Chapter Text
Sometimes, Harry wished he could help his aunt weed the garden or cook dinner. Sitting in front of the television for hours on end got old.
Harry didn’t know how Dudley did it.
Harry’s vision blurred even more as another explosion erupted on the screen. When it cleared somewhat, he turned to look at Dudley, who lay lounging beside him.
Harry’s parents had died in an explosion, probably. There were always explosions when cars crashed on the telly. Except they hadn’t died in a car crash, had they? Just a few weeks ago, Aunt Petunia had finally admitted a bad wizard had killed Harry’s parents and blown up their house.
It wasn’t like Harry was scared of the explosions or anything. He remembered a flash of green light and pain, which didn’t look like the fiery explosions on the telly, but he wanted to tease Dudley about it, hopefully enough that Dudley would feel guilty.
Dudley was still staring at the screen, munching on crisps. Harry had to get his attention.
Harry could grunt and groan, but couldn’t actually say Dudley’s name. He couldn’t really control his body, either, certainly not enough to walk or dress himself.
Harry flailed on the couch with a moan, and Dudley looked over. “You want some?” he asked, eyes furrowed.
Harry could at least roll his eyes. Unlike Dudley, he had things other than food on his mind.
“Sure you won’t choke?” Dudley asked. “Mum will kill me if you choke.”
Harry huffed. Right, because that was the most important part about him choking. There was a time he wouldn’t have been able to handle crisps, but as long as they were broken up into small bits, he could.
Even if he did choke, he probably wouldn’t die.
Dudley crumbled some of the crisps into tiny pieces and put them in a bowl for Harry. Harry could sort of grab them, and sort of just stick them to his hands with saliva before bringing them to his mouth. It wasn’t elegant by any means, but Aunt Petunia uncharacteristically never minded the mess, reminiscing about infant Dudley eating cereal. Harry hated that comparison, but at least Aunt Petunia didn’t hate him anymore.
Harry had overheard Aunt Petunia say that she’d disliked Harry when he first arrived. Oddly, it was only when he failed to walk or talk or really do anything by himself that she started to actually care for him emotionally while caring for him physically.
Harry couldn’t figure out his aunt sometimes. She loved to baby both Harry and Dudley, but she hated looking abnormal, hated the stares Harry attracted whenever she took him out for appointments and therapy. Yet, simultaneously, she seemed to bask in the attention, loved when people told her what a saint she was for taking in her poor, disabled nephew. People often said they couldn’t possibly handle taking care of Harry, let alone raising both Harry and Dudley all alone after Vernon went to prison.
Whether or not Vernon had fully caused Harry’s disabilities was still a mystery, though it certainly hadn’t helped. When Harry was sixteen months old, shortly after his parents had died and he’d gone to live with his relatives, Vernon had shaken Harry so violently that he could have died.
Apparently, Harry was impossible to kill when he was a baby. That bad wizard had tried, leaving Harry with the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, and Vernon really should have done him in with how hard he’d shaken him.
Rather than dying, Harry was left with very limited control of his body, seizures, and poor vision, though that last one might have been partly genetic. But for all Harry knew, that evil wizard messed him up with the scar, too. That didn’t seem like the sort of thing that didn’t have side effects.
Sometimes people gave Harry pitying looks, like he would have been better off dead. Other people acted like he was a ghost, like he wasn’t there at all. And while Harry could admit his life was very challenging in a lot of areas- not even just for his disability, but because Dudley could be a prat and Aunt Petunia babied them both- it was far better than being dead.
Harry didn’t like considering what life could have been like if Vernon hadn’t gone to prison, or if Aunt Petunia had somehow blamed Harry for the incident. Or, in general, if Aunt Petunia’s bitterness hadn’t subsided, and had instead grown into her abusing and neglecting him.
Trying to abandon that train of thought, Harry brought a few more bits of crisps to his mouth as another explosion boomed on the television, then stared intently at the remote control. Sometimes, if Harry wanted something enough and nobody fetched it for him, it would come flying over.
The remote sailed over, thunked into Harry’s chest, and fell into his bowl of crisp crumbs. He tried to paw at the button to change the channel, but he couldn’t manage that dexterity.
He huffed and looked over at Dudley, who just taunted “Change it with your mind, then. I’m not touching that button.”
Harry glared at his cousin, wishing he had more control over his powers.
Once, when Aunt Petunia tried to feed him horribly mushy oatmeal when he’d been five, he’d turned away from the spoon until it suddenly had ice cream instead; Dudley often tried to get Harry to replicate that trick on his own meals. Sometimes, messes would vanish from his nappies if his Aunt didn’t change him quickly enough.
He’d even teleported to the top of the stairs, once.
It was magic, Aunt Petunia explained, tiredly, when they were eight and Dudley kept asking. She didn’t seem entirely happy about it, but she didn’t seem to hate it, either. She’d gone off a bit about how Lily was so special and the favorite child, how she could do stuff Petunia could only dream of.
Yet the bitterness didn’t seem to be there when she looked at Harry and Dudley. After all, Dudley could do lots that Harry couldn’t do even with magic, and Harry’s magic made Aunt Petunia’s life easier sometimes. Like with the nappies.
Harry wished he could vanish his waste as soon as he went, but sometimes he’d lay there, straining until Aunt Petunia came, and even as she cleaned him, and nothing would happen.
Magic didn’t let him use the toilet instead of nappies. It didn’t help him talk, or feed himself with a spoon or move his wheelchair on his own.
Harry jabbed at the remote again, and Dudley sighed loudly. “Fine. What do you want?”
He held up a board of different pictures for things like eat, drink, toilet, outside, sofa, bed, wheelchair, book, television, computer, help, yes, no, and so on.
It was a very limited vocabulary compared to Harry’s thoughts, even with several boards of different pictures, and he couldn’t always even point to what he wanted. They had some clear picture boards Harry could look at, so they could track where his eyes pointed if he couldn’t get his hand to point. Aunt Petunia often said Harry expressed so much with just his eyes and face, but there was still so much left unsaid.
Harry wished he could type on Dudley’s computer and get his thoughts out that way, but he couldn’t even manage the remote control.
Harry stared at the picture of a tree and a sunny blue sky. Outside. He strained to point to it, just as something thunked into the window.
Harry stared. An owl pecked the window again, with a letter in its beak.
“Did you do that?” Dudley asked, and Harry shot him a look. Yeah, totally. He just summoned a carrier owl out of nowhere. If he had, it would have been a carrier pigeon, like in books.
Harry stared at the window, glanced at Dudley, wanting to tell him to open it. He jerked his head at the owl again, and Dudley finally got the hint and went to open the window.
The owl swooped over and dropped a letter in Harry’s lap. Harry looked down and saw it was addressed to
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
Harry hadn’t always slept in the cupboard. He’d slept upstairs for about the first half of his life here. But even though Harry was small and skinny, he’d still gotten too big for Aunt Petunia to carry up and down the stairs, and Dudley couldn’t exactly do it, either. Harry’s difficulties with eating meant he’d never grown as large as Dudley.
So each night, Aunt Petunia parked Harry’s wheelchair beside the stairs and laid Harry in a cot in the cleaned-out cupboard. Some nights, Harry used his board to request the sofa instead, but he liked that the cupboard was sort of his own room. Sure it was small, but it wasn’t like he was moving around much anyway.
Aunt Petunia had stuck glow-in-the-dark stars and planets on the underside of the stairs when she’d first cleaned the cupboard out, and Harry often gazed up at them as he waited to fall asleep.
Exactly why they hadn’t simply moved house was beyond Harry, especially after Vernon was imprisoned. They could have gotten a nice flat somewhere with a lift, and not had to worry about stairs at all. But Aunt Petunia was oddly attached to her house, even though Vernon was a convicted child abuser and attempted murderer.
Harry jabbed the letter, and Dudley asked “Want me to open it?”
Harry grunted. No, he was thrilled sitting here, just staring at the envelope. He gave Dudley an exasperated look.
Dudley broke the fancy wax seal on the back and pulled out thick parchment. He struggled to read the handwriting, slowly reading out an acceptance letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Harry stared at the letter and Dudley, wondering if Dudley was reading it right.
Aunt Petunia bustled in from the kitchen. “What’s that you have, sweetums?”
Harry glanced at Aunt Petunia. From her stories, she’d clearly been overtaken with jealousy when Harry’s mum got a letter and she hadn’t.
Aunt Petunia stared at the letter in Dudley’s hands. Did she think Dudley got it? Dudley had never done anything magical, as much as he’d tried to replicate Harry’s trick of turning oatmeal into ice cream.
“Harry got a Hogwarts letter.” Dudley said, slowly, brow furrowed like he was still figuring it out. Harry was, too. How was he supposed to wave a wand if he couldn’t even use a pencil, or even a marker?
“You did?” Petunia blinked. Harry was pretty sure Petunia never expected him to get one; after all, he didn’t even attend classes with Dudley. “Well, that’s wonderful, Harrykins!”
She swooped down, hugging him tightly. Harry squirmed, wondering what his mum thought, watching this from above. She’d probably be happy that Aunt Petunia was supportive.
Still, Harry gestured outside again. Was Aunt Petunia sure she didn’t want to just get him out of the house? He smiled teasingly at her. She almost seemed to enjoy caring for Harry.
“We’ll have to go to Diagon Alley to get your things.” she muttered to herself, scanning the letter. “Maybe they have flying wheelchairs. Lily said they had moving staircases.”
“I want a flying wheelchair!” Dudley whinged. Whenever he was tired of walking somewhere, which was often, he’d tell Harry how lucky he was that he got pushed around everywhere, like a prince, and seemed oblivious to Harry’s incredulously mocking looks.
“You just got a new racing bike,” Aunt Petunia simpered. One of the thirty-six presents Dudley had gotten for his eleventh birthday a few weeks ago.
Harry supposed Hogwarts might have some more ideas of what to do with him than his current school. It sounded a lot like Xavier’s School, from some of the comic books Dudley had. Since he’d first seen them, Harry had wished he could telepathically project his thoughts, like Professor X. Just seeing a leader in a wheelchair was pretty cool; Harry never saw anything like that on the television. He’d even imagined jokingly asking Aunt Petunia to shave him bald like the Professor; she always said his hair was unruly when she washed it.
Harry didn’t even exactly care about reading other people’s minds. He was aware of everything going on, just like everyone else. But if Hogwarts could teach him to project his thoughts at people, then he could finally tease Dudley the way he really wanted to, and maybe Aunt Petunia would stop treating him like a baby.
Harry stared outside again, longing to go.