Guilty Party
One-shot of a look into Harry's nasty childhood. Hints of abuse… And no… it's not mine. From the POV of a small OC.
Privet Drive smells of guilt. It doesn't look it but normal animals do not come near in fear… fear of what exactly I don't know.
I share this guilt, this horrible overwhelming guilt of… something.
Privet Drive is filled with picket fences and neatly cut grass. The families all know one another and the mothers get together on Tuesdays and Saturdays to speak of everyone else, the miserable gossips.
The fathers share pride over their children, young Hannah Doherty who won the latest spelling bee or maybe of young Dudley Dursley who wants to be a boxer.
Immediately, guilt goes to the children, for not listening, for not trusting them. They say things that cannot be right because this is just a normal area, Privet Drive in Surrey. It is just a perfectly inhabited town with good people.
In the back of their heads, conscience whispers that children don't lie, that children just copy what they are shown. Little Eddy Davis was spanked for lying and he couldn't understand what he did wrong. He'll move away to America as soon as he can. He'll get hooked on drugs and booze and within a few years he will be just another vagabond. No one will remember him except his parents, guilty of their faults, and he will never understand what he could have done better.
The people on Privet Drive have a secret, a well-kept secret, thinks Petunia Dursley of Number 4. She'll never know what others think of her, will never know that the pearl necklace around her neck is a knock off and that little Amelia Andrews in Number 17 thinks she is like a horse, or maybe a giraffe. Amelia Andrew's little brother Kyle is afraid of the father though, a large man with a Hitler mustache.
The children no longer tell their parents where they get their bruises anymore. So used to no one listening, they are forced to respond in the only way they have been taught: by ignoring it.
I share this guilt, but what could I do?
Sometimes I curl in a lap of a crying child. Sometimes I scare the running bullies. I am just a cat in black and nothing is really here that I can help with.
Privet Drive smells of guilt, a horrible putrid thing. No normal animals come near anymore and that's why the squib across from Number 4 always has to buy new cats. The kneazles run away and the muggle cats join them.
The children know of their outcast, their savior but what can they do but ignore him when they have learned nothing else?
Harry Potter of Number 4 Privet Drive is… different. And when shouts come from his house then the televisions of the other properties go up and once when he screamed all of the neighbor children cried out in a nightmare.
Yes.
Privet Drive is a small normal town in Surrey. Or… it was.
Now it stinks of guilt and fault and people who will do nothing. A damaged savior and a generation that will kill itself off is all that's left.
But what am I to do? I am just a cat and if I even go near that little boy in the cupboard he will get hurt.
This is why I share the guilt.
END.