I.
Harry is a worthless, useless freak.
He knows this. Aunt Petunia knows this. Uncle Vernon knows this. Hell, even Dudley knows. The entire neighborhood knows, and they make sure to remind him; he sees it in Aunt Petunia's eyes, in Dudley's Harry Hunting, in the teachers' scowls, in the neighbors whispers to stay away from him.
Everyone says it, so it must be true. Harry really must be just a waste-of-space that the Dursleys took in out of the kindness of their hearts (though, privately, Harry thinks they don't treat him very nicely. But that's just him being ungrateful again.)
And then suddenly, Freak becomes Harry Potter, savior of the wizarding world, chosen one, national hero.
Harry doesn't understand it, doesn't quite believe it at first (You've got the wrong person, I mean, I'm just freak Harry), but.
Everyone says it, so it must be true.
II.
Harry Potter, says Snape, our new celebrity, and his lip twists.
Malfoy titters with his goons, and Harry, he thinks-
Not again.
Because this is Aunt Petunia all over again, this is Freak and Boy, this is everything he thought he'd left behind when he escaped into the magical world. He thought it was a new start, that he'd finally left the cupboard behind for good, but here he is and here is someone who will never see Harry.
(Harry can almost see Aunt Petunia's disdainful sniff in his expression. Their faces are both so twisted and sallow.)
Here is someone who will never look past his scar, will never look past The-Boy-Who-Lived and Chosen One, will never see Harry and not, in his own words, a celebrity. Here is someone will say Potter with a sneer, not Harry, never Harry.
Snape might not know who Freak is, but Harry knows he will never be more than his last name to the man.
(Aunt Petunia never saw him as anything more than Lily, and now Snape will never see him as anything more than James.)
And suddenly, he's angry, and so hurt, because it was supposed to be better, this was supposed to be his chance and this person is denying him.
Harry swears he can be more than Potter, more than Freak, more than the boy in the cupboard, if only he'd give him a chance.
(He won't.)
III.
Someone's trying to steal the stone, and the professors won't listen to him.
The professors won't listen, and the only people Harry has on his side is two other eleven-year-olds, and they know maybe five spells total between them. The professors won't listen, so Harry knows he's got to do it himself, save the world again, because that's what heroes do. That's what the chosen one would do, if this were a fairytale.
(And Harry certainly doesn't feel like a hero, but he'd much rather be one than the freak in the cupboard under the stairs.)
So three first years walk into a room containing a Cerberus, and it feels like a bad joke. It all feels like the worst joke in the entire goddamn universe, except the fate of the universe is hanging from the shoulders of three first years, and why them? Why them, why not magically qualified adults, why them, three children with baby fat on their cheeks holding wands they purchased just months before?
And Harry, he wants to call it off, he wants to go back to the common room and pretend he never heard anything, never learned of this, but.
He's a hero. Heroes are brave and they face danger and they always, always save the day.
(And if Harry isn't a hero, then he's no one at all.)
Three first years walk into a room containing a Cerberus.
IV.
Harry's on all fours, and somewhere above him a pale memory of a boy is twirling his wand.
The cold stone floor is hard against his knees and his hands have already been scraped raw. His vision is dancing and tilting and there are black spots everywhere. His arm hurts, and Harry...
Harry doesn't want any of this. He doesn't want to be here, next to the dead carcass of a basilisk that's bleeding out from the roof of its mouth, next to a phantom of Voldemort, next to the rapidly cooling body of Ginny Weasley.
It's now, abruptly, that he feels like crying. Not when he realized Tom was secretly his worst enemy, not when he was face to face with a basilisk. It's here, so tired and cold and sopping, that he feels a burning behind his eyes. He wants to go-
go where? Home? Hogwarts is home, and it's about to close down because of Voldemort. No, he wants to go to bed, cover himself with the blankets and never get out again, to face this cruel, cruel world. This world that has bedridden one of his best friends and trapped the other in a box of stone, and left him to the mercy of the worst mass murderer of the century (again).
Merlin, how he doesn't want this.
(But when has what Harry wanted ever mattered?)
He gets up.
(Later, there's a little boy and a half-dead girl and a dead basilisk in the chamber.
There's grime on Harry's glasses, blood on his robes (both his and not his), water in his shoes, and ink on his hands. The phoenix is gliding above, and Harry's numb and shivering and so, so tired. It digs into the marrow of his bones, burrows into the space next to his heart. Is this, Harry wonders, what it feels like to be old?
And for a moment, he's paralyzed with fear. The chamber is so silent and still, and no one is moving, and Ginny's not waking up. Harry thought he saved the day, so why doesn't it feel like it? Did he fail? Is he going to be sent back to the cupb-
Harry? says Ginny Weasley, and Harry's so relieved that he could die.)
V.
Harry's alone and invisible, walking to what he knows is his death.
He can imagine Hermione's reaction: Harry, Harry, you mustn't trust him, he's lying, don't do it Harry, and Ron's: Mate, you don't believe that bugger, right? You can't give up, Harry, don't do it.
And suddenly he wants to laugh till he cries.
Because those two have never met Freak, have never met the starved little boy in his cupboard who wished for a real family; they've only ever known Harry, Harry who can defeat Voldemort and kill a Basilisk and ward away a hundred Dementors and win the Triwizard tournament.
They've never met the boy in Dudley's washed out hand-me-downs, the boy who ran from Dudley's meaty fists and his gang, the boy who had to be pawned off to the crazy cat-lady next door for important events.
They've never met Freak, and Harry's going to keep it that way, damnit!
(So, the boy-who-lived turned out to be a death sentence, a noose around his neck instead of the golden crown everyone thought it was. So, Harry's had a taste of what it's like to be more than the boy in the cupboard under the stairs, and he's never, ever going to give it up.)
They don't understand, they can't, Harry won't let them.
Saving other people is what the boy-who-lived does, and if Harry isn't the chosen one, then he'll revert back to nothing and no one, and he'll die before he lets that happen. He ran from that cupboard, took his chance and sprinted with it, he won't go back now.
Hermione and Ron might believe he has a choice, but Harry knows the truth.
(Heroes can save the day, or they can be martyrs. Just look at Lily.)
There was only ever one way this could end.
+1.
Hogwarts is screaming and yelling, and the empty husk of Voldemort is on the floor, forgotten.
And Harry...
Harry thinks he should be happy, and he's sure the joy will come later, but now he feels nothing at all. He wonders if this is shock, this feeling of numbness and emptiness and not-quite-disbelief.
He's finally escaped the cupboard once and for all, burned that wooden space and the little boy inside all to ashes. He's been running and running from that cupboard door and its twelve bolts all his life, since a giant told him Yer a wizard, Harry, and now there's nothing left.
Again, he thinks he should be happy. Again, he can't quite manage it.
Harry locks sight with Luna Lovegood, suddenly, and sees his reflection in her pale eyes. I'd want some peace and quiet if I were you, she says, the solemnest he's ever seen her.
He wonders what she sees when she looks at him.
That would be nice, he says instead.