Gelotophobia
Harry Potter had always been afraid of death. He didn't know why at first, perhaps it was the accident that caused his right eye to be crushed and deformed; the accident that killed his parents, the parents he never got to know or grow with. Perhaps it because of his Aunt Petunia's steadily increasingly painful punishments for messing things up even though he didn't mean to. Or perhaps it was his Uncle Vernon, who would always snatch him by the hair and lift him at least a foot off the ground for the same reason as his Aunt Petunia. Maybe it was because of his cousin, Dudley, and his strange tendency for violence when he didn't get his way. Harry never quite understood that.
He was sure they loved him once. They must've done. An innocent babe dropped on their doorstep in the dead of night. When they were younger, Dudley said it was like something straight out of a fairy tale, like how the witch in Rapunzel took her, but instead of keeping her, she dropped her off to someone else. Those childish fantasies disappeared the moment Dudley was able to be influenced by his parents' vile behaviour toward Harry. He started to act the same. He started to scuff Harry's shoes even though he only had the one pair, leaving him to go out with his soles half falling off and the leather warped from getting soaked in the hot sink water. Dudley had begun to throw his clothes out into the pouring rain, leaving Harry to chase after the fleeing fabrics if he wanted anything to wear to bed that night. More oft than not, he was dithering in his bed in soaked clothes.
Speaking of his bed, actually, it was nothing special or anything to brag about or anything he really wanted to bring up to anyone who asked. He lived in the servant's quarters of the modest house, less than that, he lived in the boiler room. It was constantly hot in there, but he never did feel too warm, in fact, if it got too hot, he'd begin to shake and dither as if he were being frozen. He assumed it to be his body over-regulating itself, he was probably right. No one else ever used the library and the books were all dusty and almost all moulded together by the time he managed to memorise his way there and back without being spotted by the late night wanderings of Petunia and the late night snack run by Dudley and his father.
In all honesty, Harry never felt too much about Dudley, they were the same age and he could run faster, so Dudley's behaviour never got to him, but it was his Aunt and Uncle that got under his skin, in a poison sort of way, a sort of poison that itched at his heart and made it hurt. Why did they hate him? He didn't know and he probably never would, but he imagined all the reasons why. Maybe they were right and he was a mad boy who cursed them when he was younger, or maybe he was actually the son of some wicked criminal, or maybe he wasn't related to them at all and they were angry to be saddled with another boy who costed too much.
The medicinal fees to treat his eye when he was younger stacked up quite high, not to mention it was another mouth to feed for a middle class family that was just barely getting by with the three of them.
He was a burden, to put it lightly. And he knew it all to well.
But he digresses, as his being a burden is not the point of the story. Or rather, not the main point.
It's glaringly obvious that he'd always been an unlucky child, orphaned at a year old and left in the incapable hands of his incompetent aunt and uncle, left to endure the violent outbursts of their son, who just so happened to be his cousin. Needless to say, Harry wasn't content with his life as of current. As he was told it, his parents were careless with their stagecoach and its footman, who accidentally nosedived down the side of a thin passageway to their remote home, of which Harry didn't know the name of. The impact killed them but their bodies cushioned the babe and he survived, the only injury being a stick of wood to his eye. Sometimes, Harry was run his fingers over where his eye used to be, where the lid was now moulded shut after being sewn when he was finally attended to a few days after, on the verge of sepsis from no treatment. Well, he counted himself lucky in that regard, he could've very well died in the fall or been impaled through the head, or he could've died of sepsis, but he wasn't, he was alive and that certainly counted for something.
Now, however, there was a pounding on the door and a voice yelling at him to "Get up!" It was one of Aunt Petunia's chambermaids, she despised Harry as much as his aunt did. When he didn't immediately get up, he was hounded by another screech telling him to rise from his bed and get out and dressed. He frowned and rubbed at his eye as he did, pulling on a broken, rickety pair of glasses, crooked as they were and missing a lens on the right, they were useful to the one eye he had remaining. When she went to shriek again, he yelled back, "I'm up!"
Rarely ever was she so insistent on him getting up, so he wracked his brain as he gathered his clothes, pulled on an outer robe and slipped out of the boiling room to find a bathroom no one was using, always a mouldy one. By the time he reached the bathroom, he remembered. Of course, it was Dudley's birthday, the one day he was allowed to be seen outside of the Dursley House.
Finishing dressed and brushing his teeth and trying, then failing to get his wild hair to sit flat for once, he booked it out of the bathroom, out of the servant's quarters and to the main part of the house, dashing through hallways and between the few servants already up and working and into the dining hall, panting with his glasses skewed on his nose and hair wilder than before, clothes a bit dishevelled.
"Harry, you are a mess! We have a guest arriving soon!" Aunt Petunia shrieked with horror, hurrying over with a goblet of water to douse his hair and try get it flat. She failed of course, which made her even madder than she already was at his bare presence. "Oh, you are horror!" She yelled, "A horror! Never can I get your hair down correctly! Never will any part of you listen or do what I need it to!"
"Sorry, Aunt Petunia," he muttered, letting her batter him this way and that as she attempted again to sort it out, more forcefully this time, but he daren't wince or cry out at her harsh fingers and sharp nails digging into his scalp. "Oh!" She exclaimed and threw the goblet down, turning to her husband with exasperation, "He is hopeless," she cried, "I should think he needs another cut." And Harry wasn't sure if she meant a haircut or a hit. He stared at her, waiting for her to make up her mind before she sat and sighed, then turned to Dudley, squeezed his cheeks and cooed: "My perfect little Dudley would never disobey me like that, would he?" Her son shook his head, both eager to get her off and continue eating and eager to agree to any compliment his ungrateful, undeserving being would receive. "Sorry, Aunt Petunia," Harry muttered again, a bit quieter this time, he took a seat at the far end of the long table, but not the master's seat, never the master's seat. He made that mistake once and could easily point out the punishment that remained on his body for it after. He sat on the to the right of it, opposite to where Dudley sat on the left of it at the opposite end, facing his mother and beside father.
Harry lamented to think that if he had grown up with his parents, there was a chance he would've ended up like Dudley. He thanked whatever God that in some twisted way, that fate was avoided.
When they were done with breakfast, the four of them piled into the drawing room, where Dudley began to meticulously and tiresomely count all his presents.
"How many, Dudley?" Asked Uncle Vernon with a proud sneer. "Thirty-six... That's two less than last year," his son responded with a dark face, evidently annoyed. Harry looked between the two, the hair on his nape standing on end, a tell-tale sign of danger, so he cautiously stepped a bit away, holding his arms over his stomach instinctively. "Well, what about Auntie Marge's presents?" Petunia asked with an edge to her voice, Lord knows how aggressive her son got. "But that's only one more," he said, faking a hurt tone. Harry could tell all too well his falsities, but his parents apparently couldn't.
"Well, well," Petunia stumbled, looking to Vernon for help. "We'll get you two more present while we're out, how does that sound?" She asked hastily after a moment of silence. Doing the math made Dudley's hurt burn red but he almost got it, "I'll have then... Thirty--thirty--" he kept repeating 'thirty,' until Vernon interjected, "Thirty-nine, boy really wants to wring his father's pockets," he laughed, slapping his hands on his knees as he bent over, his laughter joined by Dudley after a moment and a faint laugh by Petunia, who looked between the boys.
Harry knew she loved them but it was clear she regretted being and having them sometimes. Harry regretted her doing that too. Maybe she'd have room in her heart to love him if they weren't in the picture. They waited in the drawing room, Harry tucked practically into the wall with how snug his chair was crammed into it. It was the only chair he was allowed to sit on and it may as well have been a block of wood because the stuffing had become so worn it did nothing to act as cushioning.
Finally, the Polkiss' arrived, well, just two of them. The Master Polkiss was overseas in America for some odd business in trade, he didn't know. Miss Polkiss was there with her son, both as dressed and as stuck up as the Dursleys were.
Suddenly, Harry felt very out of place. He looked down at his feet as he felt Miss Polkiss' eyes drag over to him. He heard her jump and let out a shout of surprise, probably a gloved hand rising to her pushed up chest. "My, my, he frightened me," she giggled, earning one of out Petunia too, who began to smooth over her skirt, "Yes, yes, he tends to do that," she muttered. Miss Polkiss smacked her lips before she spoke again, "Well, you are certainly charitable, housing that here."
Now, Harry had been called many things, but 'that' was a new one and it caused his head to raise with curiosity.
"That?" Petunia smoothed over the back of his hair, pushing it back into place as her smile widened uncomfortably on her face. "Yes, that, you know, he's not from here, he's not one of us," she gestured to herself, then to her son, Piers, then to the Dursleys, who all laughed, only Petunia seemed a bit uncomfortable at the notion, "Quite, yes... Well, we are happy to have Piers with us today, Miss Polkiss, we'll take very good care of him, won't we, Piers?" She asked, putting a hand on Piers' shoulder, he nodded, eager to get his mother out of the house so they could leave quicker.
Harry clenched his hands into fists. Aunt Petunia had once told him why he looked so different to them, the one rare moment she was alone, sewing to herself in the drawing room. He was five and wanted to know why everyone was so pale in comparison to himself. He was told that his father was a strange place she didn't know the name of, but that the people there all looked like him, they were darker than the people in England were, but according to her, they were the same where it counted. She said that Englishmen and whoever-men alike were all greedy. She said that his father took something of hers but she wouldn't admit what to him that night and sent him to bed with the rare snack of hot milk and a buttered piece of bread. So rare, in fact, that he never got given that snack again.
It was a half hour later when they were all piling into the stagecoach to leave. Harry was squashed against the door, Dudley's back pressing him flat against it as he and Piers were rocking the coach back and forth with their boisterous and obnoxious laughing at anything they saw out the windows. They giggled at an old lady getting splashed as they passed and a young woman trying to dress her two kids ready to go run errands for her. Harry found nothing funny about the two situations, sure it was mildly amusing when the woman's son whinged about putting his coat on, but he did put it on and he did hold hands with his sister when they left the front door step, but the old lady getting soaked had nothing funny about it to him.
The Exotics Imperium was torturous to say the least. Harry endured watching Dudley pick up rocks and throw them at the magnificent zebras in the pens until lunch, at which he received nothing but half a sandwich that had a bite out of it. He didn't eat it, because he opened it and found it packed with sand. He frowned and hugged his stomach until they got moving again, this time to where they kept dangerous reptiles. Snakes mostly and a pair of alligators all the way from Florida. Harry took a particular interest in a Boa Constrictor that didn't seem to want to wake.
He wished he could be like the snake, unbothered by the outside world, but to anyone who knew of the Dursleys, he was their mentally disturbed nephew and no amount of ignorance would get rid of the way that sentence ate into his pride. His fingers ran over the wooden rail, feeling the grain against his skin as Dudley demanded Vernon bang on the glass to get the snake moving. It did not, so Dudley did. Harry stayed put, sticking a single finger out to press against the glass.
"Must be annoying having to deal with all of them, isn't it...?" He whispered to the animal, not hoping or expecting an answer. He supposed it added to his 'mad nephew' façade. The snake then moved and turned its head at Harry, who blinked and tilted his head in return. It nodded, tongue flickering as it drew closer to the glass. "Well... Where are you from?" He asked, curious now. It gestured to the golden plaque on the wooden rail, "Brazil... Where is that?" But of course, the snake didn't answer. "Was it nice?" But the snake jutted its tail at the plaque, so Harry read on, "Oh," he frowned. He wanted to continue, but then Piers and Dudley shoved him out of the way, yelling that the snake was awake and moving.
Harry, who's trouser legs were just a tad too long, tripped on the hems and tumbled to the ground, glaring up at Dudley. Then, as if God reached down and did it himself, the glass disappeared. The pair of boys toppled into the enclosure, screaming with shock and terror at the sight of the Boa Constrictor coming straight for them. It didn't go at them, of course, but rather, over them and out of the enclosure. Everyone else in the way quickly shrieked and ran off. Harry wanted to giggle, but was unable to under Vernon's angered gaze.