Magic is forbidden/I am afraid of myself
Magic was forbidden.
Magic was dangerous.
Magic was vicious.
He was freakish.
He was broken.
He was wrong.
The Dursleys called him names sometimes, when he lay at night awake in his cupboard, his eyes squinting as he traced the name etched into the walls and his ears reaching out, catching every echo, every footstep that passed by. They called him a freak, a burden, an unfixable mess. They said he did not belong and he found himself believing them. They would whisper, their eyes darting back and forth, their figures hunched over a kitchen table oddly menacing from the creak in his door.
The shadows walked with them, its arms brushing past them, attempting desperately to grab and pull them forward. Harry dreamed of the darkness winning, its tendrils oddly comforting as they lashed out, erasing all the pain and hurt and sadness that they had caused and would cause.
He dreamed of a world where people did not frown at the shadows that curled around him, and at the sea whose waves grew and lapped against the sand following him, at the lightning that rumbled in the dark blue sky as the rain pattered against his skin, the wet droplets hitting his hair and his face and his hands soothing him yet never soaking him.
He dreamed of a world where he did not hide, where the magic vibrating underneath his skin was not forced to be suppressed, where it did not build up in the pit of his stomach, a large angry fireball that screamed and raged demanding to be released, where he did not avoid the rain to avoid the questions and run from the beach and its soft sand and calm waves to feel normal, to feel anything other than fear for once in his life.
He dreamed of a world where the words on his pages did not rearrange and spin, where his hands could stop shaking and the necklace around his neck could fall and break and would not burn whenever he stepped into the sea and walked into a storm and hid into the shadows that whispered his name.
He dreamed of a world where he stared down at his hands and saw anything other than the scars marring it and felt anything other than fear at what they could do.
He dreamed of a world where he was free.
He dreamed of a life that was his.
The sea would call out to him, its waves would crash against his ankles and creatures would emerge from the conches buried in the sand and nip at his toes. They'd stare at him, their bodies twitching and soft murmurs coming from their mouths. They would talk to him, their murmurs would become louder and louder till they evolved to words, to hushes filled with prince and father and home, until his ears would ring and his head would throb when the necklace flared, his chest burning as he fell in agony.
They would not try to talk again.
Imagining his parents as ghosts never seemed logical, but he did. He imagined this was their doing. That they whispered in the creature's ears, telling him, begging him to hold on, to live for them. Then he'd lay in agony and remember that parents were meant to love and people who loved did not wish this on anyone. They would not wish him pain.
He had long given up, since then, trying to decipher what it all truly meant.
When he was younger, he would return the next day to the beach, his feet in the same position, the sand crunching under his weight as he waited. The creatures would come again, their faces excited as they stared. They would bring friends and family and voices would fill his ears, the only words that registered and sounded in his brain always the same before he would collapse again, the water flowing beneath him almost frantic as it tried to sooth his pain. It never worked.
He would stand minutes later, his chest burning and as he walked stumbling back to shore, the water too cold and the voices too loud to drown his pain his questions unanswerable and the clues too confusing for his scrambled brain.
Going home, he would walk knowing he would sleep to bruises lining his skin and insults echoing through his head, deciding once and for all that this was enough. That a human, that he could not take any more pain.
He never returned to the sea again.
He missed the water, the feel of the tides against his feet and the sand underneath his toes. He missed how he felt, how for a minute all his aches would disappear. He missed the sea, he missed the water and he missed the feeling, the experience of for once living without pain.
But the relief was momentary. He knew that once he stepped in, the pain would leave for a second before hitting him, increased tenfold, till blood rushed to his ears and the waves roared with his hurt.
The sea was dangerous, the sea was unrestrained, the sea was pain and chaos.
They were all he knew.
The sea was all he knew.
And without it, he knew nothing, he was nothing.
The sea was home.
Harry loved the rain.
The rain that fell against his cheeks and wrapped around him like a blanket, a cocoon of warmth.
The rain that soaked him, that left his clothes soggy and damp, smelling like petrichor, filling the tiny space he called home with the essence of the Earth.
The rain that left the rest shivering and chattering but smiled at him as he stood, his skin never wet and his hair dry.
Harry loved the rain because it represented comfort, and happiness and all that lay in between. He loved it because for once it chose him, for once it loved him and not Dudley and all the children and teachers in his school. It did not mock him and sneer, it did not beat him and hurt him.
The rain was comfort and Harry found solace in the idea that for a second, just for a second, he could believe it was reserved for him and him only, that it was his and knew that no one could take that from him.
Harry loved the rain
The shadows whispered his name, their darkness overwhelming and temping.
He'd lay back at night, feeling safer than he did in daylight knowing that no one could touch him here, that here he was alone and the shadows would protect him.
The shadows whispered his name and Harry could not bring himself to care for they brought him warmth and safety when the light did not.
Whenever there was a storm, the hairs on his arms stood on end.
Whenever there was a storm, Harry would run out, relishing in the rain hitting his skin and the flashes of lightning that would light the sky like beacons, not caring that there were people who stared in hatred and judged him.
Whenever there was a storm, Harry would lie awake at night, his ears pressed against his door taking comfort in the thunder that growled outside the window.
Whenever there was a storm, Harry felt at home.
The children at school called him weird, their parents would grab their children's hands and drag them away from the boy who loved thunderstorms and the rain as it hit his tongue, who loved the beach and swore its creatures spoke to him and the waves mimicked his pain but whose feet hadn't touched the sand in years. They dragged their children away from the boy who lived in the light but yearned for the darkness and swore that sometimes the sea was a part of him, the thunder growled his name and the shadows could mold and twist to his fantasies.
The Dursleys called him a freak, they stared and hid during storms and pulled him by the ear shoving him in his cupboard when it rained. His cousin would shriek and scramble back in fear when his eyes would grow eerie and the lightning behind him could be seen in them or they would turn darker in the shadows or blue with the sea. His uncle would rage when his teachers would complain, of their hair color changing and when Harry would make their job harder by ending up in high spaces out of their reach and understanding.
Harry was not normal.
He had never considered himself normal.
The people around him were scared of his power and his speech, of his skills and his eyes and the odd occurrences that happened around him. They did not recognize and did not want to know of the forces behind the supernatural, they did not want to know or recognize the forces that drove him to crumpled heaps on the floor of the beach or the crazed smiles out in the lightning and rain. They did not want to know him, for they feared him, with their passionate rage and fearful gaze. They isolated him, kept him behind metaphorical bars till he believed he was the monster, the criminal and the world around him was his jailer, till he was afraid of himself and refused to believe that he felt nothing when he looked down at his hands and saw power.
But when a man came knocking, his beard up to his waist and clothes bright and sparkly, with his eyes twinkling behind his half rimmed glasses and a wand in his hand, Harry wondered for the first time in his life, if he really was not alone, that in the midst of his terrifying reality and pain, if the world in all its horror and punishments, had decided to take pity.
Looking back years later, he couldn't help but shudder at how wrong he truly had been.