Schoolboy antics.
Harry Potter had learnt to grow accustomed to the oddities in his neighbourhood.
The creatures stared at him, their eyes wide and hungry until Harry would blink and they were people, or dogs or snakes. The horses that bowed when he passed, their mane so luscious and long, wings attached to their body that disappeared when Harry stared long enough until he was convinced he was hallucinating.
The men that followed him to school, their robes bright and oddly patterned, their top hats so round and large and their eyes so excited as they shook his hands. Oh, Harry Potter! They'd whisper his name as he left, their voices coated in excitement and shock and Harry would stare, his heart deflating as he left because they called him great and no one in their right mind would ever make that mistake. They were talking about someone else, they had seen him and thought of their relative or some child celebrity, but certainly not him.
He was no great man. He was a tired, friendless schoolboy who sat alone with his inky fingers and broken home.
He was no spectacle. He had done nothing in this life he had lived and would do nothing in his future.
He was a freak, a monster, a good-for-nothing boy who took up space.
He certainly wasn't great.
He had no friends at school.
The boys would laugh at his glasses and his strength, they'd call him thin and weak, lift his arms and poke his skin till they could feel his bones and mock him for not having as many muscles as they did.
The girls would glare, their eyes narrowing and their expressions souring when they looked at him. They did not like his clothes, the baggy cast-offs he would wear dull and worn, till there were too many holes and the teachers would complain. They thought he was dumb, they'd laugh and smile at his misfortune, giggling when the words swam and he could not answer. They did not like that he was a boy, boys were gross, boys were mean, they did not play with boys and they certainly did not play with Harry.
And so Harry would sit, his eyes trained outside as he watched them play, seeking refuge in the classroom's smell, in its warmth and in the protection it offered. The classroom was safe. Dudley could not reach him here. No one could.
The teachers hated him.
He could not read properly. The words in his book would spin, their letters moving up and down, jumbling until all he could do was sit cross-eyed, glaring at the sheet in front of him, the letters foreign and the text unreadable. His ears would redden every time he was called, his cheeks would burn and his eyes would sting as he stared ahead. The letters on the board were no different to the ones in front of him, they still swam and spun and he would stay silent until the teacher's patience would give out and the students around him would begin chuckling. His head would be down for the rest of the day, ignoring the student's stares and the teacher's glares knowing that they all meant the same thing.
He could not sit still. His knees would bounce up and down and his fingers would twitch, drumming against the table until the adults would slap a ruler down on his desk and he would flinch at the sound, his mind flashing back to his uncle's belt and his haggard blows, until he would scare his mind into submission and find a rubber band to tie his fingers together and force his knees to move slower.
He could not pay attention. A minute more seemed unbearable to his already impatient, tired state. The world around him seemed more interesting than the sheets in front and the words in front seemed boring and unnecessary to his full mind.
He hated school. He hated it all.
He was crazy.
The teachers told him he was a troublemaker, a liar with a vivid imagination. They told his aunt to take him to a therapist, to take him out of their noble school and send him to another more suited to his needs.
His aunt had shrieked and cried and raged. She would not spend another penny on this boy she would whisper. She would not spend another penny on her sister.
So they gave him a government therapist. So he'd walk the halls, his uniform torn and ratty, his gait nervous and defeated, his head down as the students behind him sneered and laughed. He was crazy. Deranged. They didn't know what the word meant. The way it rolled off their tongues and made him cringe, fed into their hunger and egos.
He was not crazy he would think, the tears in his eyes were suppressed and the teacher's sympathetic looks were avoided. He was not crazy, right?
The therapist he had was an old man, whose glasses were cracked and too big for his face, whose white wispy air stood on end as he stared, his blue eyes cold and calculating.
He'd told him to draw. He'd told him to draw the creatures he had seen and when he did, painstakingly and intricately, the man took the paper from his hands and ripped it to shreds.
Magic wasn't real
The horned bull he had drawn was from stories, the winged horse was fake and the giant dog was exaggerated.
He was crazy.
He was not normal.
He was not good.
Dudley had not chased him up the roof, though that was what he had told himself.
He had seen a monster, a horrific creature with a thousand snake heads and a body of a human. He had stared, stumbling back when the monster hissed, its mouth opening and its arms reaching out.
So he'd run. His heart was pumping and the ground beneath his feet shaking as he sprinted, desperate to get away from the monstrosity behind him. The monster caught up with him, its strides almost on par with his.
He stopped in front of the wall, his path blocked and nowhere left to go. He looked up, the longing in his eyes, wishing he could fly and when he blinked, he found the winds swirling around him and his feet planting themselves on the top of the school building.
The monster screeched below him, its arms scratching the bricks again and again until it realized that Harry was not leaving and that Harry was out of his reach. Harry spent that night lying awake, his eyes tracing the indents in the ceiling of his cupboard wondering if the life ahead of him was truly this short.
He had spent the next few weeks under supervision, his uncle's punches aching and his aunt's words mocking him as he stared into the eyes of his furious therapist, though he could not bring himself to care.
He was crazy.
He had accepted it long ago.
He was a schoolboy and even schoolboys had their antics.
He was crazy.
But so were they.