56.20 way of hating myself
In somber return to the Dursleys, Harry bore a countenance steeped in shadows, scarcely touching his cousin's trousers with two slender fingers.
Two fingers, a mere chasm betwixt the fabric and Harry's pallid abdomen. Instead of donning them in layered folds, held fast with a belt, Harry seemed to disappear within their expanse.
Harry Potter, on the cusp of slipping into trousers that once swathed his cousin's frame in youthful plenitude, now at thirteen, stood on the precipice of fourteen, his path seemed destined to mirror his corpulent kin.
With every vestige of attire shed, Harry beheld his form in all its exposed vulnerability, clad only in boxer shorts. The transformation was evident, even Hagrid's discourse broached the subject, following the ordeal that ushered him to the infirmary.
"Swiftly you grow, Harry. Persist, and soon I shan't bear your weight," Hagrid mused with an amiable chuckle.
A palpable tremor coursed through Harry as his fingertip traced the waistband's edge, imprinting an indelible mark upon his skin. A maiden occurrence, this. Were waistbands meant to etch their presence on tender hipbones? Did this fate befall all?
The shadow upon Harry's visage deepened, the certainty loomed: this was the fate of his corpulent cousin. Harry vehemently rejected such a future. To burgeon into a figure laden with excess, bereft of broomstick agility, marked by undergarments leaving their scars, and ultimately, to metamorphose into a replica of the relative who had wronged him—this was anathema.
Upon the cold floor, Harry sank. Nearly fourteen, yet carried by Hagrid just once. No other had borne him aloft, and the prospect dimmed with each passing day, lest he arrest this burgeoning transformation.
Fists clenched, the young wizard's intentions were mere solace in a whirlwind. A prolonged, scalding shower had been his design, to find respite whilst the Dursleys feigned familial ties without him. Yet, this interlude, conceived for serenity, had transmuted into a tempest. Harry exchanged his enchanted Hogwarts robes for the vestiges of his cousin's infancy, a cruel reminder of unrelenting change.
Then, abruptly, Harry jettisoned these musings and descended into the deluge, discarding his vestments in full. He permitted the heated deluge to course over him, lost in contemplation.
Absurdity loomed large. To fret as though a damsel about one's girth was folly. As Hagrid had attested, growth was the natural course. To accrete in stature was no mark of frailty, but rather, a testament to burgeoning vitality. The quest for diminution was a province of a different ilk, of those perhaps less sturdy of spirit.
He might be daft, yearning to be one of them tiny, cuddly things easily carried and cuddled. The stark truth was, Harry had no desire to grow up. He'd never had the chance to experience a proper childhood – to be cuddled, loved, carried. He was convinced he'd never even had the opportunity to sip from a baby's bottle, thrust far too young into a life of servitude, tending to Muggles.
He furrowed his brow at this thought, seeing the Dursleys as mere dim-witted and inferior Muggles. He swiftly dismissed the notion, finding it too Slytherin-like for a Gryffindor. However, he'd been forced to plead with the Sorting Hat not to send him to Slytherin. Deep down, Harry knew he was a Slytherin, worthy of that house of less-than-humane beings.
But school houses didn't count for much in the real world. Harry stepped out of the shower, drying himself with an anxious gaze reflecting in the mirror. His concerns about school houses held no weight in the adult world.
In a few months, Harry would turn 14, officially no longer recognized as a child but as a teenager. The years had passed emptily, lost to a life of servitude. He didn't want to grow up, for it meant leaving Hogwarts, parting from his friends, and facing the adult world. He, who had never had the privilege of being a child, whose innocence had been unjustly stripped away too soon, whose parents had been torn from him, and whose life as a child had been denied.
"No... I want to stay a child forever..."
A small voice in his head then whispered a gentle solution in his ear. "Starve yourself, and your body will stop growing. You can't grow up if you don't eat anymore."
Harry gripped the sink tightly and then let go. He turned to the scales, and completely naked, stepped on them to see his weight.
56.20 kilograms, probably 56.20 reasons to despise himself. He had been 36 kilograms at the beginning of the year. Harry knew he had also grown several centimeters, but it no longer mattered to him.
He wanted to remain 13 forever. He had two months before his 14th birthday to lose weight and stay thirteen forever.
Harry wept on the bathroom floor. All he yearned for was to be embraced and carried like a child. He had no wish to become a man or an adult. It was too unfair that he couldn't have at least one positive experience of his childhood.