Title: Birdcage Syndrome
Rated: T
Summary: How can you expect a boy who grew up wrong, to end up right? Sociopath!Harry.
Birdcage Syndrome
1.
connections
"Buried emotions are caged nighthawks that have fallen in love with the moon. They don't understand the sun because they were born with the darkness of shadows in their souls."
– Shannon L. Alder
It was an unspoken rule in class that you should not talk to, or even look at, Harry Potter.
There were two reasons for this. The first was Dudley Dursley, who hated him and had already gained a name as the resident bully not even a month into school. Anyone who tried to talk to him would only get a punch in the face, or worse, courtesy of Harry's Number 1 Hater. Peter Johnson, who'd sat beside Harry one day at lunch, had been found stuffed in a rubbish bin later that evening, nevermind that he was Harry's seatmate and simply opted to stay back in class. The second was Harry himself.
Harry did not talk.
Harry did not smile.
In fact, he was very much like a living, breathing doll. He was always hunched over or curled up in his seat at the back of the class, and rarely moved from that position, not even for lunch. It was easy to forget he was even there at all, but when you looked over he would always be looking back with those eyes of his. His eyes were the creepiest part of him. They were dark and vacant, like there was no one lurking behind that gaze. No soul. In fact, some of the students would think with a shiver, when he looked at them it felt like he was digging for theirs. Needless to say, they steered clear of him.
(A few of them would look back on this time of their lives, many years later, and wonder...but by then it was already too late. Harry Potter would never be the hero he needed to be.)
It wasn't their fault, really. They were just kids after all, more concerned with lunch or that complicated math homework that they haven't done but was due next lesson instead of things like the tragic circumstances behind their creepy, weird classmate. They couldn't have guessed that he had to be as small and still as possible at the Dursleys' to avoid catching their attention and the inevitable criticisms and punishments that would follow. They couldn't have guessed that he often drifted off in class to avoid thinking about the hunger pangs he felt from working himself to the bone with little more than a piece of stale bread as reward the day before. Most of all, they couldn't have guessed that he stared at them like he was trying to pick them apart because the Dursleys always hid him away from their friends and business clients, too afraid of their abnormal, freakish nephew to let them set eyes on him. For most of his short life, Harry's only human interaction had been limited to his hateful, close-minded family who never bothered to teach him anything. Harry grew up knowing nothing, in a world absent of love and happiness. But they couldn't have guessed, and so never gave him a chance—
Depriving him of the connections he sorely needed.
...
Harry was scratching a shaky letter 'a' into his notebook when he felt a prickling sensation at the top of his head. His eyes snapped upwards, catching the gaze of a startled-looking boy who immediately turned back to face the teacher. Harry always knew when people were looking at him. He had no idea how he knew, but thought it was a good thing: he liked people watching. It had become something like a hobby for him.
His classmates, teachers, and even the Dursleys always lived so...brightly. They were nothing like him; he'd looked into the mirror once, and his blank, dull face reflected none of the sheer life that flickered on theirs. He wondered what it was. He wanted to know. Watching them made a strange, indescribable feeling gnaw inside him, like hunger but different, emptier. He felt like he was missing something, something they had, and he needed to find it.
"Harry?" Miss Baker's voice shook him out of his thoughts. "Class is already over."
Startled, he looked up. The class had somehow gone empty and silent while he was lost in his own head. Miss Baker was the only one left: she stood in front of the class, watching as he slowly uncurled from his seat and picked up his bag, a tattered knapsack with a hole at the bottom. He stuffed his notes and stationary into the bag and slung it over his shoulders, but before he left she called out to him again. "How is school life treating you? Have you made any friends?"
He didn't know why she cared. The expression on her face felt...soft, somehow, and it made his stomach squirm. "It's fine," he told her as he neared the teacher's desk.
"What about friends?"
Friends. Friends were people who often hung around together and seemed brighter with one another. He knew that from watching his classmates. Even Dudley had friends. But he didn't. "No..." he said then hastily added, "I don't—understand." Maybe she'd help him figure out what the emptiness was.
"Don't understand what?"
"Them. You. Everyone."
"Oh, Harry..." she sighed and crouched down to look at him. Her smile softened even more. "Everyone is different, but that doesn't mean we don't share some similarities. You'll start to understand someone when you find that common ground with them. That's also how you make friends."
"Common ground? But I don't—"
"Of course you do!" she said, smiled, and tapped him on the chest. "You have a heart, just like us. You can feel happy, or sad, or angry, just like us. You can love, just like us. You just have to try harder, Harry. We can feel the same things you do. Knowing that, isn't it easier to understand us now?"
He stared at his chest and asked, "If I can understand, and make friends, will that make the emptiness go away?"
"It will, I promise."
"Okay," he nodded. "I'll try my best. I don't like the emptiness. But I have to go now, Miss Baker. My aunt and uncle will get annoyed if I don't go back soon."
"Then see you tomorrow, Harry."
She ruffled his hair and straightened up. Her heart ached for him. She wondered, once again, about the Dursleys and resolved to check up on his living situation. You've been lonely for a long time, haven't you Harry?
...
Later that night, Harry laid curled up in his cot, thinking about what she said. A spider crept up his hand and he flicked it away absentmindedly. Miss Baker had said that understanding people would make the emptiness go away. He hated the emptiness so, so much. It constantly gnawed at him, and he wondered when his insides would become hollow just from that.
He placed his hand on his heart. It beat steadily, ba-bump, ba-bump, the proof of life. He had read in a book that people loved from the heart, felt from the heart. He had a heart, but why didn't he feel the way everyone else did...? Were they talking about a different heart?
He didn't tell Miss Baker, but he had never felt happiness before, or sadness. The most he felt was the ache of hunger, of emptiness, eating him from inside out, bringing him to tears. He most certainly had never loved before, especially not the Dursleys.
But he needed to understand.
He needed to understand.
Maybe anger...? He might have felt "angry" before, if anger was the white-hot rush of pure feeling that he felt when he'd been snubbed for Dudley again, when it was his birthday and Aunt Petunia looked at him like he was crazy for wanting something when Dudley himself got heaps of presents to play with.
Harry suddenly smiled to himself. It was the first time he smiled, but he didn't notice as he snuggled into his threadbare blanket and closed his eyes. His heart beat in his chest, ba-bump, ba-bump, again and again as he drifted off into sleep. A proof of humanity.
He finally had a use for the Dursleys.
They will be that proof.
They will teach him what it meant to be human, no matter what.
A/N:
Welcome to Birdcage Syndrome!
I've been thinking for quite a while now that Harry was too well-adjusted for someone from a neglectful and verbally abusive background. Not in personality, but in morality. He seems to be capable of understanding things that should have tripped him up, at least at the beginning, like the concept of kindness, friendship and love: things that he had never experienced for as long as he could remember. The only time that hinted that he may not be all right was when he literally burnt Quirrel's face off with his bare hands and didn't experience any trauma from it, but that issue was never addressed, sadly.
The Harry I'm writing will be driven by the need to understand humans and be normal—ironically, something that canon!Harry also wants. I'm not planning to have him be anything like Voldemort. His personality was actually inspired by Makishima Shogo's from Psycho Pass, who you may see hints of in him, but he is ultimately his own person.
I'm not really satisfied with how I started this story off, it started off way to slow, but I needed a way to build up his character and Miss Baker's words will have a significant impact on him for quite some time. Please review and tell me how you felt about this chapter. If you have any constructive criticisms or suggestions, I'll be glad to hear them.
Thank you for reading this!