A/N: This just didn't want to leave my mind until I wrote it down... Nothing big nor special, but I hope you like it, anyway. Needless to say, this takes place before the first book. :)
Thanks: xX Ashlyn Malfoy Xx, who betaed this piece.
Poisonous green eyes, glowing faintly in the small light, quietly followed the spider that was making a web where the ceiling and the walls met. But the boy's mind was elsewhere and he wasn't really seeing the arachnid.
Sometimes, Harry liked to imagine what his homecoming would be like if he still had had parents... as much as that hurt him. Oh, how much different things would have been from how they were now…
For example, when he would come home from school, would he already have smelled the mouth-watering tomato soup in the hallway? Would his mother have surprised him once a week by taking the day off, solely for him?
Would she ask him every day, "Hey, sweetie. How was your day?" with a warm smile (because she really was happy to see him), reaching forward to ruffle his messy black hair affectionately?
Nobody ruffled his hair now. It never happened. In fact, every kid in town ignored him completely, much like he didn't exist, simply because they were all too scared of his oh so beloved cousin and what he might do to them if they hung out with Harry. But it was better than being bullied by them, he guessed.
But if his parents hadn't died during that car crash so many years ago, would he have had tons of father-son moments? Most likely, whether that was playing a sports like football, or watching TV together like real men. Who knows, maybe he would've had a younger sibling who would join them, too. A brother or sister, both would have been fine with him. Anything better than Dudley, after all.
Whatever the case, his mom would have her hands full on both of them, as she would help them with their homework and cook delicious meals and sing for them when they would feel sad. Not that there would be any reason to be sad when you had such wonderful parents, he was sure of that.
If that accident never had happened, would he have been a different person? Happier, more hopeful, funnier and more fun to hang out with? Maybe, but this was one of the things he would never be able to find out. He would never know what it felt like to have (real) parents, he could only guess. After all, aunt Petunia wasn't exactly acting like a mother to him, what with her putting him in the broom closet and all.
No, Harry would never know what it felt like to listen to bedtime stories, all with happily ever afters of course. He would never know what it was like to be cheered on by someone who cared about you more than anything. Nobody would ever hug him out of the blue just because. Harry would never get comforted after waking up from a terrible nightmare (and there were enough of those)... These were all little things, but they mattered to him. But he would never experience them. Perhaps in his dreams, if he was lucky enough, but that was it. Though perhaps he was never supposed to know what his life could have been like.
It was frustrating, really, not to be able to do something, anything, about this situation. But what could a ten-year-old do to change this? Exactly, nothing. His fate had never been less than just awful, so Harry guessed that he shouldn't expect any miracles, despite all the weird, inexplicable things happening around him.
Things would never change, and he would have to learn living with that one way or another, even if that was easier said than done.