Work Text:
They had not asked him to perform any magic yet. All they talked about in class was theory and wand movements. He felt a little jealous as his new friend Ron Wesley talked about what if felt like to have his wand in his hand. “I’ve been waiting eleven years for this. It’s amazing, isn’t it Harry? It’s like having a limb you didn’t know you had finally returned to you. I feel so sorry for muggles. They can’t ever experience things like this.” Harry didn’t understand how his friend felt but he nodded all the same. His wand felt like nothing more than a useless stick in his hand.
The first time the practiced any actual magic, he felt mortified. While everyone else got their feather to move at least a few inches of off the table, Harry’s did nothing. His professor, while encouraging, looked at him with disappointment by the end of the class. “I guess he didn’t inherit his parent’s talent after all,” Harry heard him mutter to himself.
That’s the same reaction he received form all of his teachers. Nothing but looks of disappointment. They all seemed so Happy that he was in his class and by the end they seemed let down. Harry wanted to yell at them. What did they expect leaving him with people who hated the very idea of magic? If he ever even mentioned magic or anything strange he would be locked in his cupboard or worse. He hated when they thought of something worse to do to him. Eventually, Harry refused to even think of the word magic in fear that his relatives would find out.
When he walked into potion’s class for the first time, he thought he might finally have a chance to fit in. As far as he knew, he did not need any fancy wand waving to make a potion. If he worked hard enough in this class, maybe he would finally see a professor look at him with pride instead of disappointment. Harry found out quickly that it would never happen.
Snape did nothing but insult him and try to prove how little Harry knew about the wizarding world. He would leave his class shaking with anger. Why did he have to keep proving himself to these people? None of them lifted a finger to help him when he was growing up and now they expect him to be perfect?
Weeks went by, and even his friends were starting to question him. Draco Malfoy laughed at him in the halls saying that the only reason a squib like him was allowed in the school was because of his parents. The looks he kept getting only served to make him more and more upset as time went on.
Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. It was during potions class; professor Snape had already insulted his intelligence three times before he even sat down. While he was gathering ingredients for his potion, Crabbe tripped him on the way back to his chair making all of his stuff fall to the floor. Snape yelled at him for his clumsiness.
“Those ingredients are useless now, you wasteful idiot. Go get some more and try not to ruin them this time,” Snape sneered at him. Harry did as he was told with his head bowed and his fists shaking. He made his way to his seat without looking at anyone. Ron tried to comfort him but it did not have much of an effect.
The last straw was when Malfoy walked by his table and dropped something into his cauldron before he could stop him. “Hey! What was that for!” Ron yelled at him just before the cauldron started melting onto the desk and burning away. Both Harry and Ro jumped back from the table to avoid being burned.
“Potter! Weasley! What in the name of Merlin do you think you are doing?” Snape roared for across the room. “Did you even read the instructions?”
“Sir, it wasn’t us. It was Malfoy. He put something in our cauldron,” Harry tried to explain.
“I won’t have you lying your way out of this Potter. Since you arrived at this school, you have done nothing worthwhile. Your unwillingness to apply yourself has proven that you are nothing but lazy and arrogant. It just proves that you are lying to me now and it will not go unpunished.” Snape raged.
“Sir, please,” Harry said shaking. “I’m trying, I promise. It really was Malfoy. I didn’t do it. Ask anyone else-”
“Do not speak. You just like your father. No, you are worse. At least your father had talent. All I see is a squib that only got into Hogwarts because of his parent’s fame.” Snape leered down at Harry who had turned his eyes to the ground in fear. He grabbed Harry by the collar of his shirt and shouted “Look at me!”
That was the last thing Harry remembered.
Ron would tell him that it was the single scariest thing he had ever seen in his entire life. The school would tell him he was a monster.
Harry’s form changed to nothing more than a large mass of almost physical smoke. It threw Snape into the cupboards and tossed him around the room until he was nothing more than a rag doll. The children screamed and ran out of the classroom as fast as they could, knocking each other to the ground as they went. Snape’s body finally lay dead on the ground when every inch of the room was destroyed.
The ministry immediately held and investigation as to why an Obscurial could have been created after so many years without a sighting. Dumbledore was immediately arrested and charged with child endangerment along with his relatives.
Harry, after a long period of nothing but therapy and an extended stay in Saint Mungo’s, was able to live with the Weasley family. Molly Weasley was the perfect candidate to take care of him. Because he could not practice magic, he was taken out of school. But that did not mean that she did not have plenty to teach him.
When he was not learning wizarding history or how to tend to a magical garden, Harry finally learned what it was like to live in a home where everyone loved him. Molly Weasley read to him at bedtime, and showered him with affection every chance she took, and Arthur Weasley showed him his wonderful collection of muggle inventions. On holidays, he got to spend all of his time with his many brothers and his new sister.
As the years passed, Harry became more and more comfortable in the wizarding world and with his new family. He was finally in a place where he was loved at safe.
That was until they announced the beginning of the Triwizard Tournament…