Brick by Boring Brick
"You have to listen to me, Harry. This isn't Hogwarts. There's no Hogwarts. You're in a psychiatric ward, in an institution for the mentally ill." Dr. Vicki Hammond could only watch in despair as the boy before her struggled, screaming out the names of people and places that lived in his head.
Chapter 1: THE BOY WHO LIVED
You built up a world of magic, because your real life is tragic
-Brick by Boring Brick, Paramore
23 June 1991 – number four, Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey, was called for an inspection, following numerous complaints of child abuse from neighbors. The child in question was described to be a "boy, about the age of eight or nine in size, thin and shabby like an old mop", by Madame Arabella Figg, who was passing by said house and chanced a glimpse on the boy. Other witnesses state that they have seen inhabitants of the address – Mr. Vernon Dursley, kick the child in secret behind the fences that surrounds their property.
The inspection revealed that the claims were indeed true. A boy, now identified to be Harry Potter, age 11, had been left behind in the care of his only living blood relative, Mrs. Petunia Dursley, after his parents' untimely death in a 1981 car crash. Details of young Mister Potter's life in the hands of his relatives is continued at page 21….
The woman put down the paper, sighing as she did so. Reading the paper in the first place hadn't been easy the first time, there was no reason for the second time to be any easier. It was simply barbaric, what those 'savages' had done to the young boy. To Harry. One Harry Potter who was lying unconscious in the hospital wing just a hall away from where she sat. One Harry Potter who had been lying unconscious in said hospital for what was now an entire month.
The young Potter, victim of abuse, had become known nationally within minutes of discovery, an entire nation suddenly behind him in the boy's pursuit for his moral rights. Normally, the woman would have called the crowd's sudden choice of taking sides 'impulsive', but this time, she couldn't really fault the nation for their sudden interest in the issue.
Harry Potter, after all, had been found an inch next to death, starved and kept living like an animal in a cupboard under the stairs. His body had been found covered in scars, and later diagnosis revealed several broken – some even crushed – bones, throughout the years. The institute's doctors had even unanimously arrived at a bittersweet declamation, one that probably fueled the fire on the nation's sudden interest in child abuse.
"It was by sheer miracle, that Harry Potter even lived past seven years of age at the malnutrition and abuse the boy seemed to have suffered since the early age of one."
That had all been a month ago. For a month, people have waited patiently for news of Harry Potter's return of consciousness, but the boy had yet to wake. He was alive, there was nothing that wrong with him, anymore, aside from an immense lack in motor strength which was a side effect from a month's lack of active movement.
The trauma of having gone through a near death experience caused the boy to psychologically shut down in defense, thus the coma he was going through.
The doctors had assured the boy would wake, but the question of when? No one was really quite sure.
The woman looked back to the papers she was signing, and wonders briefly, whether the decision was truly wise. It was proven after all, that talking with patients in a coma helped them recover. What she held in her hands were papers that would permit a few of Harry's supporters every day, to talk to the boy.
Three to four people only, because any more than that would be a breach in hospital policy. It was also a solution that solved two problems at once. One, Harry's state of unconsciousness, and Two, the people's doubts about the hospital keeping the famed boy behind locked doors.
She sighed again, but this time lifted up the pen and let it drift across the sheet of paper in a gesture familiar to hers alone.
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The first words started out soft.
It was like reading, which he wasn't good at, but he tried nonetheless.
Harry could see the words, he could hear them, but he could also feel that his mouth wasn't moving to speak at all.
He was reading.
He was reading letters.
The letters didn't end with just one, with just two.
They came by dozens. They came by fluttering white feeling, of something soft brushing against him like feathers.
Harry wonders if they could be owls.
The letters are much more important to him though. They call him Harry.
They call him Harry Potter.
Who would know the insolent, ungrateful brat, Harry Potter, who had no one to love him because he was bad?
It was in the last letter, the one hundredth that Harry finally understood what the words meant.
"You're a miracle, Harry. You're a wizard. You are the Boy Who Lived."
And he knew then, that Harry Potter wasn't just the bad boy his relatives called him.
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Rubeus Hagrid smiled at the woman who smiled at him familiarly. It had become routine for the heavily built policeman to drop by and visit the young boy the nation was now starting to call the 'Boy Who Lived'.
An apt title, considering everything that the boy lived through in an entire decade of his life.
Rubeus didn't know Harry personally, but he was the one who had found the small, dying boy under the cupboard, and the very same one whose large arms shook as it held the frail body, with a gentleness he'd never known he'd had. Seeing an innocent boy tortured like that had pained the man's heart so, and found himself bothered whenever he hasn't seen the boy in a day.
An old woman emerged from Harry's room, carrying with her a book, "The Wizard of Oz". Rubeus smiled kindly at the old woman, one of the few permitted to meet the young Harry Potter for half an hour stories that they thought a boy of eleven would like.
"I hoped Harry liked my story. I used to love this book, after all, when I was the kid."
Rubeus nodded. "I'm sure he liked it, and would really be eager to wake and thank you for the story."
The old woman laughed at his flattery, moving on out of the depressing hospital halls. Rubeus moved to enter Harry's room, just to check on the boy for a minute, and soon he'd be out, posted on checkpoints in areas around the city.
What greeted him was the sight most people entering the room wished to see.
For Harry had sat up, and was staring at him with curious, bright green eyes.
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July 31, 1981 – Today, in Freyton's Medical Institute, Harry Potter, boy of eleven years of age and now nationally dubbed as the "The Boy Who Lived", indeed lived up to his title and awoke after a month long coma, resulting from the abuse he experienced in his relatives' household.
Medical experts of Freyton are currently having the boy go through several diagnosis to determine whether there are any more damages than what has already been discovered in prior diagnostics (see page 5).
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Harry watched the people as they moved around him, the voices and the colors becoming a blur. He was looking at the large man that stood a few distance away.
He remembers the name 'Hagrid', and also remembers a vague memory of the large man lifting him far away from Uncle Vernon. Harry slightly shudders at the memory, causing one of the nurses that surrounded him to give him a blanket. Harry blankly stared back, the gesture of kindness foreign to him.
He then suddenly remembers what the voices, the letters, had told him.
He was a wizard.
And so, it begins.