Each day begins with the walls and ceiling of Harry's cupboard shaking, as his pig of a cousin thunders down the stairs and into the kitchen, ravenous after his fast of only a few hours. (Or only a few minutes, as Harry suspected that Dudley had food hidden in his room, which explained why, even when Aunt Petunia had put him on a diet on his doctor's recommendation, he'd gained rather than lost weight.)
Harry walked to the kitchen with dread rather than eagerness, because as bad as his cupboard was, it was nothing compared to the torture of having breakfast with his aunt, uncle, and cousin. Their treatment of Harry vacillated between cruel and indifferent, with no variation. Harry knew that when he shuffled into the room and sat down, Uncle Vernon would growl, Aunt Petunia would fling a plate of food at him, and Dudley would pound the table for more food. (The last had no connection to Harry's entrance, but was nonetheless predictable.) So as Harry ate, he pretended, as he sometimes did, that he had no aunt and uncle - that they, not his parents, had died in a car crash, and Dudley had been banished to an orphanage, the real bad kind, like the one in Oliver Twist. Not that Dudley would ever be so polite as to plead for more; he'd demand it. But they wouldn't give it to him, and he'd go to bed hungry, just as Harry did many nights when Aunt Petunia sent him from the table for asking too many questions about his parents.
In his fantasy, Harry woke up and walked to the kitchen and took a seat not as an orphan, but as a normal boy with parents who loved him. He did not have an aunt who shouted at him through breakfast ("Hurry up, boy! Vernon won't drive you to school if you miss your bus! Would you like some more bacon, Duddykins?") or an uncle who glowered at him from behind the morning paper, the vein in his bloated purple forehead throbbing every time Harry dared to glance up from his plate. Harry did not feel sick or miserable or unwanted - or unloved - because he had a mum and a dad, a real mum and a real dad, to eat breakfast with instead of his dead aunt and uncle.
He had a mum who served him eggy bread and a dad who guffawed at comics as he ate his meal instead of tsking at the news. His mum was pretty, much prettier than Aunt Petunia, with long, wavy hair that glimmered in the sunlight that filtered in through the window by the stove. It was the kind of hair that Aunt Petunia, with her practical bob, would have scoffed at, but secretly envied. Harry's dad looked like him, but taller, and leaner than Uncle Vernon, with a jovial rather than a grave manner. It would have unnerved Uncle Vernon to be around someone like him. Harry's parents would sneak a kiss as his dad left for work - and not the tight-lipped, passionless kind that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia exchanged as he clambered out the door with his briefcase, but the kind that kids on the telly gagged at. His mother would give him a kiss him, too, as she saw him onto the bus, which he'd wipe off for the other children's benefit. Secretly, though, he'd love it, because loved is what it would make him feel.
At school, he'd fidget until recess (so this part wasn't much different), but when recess arrived, he'd spend the hour playing with the other children in the schoolyard instead of hiding from his cousin and his gang. He'd always wanted to try the jungle bars. Maybe he'd even have friends, because he wouldn't be Dudley's skinny, messy-haired, socially awkward cousin, but a normal boy with parents who loved him, and maybe other people who cared about him, too.
Once home, his mum and dad would help him with his homework, so he wouldn't be earning mediocre grades in school, because his parents, unlike his aunt and uncle, would treat him as though he were capable of more. Then, after he'd finished his homework, he and his parents would sit in front of the telly until dinner. That's what his aunt, uncle, and cousin did while he, Harry, peeked at the screen from outside or from the top of the staircase. Not one of them ever laughed at the jokes in sitcoms or cartoons: his aunt and uncle because they were too boring, his cousin because he was too stupid. Harry and his parents, however, would laugh. And they'd never watch the news. The news, Harry had concluded, was for people like his aunt and uncle, who derived pleasure from others' misfortunes, and his parents would be nothing like them.
Dinner would be delicious, and Harry would eat as much of it as he liked, because his appetite would not have to compete with that of Duddykins or Uncle Vernon. He would not have to keep silent and train his eyes on his plate, either. His parents would talk to him as he ate, asking him questions about his day and answering any that he had about theirs. And even if he fashioned a volcano out of his mashed potatoes and gravy (as he'd often thought of doing), prompting his dad to snicker and his mum to roll her eyes, they'd never even consider banishing him to his room, because his presence would be welcome to them, not hateful.
As the day came to a close, his parents would read him stories set in fantastical lands where knights battled dragons and wizards cast spells, and when they left his room - because he'd sleep in a bedroom, not a cupboard under the stairs, where the darkness crept in too quickly - they'd tuck him in and turn on a night light. He wouldn't lie awake for hours in the dark with the covers pulled over his head, his heart thumping at every noise. Harry wasn't a little kid anymore, but he still got scared sometimes, of the mice and the cobwebs and the dark.
He thought of them often - his parents, and his double life with them - at night as he struggled to sleep. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he fancied he saw a green flash, which his aunt and uncle had told him was his memory of the car crash that killed his parents. So he kept his eyes open, straining, for as long as he could manage, because even the darkness, with all of its terrors, was better than that dazzling, but haunting, green light.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are, as always, both welcome and appreciated!