried the covers apart and engaged in his most preferred and only pastime (unless you counted talking to the spiders in his cupboard—good listeners, but not very vocal).
His eyes flew across the page and savoured every word like fresh water in the Gobi Desert; his posture was so awful he practically collapsed in on himself. His neck was stooped so low his glasses were beginning to slide off his nose, and he spent what felt like forever and no time at all submerged in the comforting cradle of his imagination. Fiction always caught his attention. Harry's favourite genre was fantasy, things like wizards and magic. It always felt familiar to him, for some odd reason.
He read and he read, until he moved onto his second book and dived headfirst into that one as well. So immersed was he, Harry didn't even notice when the squeak of a shoe sounded behind him, and its owner eyed him with morbid curiosity.
"Enjoying that, are you?" Harry jumped. "Say," Aunt Petunia drawled, "if I bought you one of those little books of yours, would you stay as quiet as you are now?"
Harry was speechless. Was Aunt Petunia…? No, no, that was impossible; she would never—
"Get up then," she snapped, "and bring that thing with you, in fact, pick up another two on your way out. I want to keep you silent for as long as possible," she finished, quickly making her way around the shelves and to the counter near the entrance. "Come on, quickly, before I change my mind!"
Harry shot up out the bean bag, grabbed the book he had just finished, and another that had an interesting blurb, before stumbling towards the counter where his aunt was tapping her foot impatiently.
"Give."
Harry handed over the books and tried to rationalise what had just happened. Nope, not happening, he thought. It was unbelievable, impossible; Aunt Petunia was dead and this was a doppelgänger, or a clone, or something, but it wasn't her.
Regardless, the doppelgänger-clone-something took his books and paid all the same. That night, Harry went to bed in his cupboard with an unfamiliar yet comforting warmth hidden between his ribs and wrapped around his heart.
He surrendered to sleep with a smile on his face.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"UP! GET UP BOY!"
Harry slowly opened his eyes. He had the most wonderful dream last night, one where Aunt Petunia had bought him his own books. Like that would ever happen. In his dream he had placed them under his pillow, but there were no books there—
Harry's hand brushed against a hard, rectangular-shaped object beneath his head.
There were books under his pillow.
"I'VE NOT GOT ALL DAY, BOY, GET UP!"
"Coming, Aunt Petunia!" he called.
Harry almost jumped out of his cot—and he would have had there been enough space to do so but, alas, there was not. He groped around in the dark for a pair of socks and a change of clothes, got dressed and dashed out of his cupboard to the counter where he began to fry the bacon he never got to eat. The smell of slick grease was suffocating, but it didn't matter because the Dursleys would probably rejoice if Harry asphyxiated—'probably' because it would be a pain in the neck to clean up afterwards.
Stepping off the stool he stood on, Harry dished out breakfast, then began to make his way back to the cupboard.
"Not so fast, boy!" yelled Uncle Vernon.
Harry froze. What had he done now? Nothing, probably. They don't need a reason to tell me off, he thought.
"Look at us when we speak to you!" cried Aunt Petunia.
Harry turned around to face his relatives, save Dudley who was still in bed. Uncle Vernon readjusted his posture and gave Harry his fiercest glare. "We're charitable people, you know. We do so much for you, boy, and what for? You do nothing, so the least you can do is stay out of sight and out of mind," he huffed, "One less monkey in our circus, I say."
Where was he going with this? Were they going to kick him out? Was Harry going to be homeless? Was he going to an orphanage—
"We've been thinking about this for some time now, what to do with you. We've decided you're going to be moving into Dudley's second bedroom. There's a bathroom in there and we've installed a cat-flap on the door to give you food. You are not to leave that room unless one of us gives you the clear. Am I understood, boy?"
"Yes, sir."
Uncle Vernon grumbled something that sounded like 'babbelump' and stood up to the chagrin of gravity, then plodded over to the stairs to make his way up to Dudley's—no, Harry's—bedroom.
Harry must have fallen through a wormhole, or died and gone to heaven because there was no way any of this was happening.
"You'll be home-schooled, self study. We'll get you books if you behave." Uncle Vernon grunted as Harry followed him up the stairs.
He was dead. He had died. Harry had died and gone to heaven. There was no way.
"I'll check in every other week to see if you're still alive. Now get in there so I can lock the door."
This was heaven.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Harry stood up and walked to the bathroom. He hadn't shut the tap properly.
Grabbing the metal, Harry turned the handle and stared at his reflection in the mirror.
…
"Hello, how are you?"
…
"It's quite lonely here, isn't it?"
…
Harry sighed and walked back to his bed, where the steady flow of second-hand books he had been given began to pile. He'd have to start organising them somehow.