Chapter 3
“Did you hear, [REDACTED] went missing!”
“You’re serious? Maybe she just ran away? You know she always talked about doing it.”
“If she ran away she’d still come to school. How else would she make money?”
“We can still wait a couple days and see if she shows up, an- “It’s already been a week. [REDACTED] is missing.”
…
Harry woke up to the sound of screeching noises coming from what he assumes is his giraffe of an aunt, and his half beach ball, half whale of an uncle.
‘Damn, they can’t handle two children or something? Why they screaming like that? Jeez.’
“What do we do with it Petunia?” the fat whale Vernon asked, looking a bit pale, but also sort of purplish.
“We have to raise it, Vernon, we do not want those people to come after us.” the long-necked woman replied. They were talking about Harry like he wasn’t even there. If there’s one thing Harry hated in their past life, and now this one, it would definitely be being ignored.
“Ah!” An orange was knocked off the table. Obviously, Harry had hit it with his arm, but his relatives didn’t see it that way.
“Look Tunia! He’s already doing the devil's worship! We either get rid of him or we beat out this- this madness of his!”
There was a crash coming from the dining room. Both Vernon and Petunia rushed to see what it was, while Harry just sat up from in his basket. Turns out Dudley doesn’t like to be ignored either, seeing as he turned over the porridge he was eating on his head and threw the dish to the floor.
>>>
Unfortunately, they had decided to keep Harry, despite him being ‘the spawn of satan’ and all that jazz. They put him in the spare room they had for now, until they could find a permanent place for him to stay. Well, really Vernon was trying to find a different place for the boy to stay, as Petunia was cooking up the perfect story for her mother’s group to stop all these outrageous rumours from spreading.
Eventually, they both reached their goals, because Harry was put into the cupboard, and every mother in the mother’s group believed Petunia’s tragic story about him and how he was a ‘troubled, delinquent child’.
Harry didn’t like that. They had some time to think about what had happened to them, (read: had a mini major panic attack and only snapped out of it because it was starting to make them cringe) and they had decided that since their relatives were going to lock him up under the stairs and call him a delinquent, that’s what he would be.
Just, maybe once he can do more than butt-scooch his way everywhere, and take more than two wobbly steps before falling over.
<<<
Harry is five and a half now, and he’s learned that to survive in this household, he needs to take care of himself. He’s learned four very important rules that he has drilled and burned deep in his own head.
- He can only use the bathroom twice a day. Once when everyone (sans him, of course) is eating lunch in front of the television, when he technically was supposed to be outside, but when the telly is that loud (and doesn’t he sound like a proper brit now, calling the tv the telly) it’s hard to hear him come inside and use the bathroom and wash his face. And Once at night, after he figured out how to pick the lock from the inside, – Harry suspects that there's a little magic involved but he takes what he can get – when Vernon and Dudley are snoring so loud it could cause multiple tsunamis and Petunia is sleeping like a rock.
- Don’t complain about anything within earshot of Petunia. The only chores he can do right now are clean the bathroom tub, sweep, set the table, and pull the weeds out of the garden. He once made a mistake of complaining about the heat while pulling weeds while his aunt was reading a magazine on the veranda, and Petunia made him go out there at very early, very dark, and very, VERY cold hours of the morning instead. Sometimes when he’s pulling out the weeds he pulls out a patch of grass or a couple flowers on purpose, just to see Petunia’s face redden and twist in an ugly way that only hers can do. It’s always the highlight of his day whenever it occurs.
Do not, under any circumstances, do any magic, accidental or otherwise, around any of his relatives at all. If he does any magic at all around Petunia or Dudley, they’ll run to Vernon when he gets home, and it is hell to pay for Harry. Vernon will come home and grab him either by his skinny arms or his waist, and if it was really bad he’ll be grabbed by his neck, and his uncle’s face will turn a reddish purple, almost a mix of burgundy and maroon but not quite, and yell at him while he shakes him in the air. He’s dislocated his arms so many times from this that he can do it now on command.
Stay in the cupboard as much as possible. While he’s in the cupboard he is safe. The cupboard is his little safe spot for only him and the spiders. In their past life they had hated all bugs, and even though spiders aren’t bugs they didn't like them either. But he can learn to live with them in this life. The spiders are a lot bigger than what was depicted in the first book, a lot bigger than his hand – which isn’t pretty big right now but you get the point. The spiders had even learned to make their webs in the corners of the cupboard so they stop falling whenever Vernon stomps down the stairs in the mornings.
…
Harry started his revenge plan in subtle ways. When Petunia forced him to learn to cook taught him to cook, he’d cook a little too much food that Vernon and Dudley would eat without any of them noticing. And now instead of going to the store once a week, Petunia would have to go on Mondays and Thursdays. And when Petunia made him clean the bathroom, he’d rub off some of the paint of the toilet with bleach, leaving white spots. And he’d leave streaks on the shower doors when there was only a little bit of glass cleaner left in the bottle. Something he absolutely loved to do though, was to spread rumours.
He’d purposely not water a part of the grass and then spread rumours that Petunia was using pesticides on her garden to kill weeds. Sometimes he’d pretend to be Petunia on the phone when she was on her walk and he’d fake tears and tell Yvet, her Russian friend that she had diarrhoea, or that she had pimples in between her thighs. Yvet was good at ‘calming her down’ but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. So now the whole neighbourhood thinks that Petunia has pimple thighs and frequent diarrhoea. But this plan doesn’t include just Petunia, Harry has also spread rumours that Vernon jerks off to young models in his office. It doesn’t have much traction with the guys, but the women of the community (minus that one old fashioned old lady) are outraged. They don’t say anything to Vernon or Petunia, but they glare at Vernon and make comments when he’s near (and when he’s not). And they send pitying glances to Petunia and show her a couple pictures of men who would be interested in her, should she ever find out about this. Harry has left Dudley alone for now, but the second he touches Harry, the whole playground will know that he still sleeps with his thumb in his mouth.
Harry also turns off the freezer at night at least twice a month. He doesn’t know how they haven’t figured out it was him yet, but a win is a win.