The Cupboard Under The Stairs
Uncle Vernon was livid.
Harry could barely see his eyes under his bushy eyebrows, his mouth set in a straight line. His fits were shaking as they gripped the shopping bag he was holding.
Uncle Vernon looked just as angry as the day of the Dementor attack, and that terrified Harry, whose heart felt like it had stopped. Harry didn’t dare take his eyes off his relatives, but he could see Mr Weasley stepping forward to stand closer to him, hand hovering above his shoulder.
“Boy! What are those fr–” Uncle Vernon bellowed, but a hissed “Vernon!” from Aunt Petunia stopped him from calling Mr Weasley and Tonks freaks. “What are they doing here? We told you, nobody in our house while we were away!”
Harry could tell he was angry but trying to hide just as much. Harry dreaded the moment the two wizards left him alone with them. Uncle Vernon, in the past two weeks, had demonstrated just how bad he could get. Harry didn’t think it would get much worse, but he didn’t really want to test it.
“I’m sorry, Mr Dursley, we had something to discuss with Harry, and this was the only secure place.” Mr Weasley tried to placate his uncle, quite unsuccessfully. On the contrary, Uncle Vernon looked even more angered by being talked to by another ‘freak’ like Harry. Aunt Petunia was hiding behind Uncle Vernon’s large form with Dudley, though even Uncle Vernon couldn’t do much to cover his son’s heavy figure.
“I’m going to ask you to leave now,” Vernon spat at the two unwelcome guests. “We just arrived from a long drive, and we have much to do.”
“Of course, Mr Dursley. We’ll be going now.” Mr Weasley kept a polite voice, but he shot a glare at his uncle, turning to Harry.
“Alright, Harry, be careful and write to us if there are any more problems—” he glanced at his relatives still standing at the door, “We’ll see you on September first, then.”
Mr Weasley pulled him into a short hug, gave him a last smile, and then went to the door. If Harry hadn’t been scared of what his relatives were going to do, he would’ve found the way the three Dursleys scrambled back to get as far from the two wizards funny, but alas, the sinking feeling in his stomach didn’t allow for much humour to be found in the situation.
Uncle Vernon was on him as soon as the door closed, and he was sure that he wouldn’t be heard. He wrapped his hands around his throat, squeezing so hard that Harry was afraid he would break his spine. With the other hand, Vernon made a fist and punched his face, hitting his eye. Uncle Vernon had avoided his face so far, and Harry had forgotten how much it actually hurt.
“I’m going back to Hogwarts,” Harry croaked out, fingers trying to get his uncle’s hand off his neck. Harry thought his courage had been used up during his trial, but evidently, something was still there for him to mention his school by name. Or maybe he was just stupid from the too many hits to his head from the past few weeks. “Please, not my face.”
“Don’t you dare talk about that nonsense!” Uncle Vernon tightened his grip on his throat, cutting off Harry’s air supply. Harry fought harder against his uncle’s hand, but the man seemed to squeeze harder the more he tried. “I don’t want to hear another word about that school or your freak friends. No more owls, no more anything!”
“Please, Uncle Vernon,” Harry begged. He didn’t care any more about his promise that he wouldn’t beg anyone. He needed to survive this, and he would do anything to be able to go back to Hogwarts. He didn’t go through the hearing only to be kept from going back by his uncle, and he didn’t want anyone to know how weak he was, how he had let his Muggle uncle beat him up when he had gone against Voldemort himself multiple times and survived. Harry thought he was a good Gryffindor, but he didn’t feel like one anymore. Maybe he stopped being one the moment he stepped through the doors of Privet Drive after the Dementor attack.
Black spots began to dance across his vision, and just as he felt his knees start to go weak, Uncle Vernon released his grip from his neck, and Harry, dizzy and unable to stay upright by himself, collapsed to the floor. He barely managed to catch himself before his head hit the floor, but his uncle wasted no time and started kicking him. Harry raised a shaky arm to shield himself, but without his hands to support him, his upper body crumpled, and his head struck the floor with a sickening thud. Stars exploded in his vision as pain radiated through his skull.
Harry faintly heard his uncle talk to his aunt between kicks, but he couldn’t make out the words as he tried to visualize the Quidditch pitch, as he often did during his uncle’s punishment. He stayed in his mind for what felt like an eternity, but he was brought out by pain on his scalp. Uncle Vernon grabbed a fistful of his hair, lifting his upper body off the floor and dragging him towards the kitchen.
Harry wondered what he was doing. Usually, when he was done with his punishment, Harry was dragged up to his bedroom. Where was Uncle Vernon bringing him?
Harry’s face became almost ghost-like as his uncle stopped in front of the stairs. Harry’s body was in agony. Every movement felt like he was being hit all over again, and there wasn’t an inch that didn’t scream in pain, but he ignored all that in favour of trying to get free from his uncle’s hold. No, he thought. He couldn’t go back in there. He wasn’t going to allow it. Harry kicked at his uncle’s legs, using any bit of energy he had left to raise his arm and dig his nails in Vernon’s fat arm and try to push him away.
“No, please,” Harry said. His voice cracked, throat sore from his uncle’s tight grip. “Please don’t make me go in there.”
“Shut up!” his uncle screamed.
Harry tried to hold back the tears. He wouldn’t cry. Doing so in front of his uncle would only make him angrier. Uncle Vernon liked it when he begged, but he loathed crying. He said that boys don’t cry, and anytime he saw Harry cry when he was a child, it resulted in a slap and a day without meals.
Harry pleaded with his uncle to let him stay in his room. He promised that he wouldn’t act abnormally, that he wouldn’t hear a mention of his freakishness until he had to go back to Hogwarts, but his uncle ignored his words. He opened the cupboard with one hand, the other still holding Harry from his hair, and then threw the boy in. Harry fought, pushing his legs out to stop the door from closing, but Vernon kicked his legs and pushed them back in. Two seconds later, Uncle Vernon locked the door, leaving Harry battered and bruised in the hell where he had spent the first eleven years of his life.
Harry couldn’t believe he was back in the cupboard. He hadn’t been locked in his cupboard since he was eleven, before his Hogwarts letters had arrived. He had barely enough space to lay comfortably then, when he was a very thin and small eleven-year-old boy, but now he had grown up, not much, but enough for the cupboard to be too small to even sit comfortably. He hugged his legs to his chest, hiding his face between his knees. The room felt like it was getting smaller as Harry struggled to breathe, his throat burning with every shaky breath he took.
He clamped his eyes shut, trying to forget where he was and to avoid looking at the drawing that was still attached to the wall in front of him. He made it when he was six, with a piece of paper and some broken crayons he had stolen from his cousin. It was a picture of him with his uncle, aunt, and cousin standing beside him on his right and two stick figures that were meant to represent his parents on his left. He had scribbled in barely decipherable handwriting ‘Harry’s room’ at the top, above their heads, and his magic had accidentally stuck the paper to the wall permanently. That bout of accidental magic cost him food for two days. Luckily, it was the longest he had gone without even a scrap of food when he was six years old.
Harry felt tears gather in his eyes, but he tried to hold them in, raising his head from his knees and looking up to the ceiling of his cupboard to push the tears back in. He felt weak and pathetic, crying like this because his uncle had locked him in his cupboard. He should be used to this. His uncle locked him in his room all the time, and he had gone eleven years shut inside the cupboard, and it had begun feeling like his safe space at one point, somewhere where Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia couldn’t reach him because they were too big to get in. But he never thought he’d find himself back there at fifteen, when the only way he fit was sitting in a ball like this, beaten up worse than he had ever been in his life.
Harry didn’t think his life could get much worse after the graveyard, but it had reached a whole new level, and he really hoped that it would get better once he was at Hogwarts. That was the only thought that stopped the tears from falling. He had only a few weeks left until he went back to his school, where he would deal with his friends. He could survive this. He’d use a little bit of cunning and try to avoid getting his relatives angry.
He could do this.
✦✦✦✦✦✦✦
Life at Privet Drive took a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn after his hearing. Harry went from doing chores all day to being locked in his room all day long, only let out once a day to go to the bathroom and for his uncle’s punishments, which came whenever Harry accidentally made a noise in the cupboard or when he took too long in the bathroom. He hadn’t been in Dudley’s second bedroom since the day he got demoted to the cupboard, and he really hoped that Hedwig was ok. He doubted that his relatives were feeding her since they stopped bothering to give him food. They only threw a sandwich into the cupboard every few days, which Harry tried to ration over a few days.
Harry didn’t know which situation was better. Before the cupboard, he’d have to do chores all day, chores that he could mess up and, therefore, get punished for, but at least then he could stretch his leg and see and feed Hedwig. When he was back in his room, he also had access to his clothes, to his stash of food and his school stuff, giving him something to entertain himself with during the quiet hours of the night when he was trying to avoid nightmares.
Now, he was locked in all day. His knees hurt from keeping them bent for so long, and the small walk to the bathroom didn’t do anything to soothe his aching limbs and back. His left eye was still a bit sore from Uncle Vernon’s punch on the day of the hearing, but the bruise would be gone before the first September came and Uncle Vernon had not hit his face after that, preferring to stick to the rest of his body so that it wouldn’t arouse suspicion once Harry was back among people.
Another thing that made the cupboard hell was that he had nothing to occupy himself with there. His school stuff was under the floorboards in his room, and his aunt had moved his trunk to his room upstairs before he was moved into his first room. Having nothing to do gave his thoughts freedom in his mind. He could no longer avoid thinking about his friends, and he spent hours worrying about them, thinking that they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. He was afraid that they knew how weak he was to let himself be treated like this, that they knew how useless he had been in the graveyard. He had done nothing to save Cedric and nothing to stop Pettigrew from bringing back Voldemort. The only thing he was good for was helping his enemy and getting beat up by his Muggle uncle and he worried that his friends realised that and decided that they didn’t want him as their friend anymore. Why else wouldn’t they talk to him, if not for that? He had long stopped being angry at them. All he felt was sadness. He had no space for any other emotion.
Having nothing to do also made falling asleep all too easy. No matter how hard he tried, without distractions to keep him awake, he ended up sleeping and consequently having nightmares that had gotten much worse since the Dementor attack. Now dreams of his uncle punishing him joined dreams of Cedric. He beat him up just like he did during the day, but then the man turned into his cousin, telling him it was his fault Cedric and his parents had died. His cousin then changed into a Dementor, chilling his bones and evoking his mother’s screams the night she was killed and Voldemort’s cold laughter in the graveyard telling him to bow. His dreams usually ended with a flash of green light that hit either him or Cedric before he always woke up with a scream dying in his throat and Cedric’s dead eyes staring at the sky seared into his eyes. Sometimes, Ron, Hermione, or the twins took Cedric’s place. Once, it had even been Neville.
Harry didn’t know how long he could go on like this. He wished he had some Dreamless Sleep, but he would have to ask Madame Pomphrey for it, and he didn’t want anyone to know how bad his nightmares had become.
Luckily, it was finally the thirty-first of August. Tomorrow he would be escaping his prison and going to the first home he ever had. Nothing could ruin his mood today. Except that when he thought about going back to Hogwarts, he realised that he didn’t know how he would be getting there. Would someone come get him? He also realised that he didn’t have any of his new books. In fact, the Hogwarts letter with his supply list for the year hadn’t even arrived yet. Harry was worried they had made a mistake, and he was actually expelled from Hogwarts. Harry really hoped that wasn’t the case. He’d hate getting his hopes up only to find out that he’d have to stay and suffer through his uncle’s rage when he discovered they’d have to deal with him during the year as well as the summer.
His spiralling was interrupted by a shriek and a crash. Then, Harry heard the worst sound that he could hear, and his stomach dropped to his feet.
“BOY!”
The sound of heavy footsteps approaching made his heart stop. He held his breath as the cupboard door rattled and then sprung open, giving him the perfect view of his furious uncle.
Harry tried to make himself as small as possible and attempted to still his trembling body, but he wasn’t successful at all. He scanned his uncle’s body, trying to figure out what had set him off this time, and then saw a letter clutched in his fist.
“I thought we told you! No bloody owls!” he yelled, his face was level with Harry’s, so close that he could see beads of sweat dripping down his forehead and bits of eggs stuck to his moustache. Spit left his mouth and landed on Harry, but he resisted the urge to wipe it off. It would only anger him, and if he wanted to get his hands on his letter, he had to get Uncle Vernon to calm down. “Why is your freak school writing to you now?”
“It’s the supply list,” Harry mumbled. “They send one every year.”
Uncle Vernon threw the letter at him and Harry rushed to catch it before he would change his mind and get it back. Harry didn’t open it yet, instead began to think about how he would get his supplies.
“Uncle Vernon?” he said hesitantly, as his uncle was leaving.
“What do you want, freak?”
“I go back to H—to school tomorrow,” he started. “I need to get my supplies.”
Uncle Vernon threw him a scathing look. “You won’t get any of our money, boy, especially nothing that will enable your abnormality. We’ve already spent too much on you as it is.”
“No, no, I don’t want money,” Harry was quick to say. “Can I–Can I go to London today? I can get my stuff, and I will stay there so you will get rid of me sooner.”
“Fine,” his uncle said after a few moments of silence. “You should be grateful that we’re feeling so gracious today.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Get out of my house now. I don’t want to see you until next summer.”
“Er, sir?”
“What now?” Uncle Vernon closed the distance between them again, taking him by the throat again. “I’m getting bloody tired of your requests, so you better tell me what you want now before I make you regret ever uttering a word.”
“I’m s-sorry, sir, I j-just need to pack my trunk,” he stuttered. His uncle’s grip wasn’t as tight as the last time he had tried to strangle him, but it was still painful for his still-healing throat.
The man shoved him out of the cupboard, and Harry landed painfully on his side. His wand, which he was hiding under his clothes, jabbed into his skin as he fell, but thankfully, he didn’t hear the sound of it snapping.
“Hurry up, boy!”
Harry scrambled to his feet and ran after his uncle. He was finally let into his room after weeks of not stepping foot into it, and he was grateful that his things looked just like he had left them. His relatives were probably too disgusted to touch anything remotely magical, even if it were to destroy it.
Harry hurriedly packed all of his possessions in his trunk without bothering to fold any clothes. He changed into a hoodie and jeans, balling up his dirty clothes and throwing them into his trunk. He would have to wash them at Hogwarts, and he probably needed to buy a new uniform, as the one he wore at the hearing got ruined after Uncle Vernon’s punishment. Thankfully, he’d have time to do it once he got to Diagon Alley.
Harry had yet to look at Hedwig since he came into the room, and he took a deep breath before turning to the desk where he kept her. His owl was staring back at him. Her yellow eyes looked tired, her feathers were dull and ruffled.
Harry felt a fist clench around his heart. He should’ve let her out and told her to go to the Weasleys as soon as things had gone downhill, but because of his selfish need to have a familiar face here and be around someone who loved him stopped him from sending her away, and now he had hurt the first friend he had.
Harry grabbed her cage, being careful not to jostle her too much, and then took his trunk with the other hand. He had lost a lot of weight from his weeks of starvation, and pulling his heavy luggage had become hard, but he gritted his teeth and dragged it down the stairs, unfortunately making a lot of noise. Uncle Vernon must have been in a good mood since Harry was leaving one day early because he didn’t say anything.
Harry was out of the door without another word to his relative, and he walked a bit farther away in case his uncle changed his mind and decided to beat him up one last time or keep him there forever, before stopping a few streets away from Privet Drive Four.
Now that he was finally away, Harry stopped to think about what he was going to do. How was he going to get to Diagon Alley? He could take a train to London. It would take money he didn’t have, and it would eat up a lot of his time, but Harry couldn’t think of any other way to get there quickly. The first year Hagrid had taken him, his second he had gone with the Weasleys, and his third year…
The Knight Bus!
The summer of his third year, he had run away and accidently called the Knight Bus. He didn’t have Muggle money, but he did have some wizard money left over from last year! He exhaled in relief and got his wand out of his pocket after checking that nobody was watching him. Then, he raised his arm and waited for the familiar bus. He wasn’t really too keen on taking the Knight Bus, but he had no other choice. It was quick, and it would take him right in front of the entrance to Diagon Alley. He couldn’t be too picky.
A moment later, the purple double-decker bus materialised in front of him with a loud crack. Harry pulled his hood up low on his face, hoping to cover the large lightning bolt. He knew people would recognise him—his face was on the front page of the newspapers too often for him to go unnoticed—but Harry hoped it would take a little longer if the scar wasn’t the first thing people saw.
The familiar face of Stan Shunpike welcomed him into the infernal bus, and he paid the fee, turning down the hot chocolate and going to a seat before anyone could talk or pay attention to him for long enough to recognise him.
Luck was on his part because he went the whole trip without the other passengers realising who he was, and soon he was standing in front of the Leaky Cauldron with his trunk and Hedwig. He got in and was glad when he saw that the place wasn’t busy. Only a few guests sat at the tables, and Tom, the owner, was waving his wand around to clean the newly emptied tables.
“Er, hi,” he said, once he stepped in front of Tom and waited for the man to acknowledge him. The man gave him a smile and greeted him.
“Ah, hello, Mr Potter,” he said, keeping his voice down to not attract attention. “What can I do for you?”
“Could I get a room for tonight, please?” he asked. The man nodded and led him towards the stairs that would lead them to the inn. He swished and flicked his hand, muttering Wingardium Leviosa, and his trunk levitated behind them. Harry thanked him, happy that he wouldn't have to attempt to pull the heavy luggage up the stairs. Dragging it around had been difficult enough, but weeks of starvation had taken away a lot of his weight and strength, and he was sure he’d fall down the stairs before he even reached the halfway point.
Tom brought him to the same room he had taken in his third year and then left him be, telling him that lunch would start at twelve. His stomach grumbled at the mention of food, and he thanked Merlin that he was able to eat whatever he wanted now. He wouldn’t have to go hungry again for ten months. He felt something unclench in his chest at the thought of being away from Privet Drive for the next ten months. He would give anything never to go back there, but he had to take what he could.
Harry dropped his trunk at the end of his bed and put Hedwig’s cage on the small desk that was pushed against the wall with the window. He opened the cage, letting Hedwig free to leave if she wanted.
“You can go if you want, fly around a bit,” he told her, petting the top of her head. “But I’m going to Hogwarts tomorrow, and it might be too long a flight for you right now. I promise I’ll get you some food right now, as soon as I figure out what I need to get and I get more money from Gringotts.”
Harry looked at his owl as she nipped at his fingers. “I’m sorry, Hedwig,” he said, smiling sadly. “I wish you didn’t have to pay for my mistakes too.”
Harry shook his head to get rid of the sad thoughts that were trying to creep into his mind and fished the Hogwarts letter out of his pocket. He opened the envelope and noticed that there were two pieces of parchment inside.
He grabbed the longer letter, setting the supply list aside.
Dear Mr Potter,
I am writing to you to inform you that due to your temporary expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on 2 August 1995, you have been removed from Hogwarts’ records. This means that we had to manually add you back to our records as a fifth-year student. Due to this, you are no longer registered as a Gryffindor and will have to be re-sorted into a Hogwarts House at the Welcoming Feast after the first years.
We apologise for the inconvenience, and we ask you to owl us as soon as possible with any questions that you might have.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress
Harry stared blankly at the parchment, his brain struggling to process what he had just read. His fingers tightened around the edges, crinkling the paper. Re-sorted? What? What did they mean he had to be re-sorted? He had never heard of people getting re-sorted halfway through school, but he was the Boy-Who-Lived, so of course it would happen to him. His head spun with all the thoughts swirling in his mind.
What if the Sorting Hat didn’t put him in Gryffindor? There were plenty of moments when he hadn’t felt like one this summer. What if he didn’t belong there anymore? What would his friends say? Would they still want him? And where would he end up? Ravenclaw? He doubted it. He wasn’t that smart, and he certainly wasn’t very academically inclined. He did much better in practical magic than theory. Could he be a Hufflepuff? But somehow, even that was hard to believe. He couldn’t see himself in yellow and black, but that left…
His friends would never talk to him again if he ended up in Slytherin. If they didn’t want him now, they would never want him if he was in the same house as Malfoy and his cronies, or hell, the same house as Voldemort. He wouldn’t talk to Ron again—he disliked Slytherin even more than Harry did—but maybe Hermione would try to stay his friend, maybe she would mediate between Harry and Ron… try to get Ron to see reason. She had dealt with their fallout in fourth year after all.
No.
Harry wouldn’t be in Slytherin. The Hat was going to put him back in Gryffindor, where he belonged. It didn’t matter if there were a few moments when he acted like a coward. Nobody was brave all the time. It would be fine. Harry pointedly ignored the voice that reminded him that the hat wanted to put him in Slytherin and that the only reason he ended up in the lion’s house was because he had specifically asked not to be in Slytherin. That line of thought only added fuel to his panic.
Hedwig’s hoot brought him back to reality. He put that letter away, burying it at the bottom of his trunk. Out of sight, out of mind. He wouldn’t think about it until Professor McGonagall called him to sit under the hat. There wasn’t much he could do about it other than get himself stressed out anyway.
“Ok, girl,” he said out loud. “Let’s see what we need to buy for Hogwarts this year.”