Chapter Text
It was agony and it drove Harry to his knees while he gasped and his mouth filled with his own blood.
“You showed fear. It made you weak.”
Harry closed his eyes and his mind was assaulted with memories…
“I saw love,” Harry whispered as everything became blurry and his body swayed. “And it made me strong.”
*****
Many years before that…
****
Harry Potter was not a normal child.
Harry’s aunt and uncle were normal, his cousin was normal. They lived in a normal neighborhood where everyone drove normal vehicles and held normal jobs. The houses were normal, the yards were normal.
If a person were to check the dictionary for a definition of ‘normal’ it was likely that they would see a description of the lives of three members of the household at Number Four Privet Drive.
That was, if they didn’t take into account Harry Potter, the freak who lived in the cupboard beneath the stairs.
In all the ways that Dudley Dursley was a normal nine year old boy, Harry was as freakishly opposite as a cousin could be.
Dudley had thin blonde hair, small dark eyes, and took up the entire middle cushion on the sofa when he sat down to watch his programs. Harry had thick dark hair, green eyes that were too large for his small face, and didn’t know how much of the sofa cushion he would take up since he wasn’t allowed to sit on the sofa. Dudley was loud and laughed often, Harry was meek and had heard more of his own cries in life than his laughter.
The biggest difference between the two boys was not their looks or personalities, but what they did when they had time to themselves, time to play and imagine…
Dudley played a variety of games; sometimes it meant racing games on his video console and sometimes it meant gathering his friends and beating up his cousin. Dudley thought those were the funnest games a kid could play, but that was because he didn’t know a secret game that Harry knew…
Harry’s favorite game was magic.
Harry had discovered at the age of six that he was special in a way that no one else he had met could ever claim to be. Not only for the scar on his forehead, the weird one shaped like lightning that Aunt Petunia called ‘disturbing’. It wasn’t just as his status as an unwanted burden on his relatives or the eyesore of the neighborhood. Harry was special because he could make real life magic flow directly from his tiny fingertips.
The first time that Harry performed magic, he earned a rather harsh beating from Uncle Vernon for it. Harry still had the scar on his shoulder, but it was more of a reminder of what he could do than anything else. When Harry saw the scar, he never thought of his Uncle, but of the plate that he dropped and watched repair itself… almost like magic…
That same night, young Harry thought about what could have made the plate repair itself. He didn’t think that it was a coincidence (a big word that he overheard Aunt Petunia use when talking about ‘the incident’ with Uncle Vernon) that he wanted the plate to be fixed and then it happened, but how could he know for sure?
The longer he laid on his cot, nursing his injuries and soothing himself in the dark, the smaller the list of possibilities for the plate became.
It probably wasn’t a plate that just fixed itself, since Harry had never heard of those types of plates before. Harry didn’t think someone else in the house made it get fixed, since he was the only one who saw it falling before it broke. Harry was also probably the only one who wanted the plate fixed just as it shattered, as he knew what would happen when the crash brought his accident to light.
Harry eventually decided that night that if it was actual magic that fixed the plate, it must have came from him. Aunt Petunia said Harry was a ‘no good freak’. Uncle Vernon once screamed in Harry’s face that magic was a ‘freak concept’ and he ‘better never hear that word under his roof again’. And Harry was young, only six, but even he could add up two and two to decide that if magic was freaky and Harry was a freak then any magic in the house must be his.
The morning after Harry broke the plate, Harry was left in his cupboard all day. It was a punishment and a gift. Not being allowed to do chores meant that Harry wouldn’t get a scrap of food, but it also meant that Harry didn’t have to work all day, he could curl up and just think about magic.
Could Harry do more magic? Was it just a one-time accident? Did magic only repair broken plates and nothing else?
Harry wanted to test his magic skills, only he didn’t know how to start. He thought back to the night before and tried to remember exactly what he was thinking and feeling when the plate fixed itself. He knew he had been scared – his stomach felt sick when he saw the plate fall – and he remembered thinking that he didn’t want it to break, but he never said anything out loud. Even Harry, who wasn’t allowed to watch films on the telly with Dudley and learned about fairytales from snippets he heard from his cupboard or the kitchen, knew that the Fairy Godmother herself had to say bipppity boppity boo to make the pumpkin into a carriage.
There weren’t any plates in the cupboard to break, but there had been a piece of paper stuck to the wall. The blue crayon writing said ‘Harry’s Room’ in wobbly handwriting and Harry only shrugged before he ripped it in half. Harry laid the two pieces of paper on the cot beside him and closed his eyes and began thinking very hard.
I’m scared and I want this fixed. I’m scared and I want this paper to be fixed again.
When Harry peeked open one eye to see if it worked, he felt more disappointment than he had before in his life. It was still ripped.
So Harry tried again.
And again.
And again.
On the fifth try, Harry had to fight hard against the tears that were prickling his eyes and making his nose sting. All he wanted was one neat thing, just one thing. Why couldn’t he have it? Harry didn’t ask for much. He never asked for his parents to return, he never asked for new clothes that fit just right. Harry didn’t ask for hugs or for big plates of food like Dudley got.
All Harry wanted was for the dumb paper to fix itself so that Harry could – just one time – be someone special.
Harry closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.
I’m scared and want the paper fixed. I’m scared… I’m scared it won’t be fixed. I’m scared I’m not special, I’m just… just a freak. I wish the paper would just get fixed…
Harry could feel his breath coming quicker and his hands began to shake. He tried to focus hard, thinking about the paper and how badly he wanted, needed, it to be fixed. If the paper could be magically fixed then – then lots of things could be fixed in Harry’s life! Magic could probably do anything!
FIX THE STUPID PAPER!
Harry felt something tug at his chest, causing him to gasp and open his eyes. There was a warmth that spread from that tug down his arms, through his fingers. It felt nice, sort of tingly. When the tingle went away, he slowly opened his eyes, already beginning to think about how it didn’t matter if he was magic or not.
Then he looked down and saw the paper… once again whole and fixed.
Harry couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face when he touched the paper and turned it over to see that it was as perfect as it had been before he ripped it.
Harry wasn’t just some freaky unwanted nephew who lived in the cupboard beneath the stairs… Harry Potter was special and one day everyone would know it.