The day Harry found out that the Dursleys only kept him inside because they didn’t like him and didn’t want his presence to be known– but that they had also been gossiping about their charge and his ‘lunacy’ – a painfully average day.
He’d been described as troubled, defiant, and a mess. Harry didn’t quite understand what all those words meant but Auntie Petunia had said that he truly was his dad and her wicked sister’s son.
And it wouldn’t be the last time. From then on, the adult neighbors of the street would mutter ‘animal’ and ‘freak’ when he scurried past them. The kids wouldn’t play with him and even though the Dursleys would never have allowed it previously, now all the other kids looked at him with contempt. Like they were all a part of a big inside joke that Harry wasn’t allowed to know anything about. Like Harry was the joke. Well, it would’ve been a bad one and slightly tragic. Completely blind-sighted, they would run away from him like he was the plague – which only made the naggingly nauseating feeling in his stomach grow stronger. It made Harry feel dirty and wrong, but it also awakened a nefarious rage within him. A roaring rage that was burning so bright he was afraid it would burn him from the inside out. Nothing left of him but his burnt carcass.
The very thought left him horrified.
*
Harry along with Dudley went to St. Jules primary school. In his steps of formal education, he finally had an excuse of getting outside the house for a couple of hours. At any opportunity he had, he would go. He went to the many non-mandatory Christmas lunches, just to get away, right before they were sent off to Christmas break: which Harry always found disheartening because that meant working tirelessly in the kitchen and not even getting a piece of the duck he’d been slaving over for hours. It meant watching ‘Dudleykins’ open all of his shiny and good presents, while he got a bag of peanuts. Or even last year where he got a bag of bird seeds. His presents somehow seemed to be getting worse. And at night he would rack his brain for anytime or instance in the past year where he’d been naughty because Santa gave him coal for the ninth year in a row.
When he got back to school, he would sit in the very back of the classroom, in the very corner. He would peer out of the windows and stare at the snow glistening as it felt and watch with a crestfallen expression. At this, his seatmate, Ibrahim, would watch with his big round eyes. His shoulder would bump against Harry’s and their brown skin mixed, their gangly and knobby elbows matching almost. Skin to skin, like they came from the same mixed paint, they matched perfectly. Their scars even mirrored each other from certain angles. The one on Harry's upper arm matched the one on Ibrahim's left wrist, the scar on Harry's left knee matched the one on Ibrahim's right - so on and so forth. Ibrahim was like him in a sense. He also had a funny last name that didn’t match with their other classmates. He also had darker skin with pink pale scars. They’d share purple and blue yellowing bruises, neither questioned whatever they meant. He spoke with an accent that Harry couldn’t quite place but they understood each other on another level. They were the same. Kindred spirits from different paths yet so strikingly similar. Ibrahim was also without parents. He lived in an orphanage not long from there and they’d often joke about how Harry would soon join him.
His parents had at the very least died in an honorable way. They’d all fled their country with him as a baby only for them to die trying to cross the border. Harry understood it to be quite sad. He’d sometimes catch Ibrahim’s faraway look on career days and teacher conferences. Harry’s parents hadn’t died in an honorable and brave way like that. They’d died in a stupid car crash because they were sloppy drunk – at least that’s what Auntie Petunia had told him.
The kids would stand back and watch as their peers were smothered by their parents. And at the old age of nine, they had decided that they didn’t need any of that, that they would do just fine without it.
Harry began, “Being proper and sweet and nice and pleasing must be horrible.” - watching one of the girls having their mum fix their frilly dress for the umpteenth time “Looks exhausting.”
Ibrahim almost barked with laughter at that, and Harry couldn’t help but snicker along with him. Their teacher, Mrs. Monson, glared at them.
With their warning to pipe down, Ibrahim giggled “Yee’s it’s a fooking nightmare.”
His accent and laughing almost made it discernible but Harry knew what he meant. Soon they were a snickering mess on the floor, a nuisance to the others and their families with a piercing glare tearing through them. But they didn’t care.
*
On a day that wasn’t as good or bad as the others. A day where they both could feel the absence of a warm hand on their shoulder.
They sat in the far corner of the library with a big distance between them. A hole big enough for it to fill whatever was missing both of their lives. On days like these, they’d both feel out of place in school and want nothing more than to go home. However, neither wanted to go where they were supposed to, their supposed ‘homes’. They’d rather adventure out and find a place of their own but the fees of being a jobless child wouldn’t pay their many bills and there wouldn’t be anyone who’d want to take them in.
So they sat together, in silence, in the library hating their city. Bloody hell, they hated everything around them.
The silence was deafening and too much for Harry, “Do, - “He stuttered. Ibrahim didn’t turn to him and just continued to stare at the book he was pretending to read.
“Do you sometimes think, “He whispered, Ibrahim raised an eyebrow at the question. Stupid, he thought. Steeling himself, he stood up straighter. “Do you think, sometimes, about how different things could be?”
“Yu’ meen if we had parents?” He questioned, staring so harshly into the copy of ‘Lord of the flies.’ Ibrahim looked as if he wanted to disappear into it with how far up, he had it to his face.
Harry swallowed thickly. The lump in his throat was incessant. “Yeah,” he said. They now stared at each other not knowing what the other was going to say. “Yes, that.”
Ibrahim broke their eye contact, returning to his book. “S’metimes.” He shrugged. “But Am finking of it likes zis, we were born alone we will a’lo die likes zis.”
Harry didn’t respond but he could feel the lump in his throat get stronger or bigger – he didn’t quite know. But he did know that his vision was getting blurry as he tried to blink the thick tears away. He drew his knees to his chest and suddenly felt embarrassed. The fiery anger flamed his chest, and he felt his cheeks burn up. Here he was crying on the floor because he was pied off at the big age of nine, bloody ridiculous.
Ibrahim didn’t say anything, just kept staring intently at the book Harry knew he wasn’t reading. The space between them grew bigger as they stewed in their aloneness for the rest of the school day.