Empathy but not sympathy
It’s easier if he lets the emotions flow over him. He knows he can hold it, until twists inside faster and stronger, like a maelstrom, until it breaks free, lashing everyone around him. But the repercussions of that from the Dursley’s, the days without food, the stink of the cupboard as the days were on and he is trapped in the dark, those things had taught him not to. Once he had tried just completely blocking it all out instead, but it took so much effort and he had never been able to get the blood out of his tee shirt from where it had dripped from his eyes, ears, and nose. Generally, bleeding from almost every hole in his head is a bad sign. So the best course has always been to let it flow through him, keep himself steady in the middle, like a stone in a river course. Eddies happen of course, things might leak into himself, into his core flavouring what he feels, but the full force of the emotion will smooth past. In a classroom, surrounded, theres no where for it all to go. Harry is buffed on every side, his centre tossed and turned and broken open under the onslaught. Its no surprise he losses consciousness. And really its more surprising that he lasted all of 40 minutes, right past the introductions. Petunia is called at some point when he is shifted to the sick bay. The nurse gives him a clean change of clothes. He’ll be taunted for pissing himself on the very first day for the rest of his stay at Little Whinning Primary. His classmates will distance themselves from him, no one will touch him, whispers that he will piss himself again have spread fast. Even Dudley leaves him alone, there are other targets for him and his goons. Harry couldn’t have planned it better.
He makes sure to always sit in a back corner, even if that leaves him open to more taunts from more popular kids. They’ll leave off eventually. And eventually the headaches will dim to a level where he can actually concentrate on what is happening in class. It’s too late of course, there are already notes in his records (slow, unable to focus, move to the new special learning program), and next semester a new class with only 8 students from all different age groups. Their emotions are much duller, still able to dig if felt with enough force, but its the difference between a knife and a spoon. Broader but no where near as deep. For the most part they don’t cut Harry open. None of them understand emotion either, and what they feels tends to be fleeting.
He gets better at being stone. When he feels his own true emotions he hordes them close. There will be notes about possible psychopathy by one teacher who fancies his 2 units at university of psychology makes him qualified to judge. After those notes, teachers treat Harry with less kindness, less patience. Petunia tuts her tongue and tells anyone who will listen that she was right, and the boy should be sent to an insistute.
Harry wishes she would already. He would prefer to stay locked in the cupboard reading the books he was stolen from Dudleys second room, but a place where he gets a room and doesn’t have to face school everyday would be even better. School is terribly confusing to him, if he could never go back he would be happy.
“I don’t want it anyway.” The other boy scowled at the toy in Dudley’s hands, all the while Harry could taste the boys want, desire, hunger on his tongue and behind his eyes.
“Thats wonderful!” the teacher exclaimed over a little girls work, while Harry could feel the boredom, annoyance slide along his skin.
“I don’t mind.” He says politely to Harry, allowing Harry to sit next to him, while disgust prickles at Harry.
“I’m fine.” The girl is screaming pain, sorrow, fear, humiliation, anger, her eyes puffy and her fists clenched as the other kids toss her book back and fore above her head.
No one says what they mean. The Dursley’s have always said what they mean. Harry knows the sharp tang of rage as Vernon yells at him, knows the way disgust smells as Petunia calls him freak, knows the sting of rejection, the bitter ash of indifference, the discordant jangle of disappointment. The Dursley’s emotions are on display, they match the words the faces.
At school, everyone lies. It took months for Harry to learn people want you to ignore everything else but the words. Its rude, he’s told, to manipulate others. He doesn’t really understand why acting on what they really mean is manipulation, but fine.
He puts up with it for 3 years. When he is 9 years old he feels in control enough to leave. If Petunia is never going to make good her promise to send him away, Vernon never get the courage up to go against his wife and take him to the orphanage, Harry will leave himself.
There was nothing holding him here anyway.