Chapter Text
“Up! Get up! Now!” came Aunt Petunia’s voice as she rapped her knuckles against the cupboard’s door.
Harry woke with a start as his aunt rapped the door again, “Up!” she screeched. Harry heard her walking towards the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling that he’d had the same dream before.
“Maybe I have,” thought Harry, as he fought off the siren-song of sleep, “Maybe I can sneak off to the library later and research a bit about dreams.”
The first rule of living with the Dursleys was this: don’t ask questions. It was the response Harry always got whenever he asked after anything. It didn’t matter if he wanted to know more about animals, the stars in the sky, the ground under his feet, the air he breathed, the parents that had died in a car crash, or simply how Uncle Vernon’s day had been at work. At best, he got a quick, overly simplified answer, and the patched-on phrase, ‘Don’t ask questions.’ At worst, he got a smack over the head and was sent to his cupboard without dinner.
The thing was, though, the phrase ‘Don’t ask questions,’ didn’t stop the questions from entering his mind. It just taught Harry that if he wanted answers to the questions he always asked, he needed to find them for himself.
“Are you up yet?” Aunt Petunia demanded from outside the door.
“Nearly,” said Harry.
“Well get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don’t you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy’s birthday.”
Harry groaned.
“What did you say?” his aunt snapped through the door.
“Nothing, nothing….”
Harry blindly reached for his clothes, gently brushing a spider off of his pair of socks. After reading about how spiders ate other, smaller bugs like lice, fleas, and moths, Harry had decided he liked them a great deal. He already had to deal with too big, hand-me-down clothes from his cousin Dudley. He’d rather that they weren’t filled with moth holes and tiny bugs that would bite him up, too.
When he was dressed, he made his way out to the kitchen, careful to close the cupboard door behind him. He walked into the kitchen and gawked a bit at the kitchen table before quickly moving to the stove and beginning his work on the bacon. The table had been almost completely hidden by the sheer amount of Dudley’s birthday presents. It looked like he had gotten everything he had wanted, but Harry hadn’t dared take a closer look to double-check. If Uncle Vernon or Dudley had seen him eyeing his cousin’s presents, then they would have surely accused him of wanting to nick one.
Almost as if his thoughts had summoned them, Uncle Vernon and Dudley made their way into the kitchen just as Harry turned over the bacon. Dudley immediately sat down in a chair by the table, which shuddered a bit under the boy’s weight, and started to count his presents. Uncle Vernon similarly sat, with his chair giving a similar, more menacing shudder, and barked at Harry that he needed a haircut.
As Harry plated the bacon and began frying the eggs, he wondered for what seemed like the thousandth time, how he could possibly be related to Uncle Vernon and Dudley. He knew he didn’t actually share any blood with Uncle Vernon, but even then, he was still hard-pressed to find similarities between himself and his cousin.
Where Harry was thin with sharp elbows and knobbly knees, Dudley was fat with a large pink face and almost no neck. Where his hair was jet black and unruly, Dudley’s was blond and laid smoothly on his head. Where his skin was dark and tan, even in the coldest months of winter, Dudley’s was extremely pale, only showing any color at all when he was forced to chase Harry down before pummeling him to a pulp. The only thing that was somewhat alike with their appearance was their eyes, and even then it was pushing it.
Harry’s eyes were bright green and wide, often made to look bigger than they actually are because of the glasses he wore. Dudley’s on the other hand, were small, watery, and blue. Truly, the only thing linking them together was the fact that according to Aunt Petunia, blue and green eyes were common in the Evans family, and in another life, Harry could have had ‘the respectable English blue eyes,’ or Dudley could have been doomed with ‘those unfortunate vomit green peepers my sister had.’
Harry’s mind went back to a project he had had to do for school last year. He was supposed to map out his family tree and from whom had he inherited what traits. While Dudley’s had been an extensive history of the Dursley family (excluding all of Aunt Petunia’s relatives, bar Aunt Petunia herself), Harry’s family tree had been quite barren. It had included only the Dursleys, and the names Aunt Petunia had occasionally let slip over the years: Truman Evans, his grandfather, Angelica Evans, his grandmother, Lily Evans, his mother, and James Potter, his father.
Knowing that Aunt Petunia would never speak of any of them, Harry had gone to the library to see if he could find any mention of his long-dead family. The only thing he had found had been a few newspaper articles on Professor Evans of the University of London, and his work in natural history. Harry had looked carefully at one of the articles and the picture it had shown.
“Doctor Truman Evan (upper left corner) shown with wife Angelica Evans (upper right), and daughters Petunia and Lily (bottom left and bottom right respectively).”
He had taken in the family of four for hours. He picked apart the details of all of their faces, trying his best to commit them to memory. When he had returned to Privet Drive that night, he had snuck out of his cupboard, and silently tiptoed up to the upstairs bathroom. He’d stared at the mirror for almost as long as he had stared at the picture earlier that day, trying to pick apart his appearance and find his grandfather’s nose, or his grandmother’s smile, or his mother’s dimples staring back at him.
In the end, he hadn’t found them. But after a few nights of sad disappointment, he almost didn’t care if he didn’t look a thing like the Evans.
Because if he didn’t look a thing like his mother or her family, then that meant he looked exactly like his father and his.
There wasn’t a thing about the Potters in the Little Whinging Public Library. Or, at the very least, he couldn’t find anything on his Potters. Potter was, apparently, an extremely common name, as was James. All of the newspaper articles he had dug up were all about people that didn’t look a thing like him. He’d completely given up hope after double-checking and triple-checking all of the resources at the library.
But when he snuck up to the bathroom and stared at the mirror once more, he pretended, for a moment, that it was his father staring back at him. If he pretended that his eyes were a dark brown instead of green and that the lightning bolt scar etched into his forehead was gone, then he had what he imagined to be the very image of James Potter.
“Thirty-six! That’s two less than last year!”
Harry was pulled out of his mind by the sound of banging on the table as Dudley raised his voice. He realized that he had almost burned the eggs, and quickly did his best to save them as his aunt and uncle tried to pacify his cousin.
“Darling, you haven’t counted Aunt Marge’s present, see. It’s here under this big one from Mummy and Daddy.”
“All right, thirty-seven then,” said Dudley, face still going red. Sensing that a huge Dudley tantrum was coming, Harry stole a piece of bacon and stuffed it quickly in his mouth. He didn’t want to go hungry if Dudley overthrew the table and sent presents flying towards the platter of bacon and eggs.
Aunt Petunia obviously sensed trouble, too, because she said quickly, “And we’ll buy you another
two
presents while we’re out today. How’s that, popkin?
Two
more presents. Is that all right?”
Dudley nodded his head in acceptance as Uncle Vernon chuckled, “Little Tyke wants his money’s worth, just like his father. ‘Atta boy, Dudley!”
Harry finished plating the eggs and brought them and the bacon over to the table. He gently set them on the tiniest of open space left on the table buried under the mountains of presents. He, Dudley, and Uncle Vernon began to eat while Aunt Petunia went to answer the telephone that had just rung. Harry was doing his best to eat his breakfast faster than Dudley could steal it, when Aunt Petunia returned, looking both angry and worried.
“Bad news, Vernon. Mrs. Figg’s broken her leg. She can’t take him.”
Dudley’s mouth fell open, but Harry’s heart gave a leap. Every year, while Dudley and his parents took him and a friend out to various places to celebrate, Harry was left with Mrs. Figg, an old lady who lived two streets away. Harry liked her enough, though she was a bit mad, always smelled of cabbage, and always insisted upon showing him pictures of every cat she’s ever owned. While he was sad Mrs. Figg had gotten hurt, he was excited as well. Maybe this year he’d finally be able to go out and join in on the fun things Dudley always bragged about.
“Now what?” said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Harry as though he’d planned this.
“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested.
“Don’t be silly, Veron, she hates the boy.”
The Dursleys often spoke of Harry like this, as though he wasn’t there -- or, rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a slug.
“What about what’s-her-name, your friend -- Yvonne?”
“On vacation in Majorca,” snapped Aunt Petunia.
“You could just leave me at the library,” Harry put in hopefully.
Aunt Petunia and Uncle Veron blinked at him in astonishment, as if they had just seen the tea kettle stand up on its own and request that they change the channel on the telly.
“I suppose he’s old enough to know to follow the rules and stay silent,” said Aunt Petunia slowly, “And we never have any reason to read. Nobody would hardly know us to be connected to him at all.”
“And the police station is just a few doors down,” said Uncle Vernon, who was catching a gleeful look in his eye, “If he were to start destroying property like his hoodlum father, they’d be called over immediately and scare him stiff. That’ll serve him right.”
It seemed like the two had come to an agreement when the doorbell rang and the Polkiss’ arrived. Piers Polkiss, one of Dudley’s cronies that would hold Harry down while Dudley hit him, walked in with his mother. Dudley abandoned the present he had just unwrapped, a gold wristwatch with diamonds all around the band, to greet his friend.
Half an hour later, Harry, who couldn’t believe his luck, was sitting in the back of the Dursleys’ car with Piers and Dudley on the way to the library. Uncle Vernon had taken him aside earlier and told him that there was to be absolutely no funny business at the library. Harry had insisted that he wasn’t going to do anything, but Uncle Vernon hadn’t believed him, no one ever did.
The problem was, strange things often happen around Harry. Things Harry simply couldn’t explain.
Once, Aunt Petunia, sick of Harry returning from the barbers looking as if he’d never gone at all, had taken a pair of scissors and sheared him bald, save for the bangs she left to ‘cover that dreadful scar.’ Dudley had laughed himself silly, while Harry had spent the night tossing and turning in bed, imagining how much of a nightmare school would be the next morning. However, when he woke in the morning, his hair had regrown to exactly how it was before Aunt Petunia had hacked it off. He had been locked in the cupboard for a week for that, even though he tried to explain that he simply didn’t know how it had grown back so quickly.
Another time, Aunt Petunia had tried to force him into a truly hideous old sweater of Dudley’s, but the harder she tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it shrunk, until it could perhaps fit a small hand puppet, but would certainly not fit him. Luckily, Aunt Petunia had blamed the sweater, saying it had shrunken in the wash and hadn’t punished Harry.
Unfortunately, Harry couldn’t always safely avoid the punishments for the strange things that seemed to happen to him. One day, Dudley’s gang had been chasing him as usual when, to Harry and everyone else’s great surprise, he had suddenly appeared on the chimney of the school’s kitchen roof. The Dursleys had received an extremely angry letter from the headmistress about Harry climbing school buildings, despite the fact that all Harry had tried to do was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. He supposed that a particularly strong gust of wind might have blown him to the rooftops, but even that Harry doubted. Even if he was smaller and skinnier than anyone he knew, he didn’t think the wind could blow him that far up without him knowing it.
But today, nothing was going to go wrong. Because today, he’d finally get to go somewhere that wasn’t school, the cupboard, or Mrs. Figg’s living room. He was going to his favorite place in the world.
“Boy, get out,” said Uncle Vernon, who parked on the curb the second the public library had come into view, “We’ll pick you up after we’re done at the zoo. Don’t bother the other brown-nosed bookworms, and remember: no funny business.”
“Yes, Uncle Vernon,” said Harry, quickly climbing out of the Dursley’s new car. Piers slammed the car door behind him, and the vehicle quickly sped off, leaving Harry alone on the sidewalk.
Harry felt a grin stretch across his face as he walked towards the library doors. He entered quietly and walked up to the desk of the librarian. Mr. Frayley was a graying older man, with glasses similar in shape to Harry’s. He looked up from the book he was reading and nodded to Harry, “Hello, Mr. Potter. Back again, are you?”
“Hi, Mr. Frayley. Are there any books about dreams? I had a weird one last night. It had a flying motorcycle in it.”
Mr. Frayley smiled a bit, “Nothing but medical textbooks, I’m afraid, Mr. Potter. But I do think you’ll be happy to know that it’s back.”
“It is?” Harry asked, gasping with excitement.
“It is. Mrs. Lipsey just returned it today. Why don’t you go and read in your normal spot, Mr. Potter? I imagine you can find it all right on your own?”
“Of course! Thank you so much. Mr. Frayley,” Harry said, trying his best to keep his voice down. He couldn’t very well get kicked out of the library before he could reread his favorite book.
Harry started towards the children’s book section turning past the shelves for A, B, and C. Finally, he happened upon the D shelf and found the author he was looking for. He ignored the other titles by the author until he had found it. There, sandwiched between ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘The Witches,’ was his favorite book by his favorite author: ‘Matilda.’
Harry grabbed the book and made his way over to his favorite armchair. He sat down carefully and opened the book to the first page. Although Harry loved all of the stories Roald Dahl had ever written, ‘Matilda,’ was by far his favorite. Matilda herself was an interesting character, and he loved how she got to be happy with Miss Honey at the end of the book. But by far, his most favorite thing about Matilda was how she always got revenge on the Wormwoods.
The Wormwoods reminded him a great deal of the Dursleys. Both families were beastly, cruel people and Harry wished that he had the courage and the brains to go through with half the schemes Matilda did. Unfortunately, Harry was already blamed for funny things that happened around him. If he were to dye Uncle Vernon’s hair or scare the Dursleys into thinking a ghost lived in the dining room, he’d likely be blamed and punished for it, not get away with it with nothing but a laugh like Matilda always did.
So instead of punishing the Dursleys whenever they became particularly nasty, Harry decided to do his best to act like Matilda instead. He was polite and kind to everyone, just like her, and did his best to read as often as possible. Harry didn’t have a library card, as he feared Uncle Vernon or Dudley destroying one of the library books like Mr. Wormwood did in chapter four, but he did slip away to the library every chance he got during the school breaks and the weekends when he knew he finished all of his chores and wouldn’t be missed.
Unfortunately, no matter how much he wanted to be, Harry wasn’t as smart as Matilda. He couldn’t read all of the great, big, famous books she could and hadn’t nearly read every book in the children’s section. But he was content with himself knowing that he at least tried to read and get smarter, which was a sight better than Dudley ever did.
Harry chuckled a bit at the things Mr. Dahl would say to the parents of nasty children and leaned back in the armchair, motorcycle dream forgotten for now. He let himself swim through the sea of Mr. Dahl’s words, happy to have a little piece of happiness to himself.
*****
At a quarter to eight, the Dursleys’ fancy new car pulled up to the library to pick Harry up. The library had been closed for over an hour at that point, and it had taken nearly twenty minutes of insistence that Harry would be fine waiting on his own for Mr. Fayley to leave.
Uncle Vernon parked the car and shouted at Harry, “Well, get in! The season finale of ‘Manwaring Hall’ airs in ten minutes! And if we miss it because of you, you’ll be sent to bed without dinner.”
Harry got into the car hastily and buckled his seatbelt. He hadn’t had anything to eat after breakfast except for the half a sandwich Mr. Fawley had given him, and the bag of chips Mr. Fawley had bought him from the vending machine around tea time. As it was now nearly eight, this meant that Harry was extremely hungry, and the last thing he wanted to do was miss dinner.
Uncle Vernon barely waited for him to close the car door before he started back towards Privet Drive. Aunt Petunia was flipping through radio stations, quietly sniffing in disapproval every time a song she deemed vulgar came on, only to quickly move onto the next one. Dudley, thankfully, was asleep, head leaning against the windowsill, paper crown reading ‘Birthday Boy’ slipping down his head until the rim covered his eyebrows.
Harry looked out the window and stayed silent, hoping that his aunt and uncle were in a good enough mood from the day that they would leave him alone for the night. Alas, this was not to be, as Aunt Petunia, dissatisfied with the radio, turned it off and decided to turn to him.
“Did you bother anyone?” she asked sharply, “You’re a right nuisance most of the time, but I imagine the dullards who go to the library don’t like to be bothered when they’re reading their books.”
“No, Aunt Petunia,” said Harry, “I talked to no one except the librarian. He wanted to make sure I knew where to find the book I wanted to read.”
Uncle Vernon huffed, “I can’t imagine why anybody would ever want to spend their time in someplace as dreary as a library. Can’t they watch the telly for entertainment like the rest of us? No, they’re probably not there for entertainment at all! I reckon they just go there to make themselves look smart. Just to make good people like us feel bad for not enjoying those stuffy novels they pretend to read all the time.”
Harry stayed silent as Uncle Vernon continued his rant. He didn’t have the courage to tell him about all of the marvelous things he’s read. To tell him that he’d enjoyed his stolen moments at the library far more than any amount of time spent in his presence. But his stomach growled, reminding him of what was at stake, and he stayed silent, deciding that giving his uncle a dressing-down in his head was better than doing it out loud and getting punished for it.
Five minutes, and multiple broken traffic laws, later, the shiny new Dursley car pulled up to Number Four, Privet Drive. Aunt Petunia gently shook Dudley awake and Uncle Vernon parked the car in the drive. Harry tried to unbuckle the seatbelt, but he found that it was jammed. He pushed the button on the buckle and pulled on the belt, trying to get it free. After a few moments of struggling, Harry gave it up as a lost cause and wiggled his way out. He left the car, and seeing that he was the only one left out, went to the door of Number Four, knowing that the Dursleys were already inside.
Except, when he tried to open the front door, he found that it was locked. He knocked on the door a few times, and when that failed, rang the doorbell. Still, no one answered. He walked around the house and tried to enter through the back door, but that was locked as well. Deciding that maybe he could get someone’s attention by waving through a window, Harry went back to the front of the house and walked up to the large window that looked in on the living room. The Dursleys were all sitting around the TV and did not look towards Harry as he first waved his hands, and then started tapping on the glass.
What came next happened so quickly, no one saw how it happened. One second, the Dursleys were on the edge of their seats, watching as the season finale of their favorite show began, and then the next, the television blew up in a brilliant explosion of light.
Great electric sparks danced across the wires connecting it to the socket. The screen cracked and fissured, eventually collapsing inward, leaving a hole, not unlike the one Dudley put in his first television set when he found out his favorite show had been canceled. The outer frame of the machine busted itself and broke off in places. When Aunt Petunia went to open the window to let out the smoke wafting up from the machine, she finally noticed Harry.
She followed his gaze to the telly and then screeched in outrage, “You did this!”
“I didn’t do anything! I was outside the entire time, how could I have?” Harry tried to defend himself, but it was too late.
Uncle Vernon stormed out of the living room and around to the front of the house. He grabbed Harry by the head, one meaty paw in his hair, the other grasping him by the ear, and dragged him inside.
He was so angry he could barely speak, “Go -- cupboard -- stay -- no meals,” he managed before throwing Harry to the floor of the hall and slamming the front door behind them.
Harry, recognizing that an Uncle Vernon in this state would probably beat him to death if aggravated further, dashed out of his sight and into the relative safety of the cupboard under the stairs. He had just enough time to hear Aunt Petunia run to get Uncle Vernon a large brandy before his stomach growled in protest. He grabbed his pillow and hugged it to himself, hoping that it would muffle his unruly stomach until it was safe to sneak out into the kitchen and steal some food.