So Good at Being Bad

Harry grows up in the cupboard under the stairs, under Aunt Petunia's pinched looks and baleful eyes, under Uncle Vernon's purple veined glares and shouts of Boy!, under Dudley's big meaty fists and his Harry Hunting. He earns himself a couple of nicknames: boy (a favorite of Uncle Vernon's), freak (a favorite of Aunt Petunia's), worthless, ungrateful, useless, slow, and so on. What he never earns, despite everything, despite his doing the chores and weeding the garden and cooking breakfast, is the Dursleys' love.Harry is seven when he realizes this with a startling clarity. Or: a whimsical tale of a normal family and a not so normal boy. (And how everyone suffers for it.)