Magic isn’t real.
The Dursleys had never been nice to him.
They had shrieked and shrieked when they saw him and banished him to the smallest and dirtiest room they could find. His new inhabitance was the cupboard under the stairs. Sometimes, Harry would often wake in the middle of the night, his stomach rumbling and his head hurting, dizzy and disorientated and he reached up expecting to touch the baby mobile that hung above his crib or his father's beard as they peered down at him, only to cry out when all his fingers grazed clumps of dust or the bodies of spiders that crawled around.
The Dursleys had scoffed at his cries and spit in his face, they did not hug him like his father or feed him. They left him in the dark till he was too tired and his eyes were too dry to shed any more tears and he fell into a fitful sleep.
He had no meal time. He had no milk and no food. No toys and no pets. No hugs and certainly no love.
Sometimes, when he was hungry and tired he would still awake expecting to see his family, only to cry and cry until his heart realised that they were gone, the habit never fading even as the memories did.
The first time Harry was hit was when he was 4.
He had stolen one of Dudley’s toys, a broken ragged bear that Dudley had thrown out and certainly wouldn’t miss. He had kept it in his cupboard, left it leaning against his bed and at night when he couldn’t sleep he’d hug it and at times when he felt particularly alone, he swore the bear had hugged him back.
He told his nursery teacher the next day that that the bear was his best friend, he told the children who sat around him that the bear could move and watched his cousin shrivel up in jealousy nearby. He was sent home later, his aunt gripping onto his shoulder tightly as the teacher explained his childish fantasies and laughed, because he was a child, and children had big imaginations and there was nothing they could do to stop them.
He went asleep that night with bruises lining his body and the blows his uncle had delivered lingering on his skin like phantom pains prickling his arms and tickling his stomach, alone in his cupboard with nothing but the spiders and dust bunnies for company.
Magic wasn’t real.
His uncle had screamed the words at him, his spit flying and his hands holding his neck when Harry had made the mistake of defending himself, indignant and determined that the bear had moved like magic. His face had swollen up, turning rapid shades of purple and red as his beady eyes stared, as if attempting to force his very soul into submission with a single sentence.
Magic wasn’t real.
His aunt had screeched, her eyes wild and mad when he found himself on the roof, and her nails dug into the back of his hand till he could see the blood pooling out beside her fingers and saw the droplets of ruby red hit the floor, till he could feel the dizzying consequences of her fear.
Magic wasn’t real.
His cousin taunted him, his meaty fists pummeling his stomach calling him a freak, calling him a monster and every other vile, vicious name that had been invented, as Harry lay battered and bloody, till his eyes had shut and the sky around him was no longer blue but black and the ground he rested his head on had been tainted red with blood and he lay in a puddle of tears.
Magic wasn’t real.
He repeated the words in his cupboard, his eyes tearful and his stomach grumbling till the words echoed through his head in a pendulum motion, till the word freak seemed normal and fitted, till the bruises on his skin that turned ugly shades of purple were simply a part of his life and the pain, the terrifying and antagonizing pain he felt in his heart and his head was nothing more than a figment of his imagination.
Magic isn’t real.