Younger Days
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. I do not own.
A/N: Hi everyone! As you can see, I finally got around to posting another fic! This just happens to be the first fanfiction I ever wrote (I wrote this even before I started writing His Mother's Eyes). Hopefully it's not too cliche - it's basically just my ideas of things that may have happened in Harry's childhood, and possibly in later chapters, my take on things that are actually mentioned in the books. I was feeling inspired, and just started writing. I wrote the first 4 ½ chapters last summer, and I'm hoping to write a little bit more to finish it off. Anyway, here's chapter one. Please enjoy and review!
It was the day before Christmas. The smell of a feast was wafting from the kitchen, and Harry could smell ham, turkey, potatoes, gravy, and for some odd reason, peppermint humbugs. The smell made his mouth water and his stomach rumble, but he knew that he wasn't even going to be allowed in the kitchen for the Christmas feast. He had worked all day helping Aunt Petunia fix the food, and now she had banished him to his cupboard, telling him to stay there and not bother the guests, who were to be coming any minute now. "Could I at least have some potatoes?" five-year-old Harry had begged when Aunt Petunia ordered him to leave the kitchen.
"No," Aunt Petunia replied stiffly. "You are to go to your cupboard and stay there. I won't have you being in the way of our guests."
"But I won't be any trouble!" Harry persisted. "And I'm really hungry. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast!"
"Well, you'll just have to wait until breakfast in the morning, then, won't you?" Aunt Petunia said distractedly, pulling out stacks of plates and spreading them on the table. Just then the doorbell rang. "Good heavens, they're here already!" she exclaimed, but before running to the door, she turned to Harry. "Go to your cupboard now, and don't come out until the guests have left," she snapped, "or better yet, until morning." Harry hastened to obey.
Harry lay in his cupboard, listening to the happy chattering of the guests in the dining room, and the merry clinks of forks against plates. His heart ached. Why was he denied the simple joy of being happy and well-fed, even at Christmas? He longed to be in there with them, longed to taste the smell of the feast that taunted his growling stomach…..wait. With them? No. He didn't want to be with them; he wanted to feel what they were feeling: the feeling of being surrounded by people who loved you and cared about you; people who listened to you and wanted you to be happy; people who wanted to celebrate Christmas with you. Being with them wouldn't bring him that joy.
Harry looked around his tiny prison. On the floor was a pile of thin blankets that he curled up in every night, and behind him, shelves hung on the wall. They were stacked with odds and ends: old umbrellas, cleaning supplies, old buckets of paint, a broken tennis racket….the cupboard under the stairs was full of things that nobody wanted. But Harry had been given one of the shelves on which to keep everything he owned: some old, oversized hand-me-down clothes from his cousin, Dudley, a pair of shoes three sizes too big for him, some paper and a pencil that he had smuggled into the cupboard when Aunt Petunia wasn't watching, and a broken action figure of Dudley's, that had accidentally been thrown into the cupboard during one of Dudley's tantrums, and that Harry had secretly kept ever since. It seemed that every corner of the cupboard was adorned with a spider's web.
And Harry remembered vividly the overwhelming fear that had gripped him that first night in the cupboard. He had been two years old, and was starting to grow out of the crib that he had slept in ever since coming here to Privet Drive. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had decided that they wanted to give Dudley both the medium sized bedroom and the smallest one; the smallest bedroom would be used to store all of his toys. This meant that Harry would have to share a room with Dudley, which was completely out of the question. And then it came to them: the cupboard under the stairs! This way, Harry would be out of the way if they needed him to be, he wouldn't have to share a room with Dudley, they wouldn't have to give up the guest room for him, and, locked away in the cupboard under the stairs, they could pretend that Harry never existed at all, pretend that he had never been left on their doorstep, a burden that they didn't want to deal with. So, Harry was told that for his third birthday, he would be receiving his very own bedroom.
Harry couldn't wait! The morning of his birthday he bounced around the house, wondering eagerly which bedroom would soon be his. But when he was shown the cupboard under the stairs…..
Harry drew back in fear and despair. He couldn't live in there! It was dark and scary! And….was that a spider?
"Go on Harry. It's bedtime. Don't you want to sleep in your new bedroom?"
Harry shook his head and started to cry, but before he knew it, someone had shoved him into the cupboard and shut the door. Darkness enveloped him, and he cried harder. There were spiders in here, and it was too dark to see them! He crawled slowly into the corner and curled up, too terrified to move…..
Now, two years later, Harry had learned that darkness was nothing to be afraid of, and as for the spiders….well, if he tried not to bother them, they didn't bother him.