The boy who lived
Harry Potter wasn’t like every other boy his age, thank you very much.
He wasn’t as tall or well-fed as any of the boys at his school. He doesn’t have a good pair of shoes, or clothes which fit him well. He doesn’t even have his own room, but sleeps in a cupboard instead; the cupboard under the stairs, in Privet Drive Number 4, where he lives with his aunt Petunia, uncle Vernon and cousin Dudley, or as Harry always calls them in summary; the Dursleys.
Harry has lived with the Dursleys ever since he can remember. Ever since, according to his aunt Petunia, his parents had died in a car crash when he was just a baby.
His aunt likes to remind him of how they so graciously took him in, just about as much as she likes to point out that he was just as strange, just as much of a freak as her sister had been, Harry’s Mum.
That is all he ever gets to hear about her, his Mother, of how she was a freak, married to his Dad, who had been a shabby drunk. That they’d probably never wanted him in the first place.
Harry used to argue with her, insisting she’d be lying. His parents had loved him, they must have, right? But he quickly learned that arguments never played out in his favour, not with his uncle having the final say. Usually, uncle Vernon would condemn him to a lengthy timeout inside his cupboard, where he’d lock the small door from outside, leaving Harry to starve there for days at a time.
On other times, when his uncle couldn’t control his anger enough to shove him into the cupboard and leave, he’d get a beating first. Harry got used to avoiding any possible conflicts, and that worked well enough most days, though he still found himself in trouble on occasions.
Sometimes, well most times, for things he just can’t control. He used to envy his cousin for all the love and care he receives from his parents, whereas Harry was always picking at leftovers, in every aspect that applies. And with Dudley, there usually weren’t any leftovers.
Harry used to look forward to finally going off to primary school, but that had quickly proven a mistake, because his cousin being in the same year as him, and being quite popular with the other boys — Harry never understood why — meant he was never invited to play.
It only got worse later on, when Dudley and his gang started to taunt him deliberately; inventing stupid games like Harry hunting where they’d chase him around town, though the worst part wasn’t the running, as Harry was quite fast, but whenever they ended up actually catching him.
Pierce, Dudley’s personal guard dog in both size and brains, would hold him in place, whilst Dudley used him as a punch bag. Sometimes they took turns, which was even worse, because the only one punching harder than Dudley was Pierce.
Harry often found himself black and blue, mostly along his torso and stomach, as the boys seemed to be clever enough, astoundingly, not to hit him anywhere a teacher could see.
After the naive excitement for school had died down so rapidly, Harry had found himself more than glad to finally have finished primary school earlier this summer. He’d attend Stonewall High in September, whilst Dudley and his friends would all go off to the same private school where uncle Vernon went to, called Smeltings Academy.
Dudley’d teased him about it all summer, how he’d get toilet dunked on his first day at Stonewall whilst at Smeltings, boys got their own walking sticks and exclusive extracurricular activities and all. But Harry didn’t mind going to Stonewall if it meant not having to share a classroom with Pierce and his cousin anymore. Although, the uniform his aunt had bleached and coloured herself did make him gag enough to momentarily question his contentment.
Otherwise, his summer had been going…well enough, with lots of chores and cooking and what not, but no major arguments, no strange occurrences, until, of course, all that got thrown out the window after what had happened with the snake at the zoo. Harry had no idea how the glass disappeared, but however it happened, his uncle had thought it was his fault.
He’d been stuck in his cupboard for days after that, only getting to go out to go to the toilet, only receiving bland porridge and water — it had felt like he’d been stuck in prison, which really wasn’t that far fetched, he reckoned.
Summer had turned grey and dreadful, as it did most years, because of some freaky occurrence he’d had no control over.
Harry’d already accepted this would be how it went on until September, when, just a few days before his birthday, he’d received a letter. A letter wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, except that nobody had ever sent him one before. He’d been so excited, but as with all things, the Dursleys had found a way to ruin his excitement immediately.
Only that whoever had sent him this letter, apparently really wanted for him to receive it, for no matter how many times his uncle sealed the letterbox, burned the letters or shredded them to pieces, more letters kept coming. And not via mailman, as per usual, but they arrived in the claws of owls. Dozens of them, all fluttering about Privet Drive just to bring these curious letters. It went so far that, on a quiet Sunday morning, Privet Drive 4 got flooded with them, the letters flying in from every possible opening into the house. It was marvellous, Harry thought, but unfortunately his uncle and aunt had seemed to think otherwise, and so after his failed attempt at escaping with one of the letters, his uncle had finally slapped. “That it! We’re leaving! To a place where they can’t find us!” he’d screamed, wrestling with Harry, who had tried to run for the door, all whilst a wave of more letters had burst through the mail-slot in the front door, breaking his uncle’s carefully crafted barrier he’d hammered on there just days ago.
Harry would have found it all rather funny, had it not been for his uncle packing up their things and scurrying them all in the car that very same Sunday, to drive them hours away to a scabby little boat, in the middle of a roaring storm nonetheless, and getting them across the sea to sleep in a single, old hut atop a tiny little island.
On the inside, it had been damp, dark and cold, with only one double bed and a single sofa, where Dudley got to sleep.
Harry got to sleep on the floor, with nothing but a single cushion, just as ratty as the rest of the furniture, among the piles on piles of dust that had gathered all over the place. It hadn’t seemed like anybody had lived there in years.
Midnight struck silently, the only giveaway being the quiet beeping of Harry’s digital watch strapped around his wrist, alerting him that it was officially July 31st; his eleventh birthday.
Whilst everbody else had already fallen asleep, he’d painted a cake into the layer of dust beneath him, drawing eleven little candles, before blowing them out like he would with a real birthday cake. And he wished, silently, that he’d get to read that letter. Please.
And then— maybe because for the first time, somebody had heard his wish, the door burst open with a startling pang, falling off its hinges entirely as a gigantic person stepped into the house. Rubeus Hagrid, he’d introduced himself gruffly.
Harry had never before seen a man like him.
The way he was dressed, and that strange umbrella with which, out of thin air, he’d caused Dudley to grow a pig tail.
Harry thought they would probably all be done for then, no way a man like that would randomly come here just for the fun of it, but then…Hagrid smiled at him.
Not only that, but he gave Harry a real birthday cake, with writing and all! Harry didn’t care that it was horribly spelled writing, nor that the cake was almost completely squished. Never before had anybody remembered his birthday. But that wasn’t what made this birthday so special in the end, well it was, but not compared to what Hagrid had told him then, handing him nothing else than the exact letter he’d wanted to read.
“Yer a wizard, Harry.”
A wizard. Him.
His entire world, everything he’d known and everything his aunt and uncle had told him, turned out to have been a lie.
He wasn’t a freak. Neither had his parents been. They’d been a witch and wizard, and according to Hagrid, really great ones.
And Harry was like them. A wizard.
He’d get to go to the same school they went to when they’d been his age. Hogwarts.
No amount of arguing had done anything in favour of his aunt and uncle, who had desperately tried to tell Hagrid that he wasn’t, under no circumstances, to attend that freakish school. For once, an argument actually turned out in Harry’s favour, not theirs.
Hagrid had showed him to a place called Diagon alley a few days later, to get all of his school supplies. To say that it was the greatest place Harry’d ever seen would have not done it justice. Diagon alley was wonderful in every way one couldn’t even imagine; there were people dressed in all sorts of cloaks and pointy hats, there were shops filled with strange objects, some of them even flew around.
They’d gotten all his schoolbooks in a bookstore where some of the books could talk, whilst other had wings or even teeth. It’d been absolutely amazing.
Though, his good mood did get dimmed temporarily after a rather strange encounter at Ollivanders, a shop existing exclusively for the purchase of wands.
Mr. Ollivander, the owner and famous wandmaker, is an elderly man, and a bit loopy, if you asked Harry. He explained to him that a wand always chooses the wizard, almost as if wands had a mind of their own.
Harry’d tried a few, some resulting in shattered vases or messed up wand boxes, before he was handed the right one. He’ll never forget the warm feeling spreading through him, the faint golden light which illuminated the room as he took the wand in his hand.
He’d instantly felt the connection, how right it felt, well, until Mr. Olivander told him about the curiosity of the wand’s choosing; the curiosity of this wand being the one and only brother of its counterpart, made with a phoenix feather core. Curious, because its brother had belonged to none other than the man who’d given Harry his scar.
The lightning bolt shaped scar cutting into the right side of his forehead, all the way down to his eyebrow. He’s had it ever since he’d been a baby.
A curse mark. That’s what Ollivander had mumbled on about. Given to him by the wizard who, according to Hagrid, had tried to murder him as a baby.
“What’s his name?” Harry’d asked over lunch, waiting patiently for Hagrid, who’d waged a great struggle to say the wizard’s name aloud. Apparently, nobody here ever spoke his name, even though that dark wizard wasn’t here any longer, his name seemed to still carry fear.
“His name was…Voldemort.”
“He…he killed my parents, didn’t he? Vol— I mean, you know who.”
Hagrid had stalled for a long while, before looking down into his bowl of food. “I think someone else should tell ya what happened with yer parents, Harry.”
The day’d ended on a really good note though, because Harry’d gotten yet another birthday gift from Hagrid; his very own pet owl!
Hedwig is what he’d called her, after spotting the name in one of his new schoolbooks History of Magic.
The rest of summer was slightly more bearable than the start, because after everything that’s happened, his uncle seemed rather unnerved, enough even to move Harry out of the cupboard and into Dudley’s spare room, which made the occasional house arrest a bit less dreadful.
Still, September 1st could not come around fast enough, so when it finally did, and Harry said his goodbyes — a rather short one, hugs excluded of course, thankfully — to the Dursley’s at Kings cross station, he was basically jumping with joy.
It got even better after he’d met a lovely wizard family, the Weasleys, who’d showed him to the magically hidden platform 9 3/4, where the Hogwarts Express would take them to Hogwarts.
The Weasleys are a large family, with a lot of children, but one in particular, a boy named Ron who was his age, became an instant friend. They even shared a compartment, where they’d ordered about every single sweet available off the trolley.
It’d been the first time Harry’d truly made a friend.
Though, however flabbergasted he’d been about everything before, the moment he’d laid eyes on the huge castle, Hogwarts castle, his heart soared.
He had never, truly never in his life seen anything even remotely comparable before. Hogwarts is amazing.
It’s been three weeks since he’d come here now, and he still can’t believe how incredible it is.
There’d been a ceremony on the first night, at the welcoming feast, called the sorting ceremony, where first year students got sorted into one of the four Hogwarts houses; Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor or Slytherin.
The houses should be akin to a sort of team, or family, where students could earn house points for good behaviour, such as following the rules, attending classes, good grades and team spirit, or loose points by doing the opposite.
Ron had told Harry all about the four houses as they’d waited for their sorting; about how he would probably end up in Gryffindor, house of the brave, like all of his siblings and his parents had. And about how Slytherin, house of the snake, was known to have housed some of the darkest wizards in history.
Voldemort had been sorted there, Harry’d guessed so even before Ron’d told him, which is why, when it was his turn to put on the sorting hat, he’d pleaded with it not to send him there.
Not Slytherin. Anywhere but Slytherin.
His heart soared once more when, as a result, the hat had shouted GRYFFINDOR loudly throughout the great hall, and Harry’d earned enthusiastic cheers from all around the Gryffindor table.
Since then, him and Ron had become best friends, attending classes together and studying in the common room in the evenings, or well, they’d study sometimes, and other times, Ron, Fred and George would tell him all about the wizard world, and most importantly about this amazing sport called quidditch where you’d fly on brooms, playing a game which included based off scoring goals for your team, until one of the Seekers would catch a small golden ball called the Snitch.
It sounds fantastic.
Harry hopes he’d get to fly and play quidditch someday.
And so, Harry’s days went from grey to colourful, from bleak to interesting, and he can almost forget all about how he’d have to return to his muggle aunt and uncle next summer.
For now, for the first time ever, he actually really enjoys school.
Nothing could happen that could muck it up now, he thinks, as he sits through Professor Flitwick’s Charms lesson on this late September morning.
“And this, dear students, is how one successfully—“
The door to Flitwick’s classroom bursts open, interrupting his current explanation on a mild firelight charm, to reveal a rather disheveled looking Professor Mcgonagall.
“What’s up with her?” Ron whispers next to Harry.
Harry shrugs, watching as their head of house walks into the classroom with a very unusual lack of stern authority she would normally radiate.
“Excuse my interrupting you, Filius,”
To Harry’s dismay, she halts right in front of him, looking down upon him with an unreadable expression. “Headmaster Dumbledore would like to see Mr. Potter in his office at once.”
“Of course, Minerva.”
Professor Mcgonagall turns to him then, her moss green eyes piercing his as she beckons him to stand up. “Follow me, Mr. Potter.”
Oh, great…
Harry sighs as he packs is things together at once, trying to ignore the whispers coming from Draco Malfoy and his friends.
“Good luck, mate.” Ron whispers as he shoulders his bag.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Seems he might have mucked it all up somehow after all, he thinks miserably, following Professor Mcgonagall out into the corridor.