The-Boy-Who-Lived-in-a-Cupboard
Harry Potter, of Number Four, Privet Drive (no matter how unwillingly), was used to walls. After all, much of his childhood was spent locked in a space that was more walls than floor. He grew up not knowing much past the dirty white walls of the cupboard. Grew used to the spiders that made homes in the corners of the walls, of the drawings he made with smuggled crayons, of the picture of two adults and a shaggy black dog, of the skewed letters that labeled the space as Harry’s Room. Learned to listen to the walls to determine who was walking down the steps, how many Dursleys were in the living room on the other side of his walls. And those walls turned into shields for him, as he was the only one in the house who could even fit in the cupboard under the stairs that was called his bedroom. When the day was done, after shoves and smacks yielded to a piece of toast eaten over the sink and a handful of water from the tap, Harry could disappear behind walls and finally, with no one’s eyes on him, rest.
The outside walls of Number Four were also very familiar, as he grew to get used to staring at them while he watered and weeded the flower beds that framed them. They were also a relief to see behind him as he ran away from his aunt’s scissors, which for all she tried, could never seem to keep his hair short, any haircut growing back to a tangled heap by the next morning. (The first time that happened, he was five, the night before he was going to his first day of school, and she was trying to make him presentable. When he crawled out of the cupboard the next morning, hair in its usual curls, she screeched, and his uncle threw him back in, and he missed his first week of school.)
By the time he was seven, he had realized that walls were useful for more than just hiding physically. He had found a book on his aunt’s side of the living room couch on “An Organized Mind”, all about compartmentalizing one’s thoughts and feelings. He began to think of walls in his mind, to hide the things that his relatives would consider “freaky”, to bury the loneliness he felt at seeing Dudley get love so easily from his parents, love that Harry himself couldn’t even dream of anymore. Not since whispers of “mommy and daddy love you Harry” were drowned out by green lights and high, cruel laughs and the echo of thudding bodies on hardwood floors.
Walls that he’d shove to the front of his mind when he felt his freakishness bubble over, when he felt a weight in the air that echoed the one in the pit of his stomach, when there was a chill in the air even in the warmth of the summer.
He also began to realize the benefit of walls outside of Number Four. When Dudley was placed in a different class in school, the walls between them provided the sanctuary in which Harry was able to eat snacks without interference, what tended to be the only substantial food he got during the weekdays. As much as he hated the musty, dead air in the old woman’s house, he also felt the immediate relief when the Mrs. Figg’s door closed between him and the street.
And the first time he stumbled into the public library, a few weeks before Christmas, breathing heavily as Dudley’s gang ran past, not even looking in through the glass doors, he realized that there were other walls that could hide him. And when he turned to face the rest of the building, seeing shelves and shelves of books, a small smile leaked through his usual blank mask. Every spare hour he had after that day was spent in the corner of the children’s section, eyes scanning pages furiously before scanning his environment as he flips the page, slowly working his way through shelf after shelf.
His eighth birthday was the first time he made the trip to the library with a limp. Harry Hunting that morning had ended with him falling out of the lower branches of a tree when a thrown rock from Piers clipped his shoulder. Aunt Petunia had seen him fall and had just scuffed the back of his head for landing in her begonias.
He took the now-memorized path to the children’s section, fingers trailing on book spines as he found the shelf he had stopped on during his last visit. He picked up The Tale of Peter Rabbit, tracing over the author’s name, wondering yet again if Beatrix Potter was somehow a relative of his—if she would show up at any moment, telling him that she’d been looking for him for years, if she would whisk him away to a loving home, magical stories spilling from her as he followed behind. Wondering if she would rescue him from the people who lock him in a cupboard for doing things he couldn’t explain, like causing an ugly sweater to shrink so it wouldn’t even fit over his head.
As he shifted on his feet, the small smile on his face disappeared as a rush of pain shot through his leg. It was as if something in his mind shifted, like puzzle pieces locking together.
Stories were for children. And as small as he was, as young as he was, as naïve as he was… Harry was mature enough to realize that his childhood ended years before, when he was first shoved towards the stove to make food he’d never eat, when he was sat down before school and told that he wasn’t to tell anyone that he lived in a cupboard, that other people wouldn’t call him Freak or Boy but would call him Harry, Harry Potter. A name that he clung to, something that set him apart from his aunt and uncle, something that let him escape sitting near his cousin in class, something to explain him being different.
Stories were for children. And after the years he’d spent with the Dursley’s, after pain and loneliness had long turned into stone and bitterness, Harry couldn’t bring himself to believe in fairy tales. He put back the story book, resolving himself to build a happy ending, because he knew that it wasn’t going to come as easily as these tales made it seem.
The librarian had taken to watching him, just to keep an eye on the boy who was too small for his age. By now he’d been sneaking into the library for months, head down, never making eye contact, jumping at loud noises, only giving faint smiles when he passed her desk. She recognized the signs, but something always kept her from asking the question. But as soon as he settled at a table, expression fierce and stubborn, with children’s books on math, self-defense, and modern history, she walked past with a dictionary, a notebook and pencil, and a small, understanding smile.
Harry watched her walk away warily, before slowly pulling the books towards him when he was sure she wouldn’t come back to take them away. When he stopped by her desk on his way out at the end of the afternoon, he tried to give them back, a fierce blush on his face as he pushes the dictionary and notebook across the desk.
She smiled. “You can keep them.”
If possible, the blush under his dark skin got brighter. “My aunt wouldn’t want me to have them.”
The librarian’s smile tightened. “How about we just keep them back here, in my desk, and next time you need them they’ll be here waiting for you, how’s that.”
Harry’s blush remained, but as his shifty eyes landed on hers, he offered a quick, small smile before rushing for the door.
Occasionally, when Dudley would get books as gifts and throw them to the side, or when Harry would reward himself for getting out of chores or punishments by throwing sly words around when Aunt Petunia had guests, fictional stories would make an appearance in the stacks of books Harry would surround himself with at the library. But not even the most fantastical of tales could lessen the hard resolve that the young boy instilled on himself that fateful July day.
He started to get enjoyment out of calculating how to stay exactly half a letter grade below Dudley, didn’t complain when Dudley forced him to do his homework for him. Anytime a teacher would question his lack of success, or another student would pick on him for his skin color, or his height, he got a glint in his eye and talked circles around them. He found pride in using words he’d learned from his books; of backhanded compliments he’d picked up from overhearing TV shows from his cupboard. He loved the confused look when they walked away, not knowing what just happened or if they should be offended.
Between the Dursleys, the neighbors, and the teachers at school, Harry slowly began learning how to read people as well as books.
Dudley and his gang, through first-hand experience, taught him how to intimidate loudly, how to make yourself known and get the results you want from fear.
Petunia, with her sly comments, knowledge of the other wives, and her insistence of acting far above her income level, taught him how to intimidate quietly. How to use words to cut through acts, how to leave one person out in the cold hardly realizing what happened, and the rest on an in-joke they didn’t really understand.
He learned which types of people would look past his skin color and his ratty appearance, and which people would assume the worst of him without a second glance. He learned what each of those types of people expected of someone like him, and how to either act accordingly, or work to change their mind.
He learned to listen to how people spoke, how voices could either become high and sharp, or low and drawling when they were angry. How they could soften in amusement or affection, or thicken with emotion or even fear. He learned to pick up on the nuances of humor in a voice, to determine an inside joke he was missing, or sarcasm that he was not.
He watched and learned, experimented with dumbing down his vocabulary for pity, or to use the biggest words he knew for good impressions. He tossed out soft smiles to adults who he knew would coo and let him leave, and sharp, mean grins to kids that thought they could get in his way.
All of this was used to keep himself under the radar. Calls to Number 4 from school never ended well for him, and if he acted too strangely around the neighborhood, Petunia would hear immediately and be furious. It was hard, figuring out your personality while under a microscope, but Harry made a game of it. If he won, the feeling of victory was tinged with satisfaction of knowing how people’s minds worked. If he lost, it usually meant no food and extra chores, or worse.
He learned very quickly how not to lose.
To his ‘family’, he was quiet but snarky when he thought he could get away with it.
To the rest of the neighborhood, to the old cat lady down the street, to the librarian, and to all his teachers, he was the image of innocence, of curiosity, asking questions with a sweet smile before disappearing before the questions could start to be asked of him. A student that was rarely thought of until he appeared in front of them, doing his work quickly and quietly, and disappearing as suddenly as he came.
He dodged the looks that judged his too-large clothes, talked his way out of worried comments about his stature, or the number of bones you could see through his skin. He just smiled at questions about the Scotch tape that held his glasses together after too many punches from his cousin, or the thin scar on his forehead that spread out like a single bolt of lightning over his eye. He dismissed comments about how he was thrown at his aunt and uncle, and how kind they were to take in their orphan nephew, or talked about how grateful he was with a smile that made his face hurt, and his mind scream in hypocrisy. But he also learned that gratefulness was expected as well, whether or not he thought they deserved even the slightest recognition.
By the time he walked out of the school for summer, looking forward to his eleventh birthday with a dulled hope, and his future at a different school than his cousin Dudley, Harry Potter was sure that he could survive the Dursleys until he was legally able to leave. He knew he could get a part-time job when he turned sixteen, and then by the time he was eighteen, he would have enough to at least manage on his own.
All he had to do was not have any… freaky accidents.
(Harry apparently wasn’t good at not having freaky accidents.)