"It felt most strange to stand here in the silence and know that he was about to leave the house for the last time… It gave him an odd, empty feeling to remember those times; it was like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost."

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It was not easy being Harry Potter, even now that he was twenty-four years old.

The number looked odd to him, as if it belonged to someone else: someone much older than he was, someone he should have respected as a role model instead of staring at in the mirror. In the layer of himself that rested deepest in his soul, it seemed that his life had paused at age seventeen. Most of the time, he didn't feel a day older. For one thing, he was in training to become an Auror, which meant that he remained a schoolboy of sorts. He still loaded his pockets with cauldron cakes and Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, complained about needing to fill twelve inches of parchment when he had only written five, and craved more free time to spend with Ron and Hermione.

But then there were other times that he remembered things - not simply with his head, but also with his heart. In these moments he was filled with a quiet sadness for the little boy he had once known so well.

He had a still photograph of his childhood cupboard on Privet Drive, which he had taken several months after the Battle of Hogwarts. He held it in his hand sometimes and gazed at it for what could be either minutes or hours, but felt like eternity.

It was winter. Underneath the threadbare spaceship blanket, Harry had rolled himself into the fabric so tightly that only his neck was free to move. He couldn't really see the stars and planets on the print anymore – it had all faded to a homogenous gray – but he could still imagine rocketing past them as he tried to drift off to sleep.

On the wall next to him was the circuit breaker for the entire house, which whirred incessantly and clicked at random times. It gave him the cover of background noise that he needed to talk to himself without the Dursleys listening.

There were shelves behind him, too, and Harry regarded their contents as landmarks for his own personal possessions. His khaki trousers lay underneath the dishwasher soap, his gray sweater on top of the screwdriver, his navy shirt held down by the broken TV remote, his underwear and socks tucked behind the box of cleaning rags. He kept his schoolbooks and pencils under his mattress, flat against the two storage crates. He also had a couple of three-legged model horses, which he had rescued from Dudley's rubbish bin and propped up on the highest shelf. Sometimes he would ask his friend, Alastair, to ride the horses into battle; she wouldn't mind that the horses were injured, of course, because she had plenty of legs to spare.

That night, the inside of the closet was pitch dark (the lightbulb inside the cupboard had fused, and Uncle Vernon had slammed the little shutters in the door shut before locking him in), but Harry couldn't sleep. He reached overhead for Alastair's silken abode and smiled as her spindly legs pattered down his fingers, into his palm.

"G'night, Alastair," Harry whispered. "Why are you still awake? I hope you had enough to eat today. I'll try to leave the door open in the morning. That way some bugs might make it inside. I know there haven't been many flies lately."

At that moment, sawdust cascaded from the ceiling and Alastair scuttled away into the darkness.

Harry sat up with a start just as the door flew open. A dark silhouette was standing in the hallway with a torch in hand, towering over Harry's bed.

"Get up," Vernon snarled through his teeth, reaching down to grasp Harry by the collar and tossing him to the opposite wall of the hallway.

Harry found a certain comfort in knowing that he hadn't actually done anything wrong, that Vernon didn't need even a triviality to justify the motions of his fist. It had taken Harry a while to figure this out. Landing with a thud on the hardwood floor, he scrambled to his feet before Vernon could try to assist him.

"You – " Vernon pointed a pudgy finger at Harry's throat. "You – "

"I didn't do it," said Harry, taking a step back toward the kitchen. He resisted the temptation to roll his eyes – he wasn't sure how much Vernon could see with the torch aimed shakily at the ceiling.

"Of course you did, boy," Vernon spat. "Who else could it be… just like that wasteman father of yours… a ball of rubbish, you are. At least a crapstained scrap of underwear can be washed – but you are nothing but a parasite in my own house!"

Harry shook his head slowly. Creativity was not one of Uncle Vernon's strengths.

"Uncle Vernon," Harry said steadily, "It's past midnight. You have work tomorrow."

He could smell it now, the sickly sweet mist of Jack Daniel's wafting toward him. He needed to be extra careful.

"Are you disrespecting me?" Uncle Vernon leaned forward until his nose was inches from Harry's. "You know, I could make it a lot worse for you… withhold meals until your stomach rots from the inside… lock you back in the cupboard and tell your school you're ill with the flu… those revolting eyes of yours won't see daylight for another week…"

Harry's gut had wrung itself into a knot.

"Uncle Vernon, I don't know what you're talking about," he said slowly. "Why don't I make a kettle of tea, and then you can get some rest – "

"Don't play stupid with me, you nasty little worm. YOU know why our Dudley's been sniffling all night."

"Well, yes, actually," said Harry. "He and his friends tried to stuff my head down a toilet, but he got splashed with whatever was in there. He spat it right out, though."

There was a moment of stillness during which Harry knew, with a heavy feeling in his insides, that he had said too much.

With a roar, Vernon struck Harry on the side of the jaw with a hook punch that sent him sprawling onto the kitchen floor. Before he could stand, Vernon landed a kick to Harry's chest with the tip of his boot. Bile bubbled in Harry's throat, and he raised his arms to shield his face.

When Harry opened his eyes again, Vernon's shadow was standing over him with Petunia's broom in hand.

"It's Monday tomorrow, Uncle Vernon! I'm going to school! You don't want people to see!"

For a moment, it was as if Vernon had heard him; the man paused with his arm in midair, holding the broom like an axe, before he swung it down onto Harry's ribs.

"HOW – DARE – YOU – " Vernon panted after each strike, "THREATEN DUDDERS – AFTER ALL WE'VE DONE FOR YOU – YOU DISGUSTING SLUG – "

It was probably the wrong time to tell Vernon, Harry thought, that he hadn't touched Dudley at all. The toilet had regurgitated of its own accord and the wave of contents had caught Dudley in the face.

At long last, Vernon lowered the broom, kicked Harry's ribs one last time for good measure, and staggered back against the doorway, gasping for breath. Harry knew that any sudden movement on his part would only aggravate Vernon further, so he waited there on the linoleum floor, clutching his ribs.

The session seemed to end as abruptly as it had begun. Uncle Vernon leaned the broom against the wall, fumbled with the loose drawstrings of his pajamas, and started down the hallway to the staircase; Harry pulled himself up by the handle of the refrigerator door, and braced himself against the kitchen counter. He was still standing there minutes later, forehead pressed to the cool marble countertop, when he heard footsteps behind him again.

"Boy."

Harry rose slowly and looked over his shoulder with bleary eyes. Vernon stood behind Harry with long loops of extension cable dangling from his fingertips.

Uncle Vernon spoke again, this time in a whisper so low in tone that Harry might not have heard him if he hadn't seen the lips move in the light from the microwave clock. "Come with me, boy."

Something deep inside Harry's chest curdled as his eyes darted from the cable, to Vernon's dimly lit face, and up to the uninhabited lightbulb fixture on the ceiling. It occurred to Harry that if the racket happening downstairs had not yet woken up Aunt Petunia and Dudley, nothing would – or, at least, nothing would prompt them to roll out of their beds to investigate. Vernon was safe in his own liquor-fueled delirium, relishing privileges he didn't have by the light of day. Harry could imagine no worse feeling than to know, without a doubt, that he was alone. No one would be coming to rescue Harry from this nightmare – he was cornered into the space between the stove and the sink, it was two in the morning, and not a single neighbor remembered his name.

"A good butcher's beating," Uncle Vernon rasped, still breathing hard between each set of words, "will teach you to be grateful – for this roof – over your head – you insolent snake – "

"Leave me alone," said Harry.

The words escaped him before he could make up his mind. Uncle Vernon raised his eyebrows.

"What's that, boy?"

"Leave me alone," repeated Harry. He could feel his voice shaking. "Don't touch me – "

With a snarl, Uncle Vernon lunged forward with his fingers outstretched like claws toward Harry's neck. Harry ducked under Vernon's armpit and spun so that the two of them were face-to-face, but now with his own feet only inches away from the doorway that led to the living room, and directly to the front door

"Never – touch – me – again." Harry lifted the broom from the wall, pointed the handle toward Uncle Vernon's chest, and looked the man in the eye as he paused after each word. "Stop hurting me!"

In the semidarkness of Harry's vision, Harry thought he saw the cable draped around Uncle Vernon's elbow sliding of its own accord – the pronged end looping up to Vernon's shoulder, around the back of his neck, and into his gaping mouth. There was a high-pitched squeal, and then a yelp, and Uncle Vernon was hopping around the kitchen on one foot, spewing spittle onto all three walls, and swatting frantically at his own nose. He stumbled into the kitchen stove, and the evening's forgotten pot of canned spaghetti catapulted into his face before Vernon bolted into the hallway, soon followed by the sound of his footsteps thundering up the stairs and the click-clack of the extension cable dragging behind him.

Harry stood motionless for a time, staring at the dark puddle on the kitchen floor seeping underneath the vent of the refrigerator.

He could leave. It was a daring, almost impossible thought, but he could. He could pack whatever hand-me-downs he had into his school bag and take off into the night. No one had cared about what had had happened tonight; no one would care if he vanished. He might as well as do it on his own terms.

But then again, where would he go? He looked back at the cupboard, only just visible in the hallway around the corner from where he stood. At least he had a mattress to sleep on. And Alastair – he had promised Alastair with help catching a decent meal. Alastair, at least, would know Harry was lost.

So it was that Harry staggered back to his cupboard, fumbled with the lock, and collapsed onto the ragged mattress. He last remembered Alastair's dainty feet brushing over his cheek before he drifted into a restless slumber.

A few hours later, as Harry lay awake in the darkness trying to find a comfortable position, he thought back to the previous morning, when Dudley's friend Piers had arrived at the front door and promptly punched Harry on the nose.

Through the stars in his vision, Harry had noticed the message printed into Piers' T-shirt:

Parents for Sale

(Slightly Damaged)

Buy One, Get One Free!

The sans serif typeface was seared into Harry's memory.

Is that what it's like? thought Harry, a surge of anger coursing through his face. To not be parentless? To have so many T-shirts that you have the choice to buy one that insults the provider of such clothing?

"I'll take that bargain any day," Harry muttered to the ceiling. A single tear ran down his cheek, and he quickly wiped it away.