Life at Little Whinging was quiet and sad, and everybody who lived there looked they’d never laughed or danced. The type of old folks who scowled at smiling, laughing children for being loud or playing dirty. They were all too obsessed with seeming prim and proper. Their poshness was worn and shown on everything they owned. A cloud of smog so thick that it threw harry off to just be around them. A smog so swelling and horrific it was suffocating. Harry saw it in how Auntie Petunia’s hands would always land on her pearls when around people she deemed tacky, trashy, unacceptable. He saw it in how she’d watched people clutching her purse. People say you shouldn't dwell on such trivial things, but oh, did Petunia dwell.
Her boney hands would reach up to around her neck to twirl one of the white and shiny orbs between her fingers with a scowl of her face.
She would stand tall and proud and was always much too excited to show off her moderate wealth. Harry wished that the necklace would tighten to choke her – or grow huge and become big heavy stones that would bring her down to the same level as everyone else. To the same level as Harry.
Harry Potter was alone a lot. Little Whinging was the only city he'd ever been to, he grew up there but still didn't know anything about it. He wasn't allowed to go outside often.
His freedom felt hollow and forlorn. Any other child would have loved it but not Harry. The pretty, clean, and loved kids, those with parents, would run around wildly playing princess and princes. They'd go on countless adventures out in their gardens that were their worlds, but they'd always be called back home. Because someone was always awaiting their arrival, missing them dearly. Harry didn't have that, however. Too much time without anything or anyone made him angsty. He’d look over his shoulder waiting for someone to bark him an order like a puppy waiting to let in. Like there was too much space in the world for just one person, that despite his many adamant attempts at attention - Auntie Petunia would scowl at him with disgust while Uncle Vernon readied his belt. But he’d patiently wait that maybe – just maybe – someone would choose him. Choose him to love and care for, to cherish.
At odd hours of the night in his cupboard, Harry would wonder if he could ever belong to the Dursleys. To be theirs as a child and have a home. He wasn’t shiny and pretty, Harry knew that. He knew that he would never be like them and therefore they’d continue to scrunch their noses at his presence – continue to ignore him as if he wasn’t even there. To see through him rather than at him. He knew that he was meant to reside between the spaces of being seen too much of or never enough. To be seen through and not at. But that didn’t stop the longing to belong from eating away at him. There was a horrible monster that was sitting on his soul. A monster who eats away at all senses, a curse by all means. Something big and green with envy that grew bigger when he went days without eating, something that became aggressive and agitated as he watched Dudley be praised as he himself longed for.
He knew he wasn’t meant to be a shiny person. He knew that so he pretended not to care. That it was all nonsense. That he didn’t want clothes that were nice and pretty with vibrant colors. He'd do just fine in his faded, wornout clothes that weren't truly his. That watching his aunt stroke his cousin’s cheek with nothing short of adoration didn't make him sick, that he didn’t feel a sharp ache in his heart. Harry pulls at every thread inside his head, unraveling a tightly wound knot in it. But on every line of the thread was just a tiny child begging and pleading for another man's trash, never quite deserving his own treasure. Something he pushed away for as to not know about it. He’d plunge his fingers into the holes of his shabby shirts, busying his hands knowing that no one would want to hold it. It is in moments like these that he feels alone.
My parents.
Parents are something he thinks about often but not his own, never his own. Auntie Petunia and Uncle Vernon had fed him vermin about his folks for years now. So, there was no use snooping around something long dead and gone. Literally, Harry thought. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had been loved and wasn’t a bad child if he wasn’t – if he could into their lifestyle and their hearts. If he’d still feel the same. If his parents were there and were good, whole people with a love that pumped warmth – if he’d be the same, as he was now.
Harry selfishly wondered what they looked like, which one he looked the most like. What their names were, what their laughs sounded like.
Auntie Petunia and Uncle Vernon would be so disappointed, disgusted even.
It didn’t matter because he wouldn’t be able to find out.
Year 1, Hogwarts 1991 - 1992
With the year at Hogwarts ending and the summer sun on the horizon, Hagrid gifted him a picture album.
‘Y’er birthday is right round te’ corner ‘arry.’ Hagrid stuttered, his big body bending to stare into his eyes. Whispering as if it was all a secret – 'Happy Birthday dear boy – ' He said unsure. His eyes shifted debating whether or not to say.
‘An’ ter think yer’ all grown up now, I remember when ye’ were a wee little lad.’ He coughed, tears twinkling in the corner of his eyes. And before Harry knew it Hagrid was sobbing, albeit violently and shifting away.
Later that night Harry would sit in his old dorm bed starring at various black and white pictures.
He watched his mother’s pretty auburn hair moving as his dad twirled her around again and again. His mother had a beautiful face with bright hair and bright eyes. Her eyes, he realized were exactly like his. Like looking at a mirror, he saw himself reflected in her eyes and hoped the same for her. Her flowerlike hands were elegant and her lips cheerful. His dad had a handsome face with dark skin, his soulful eyes were trained on the lady in front of him - but Harry could see that they had a hazel hue to them. Youthfully round faces staring up at each other, clearly smitten with each other. Flirting with the sun beaming behind them, seemingly happy for them.
For most of his life, James and Lily Potter were an enigma to him. An unsolved riddle. A puzzle with too many missing pieces to see the bigger picture. For most of Harry's life, he was too afraid to look for the missing pieces. Afraid of what'd he'd see or read or hear. Afraid if what the Dursleys said were true, if his own suspicions were true. What a horrid realization that his flesh and blood were cruel, lazy or evil.
It'd the hardest thing to swallow if it were.
‘Your parents loved you, Harry.’ Dumbledore told him once. ‘They were strong, brave souls that loved you so fiercely.’ His crow’s feet were crinkling as he looked at him sympathetically – Harry squirmed in his seat unsure of what to do.
Flipping through the pages he landed on pictures of his parents smiling mischievously at the camera with their big group of friends, clinking their glasses of butterbeer together, so cheerful, so young and so alive. Surrounding his parents was a raven headed man with long hair that seemed to embody rock n’ roll with his wicked grin, a man covered in scars had an air of quiet confidence as he smirked lazily at the grinning man, and at last, a chubbier guy with an anxious yet sunny smile as he stared at his friends.
'Your mother was a warrior in her own right, she was as clever as they make them,'He smiled 'So clever but still unbelievably kind. And your father,' The headmaster took a breath 'your father was the activist of his group, even as a privileged pureblood wizard he didn’t hesitate to jump into the fire of battle when others hesitated.'
Flipping, flipping and jerking at pages he ended on their wedding pictures. His mother looked gorgeous in her wedding dress, entangled with her new husband she smiled brightly as they danced, positively beaming. His dad was puffing his chest with a newfound fondness as he stared at his wife, his brown skin shining under the fluorescent lights. The same three friends were there but now accompanied by three pretty girls, one with short blonde hair and two others that shared the same dark and curly hair. As he flipped to the end. Harry saw the end of the book and so the end of their story. Like that they were gone, they had imprinted on him for the second time. Once with their love and then with their life. A life he longed to be in, but they were gone.
'They protected you that night, they saved you with their love. That power was so intense that even Voldemort was unbeknownst to. So unyielding it protects you to this day, it lives within your skin, my boy.' Dumbledore said.
'Their untimely deaths were grieved so sorrowfully all these years, they are remembered as heroes in our world.'
He sighed, with a faraway look in his eyes. Staring behind Harry at the portrait of a young girl with fiery red hair and kind eyes like his own.
'But even so, perhaps, the greatest grief of all is to be left alone.'