A/N: I'm stuck on all the other stories I'm trying to write, and I read an article that inspired me to write this one. I do not have any mental illnesses that I know of, and am just trying to put it into words. It didn't come out like I'd meant it to, and I'm not completely pleased with it, but it shouldn't be unreadable.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
The Dursley family never really liked Harry Potter, but they never hated him either. They couldn't hate someone who was so normal – at least to them.
Harry had been described by his teachers as extremely neat and organized, and was by far the cleanest boy in the school. At home, he was constantly straightening things, tweaking things to perfection. Even the Dursleys, who had ensured that their home was practically sterile, were amazed at their perfect house.
He did all of his chores and school work perfectly, and would spend hours at a time fixing the smallest mistakes.
No one knew that he constantly redid all of his assignments, as the smallest eraser mark or torn area from his constant erasing and adding of details that no one would notice. The smallest error struck a deep chord of fear with him, made him want to scream. Everything had to be perfect, or everything would go terribly, terribly wrong.
Harry knew he was different, and he always wanted to be normal and fit in with his classmates.
But he was constantly hiding his problems, afraid that his relatives would label him a freak and that the doctors would laugh at him. Besides, he seemed to make everybody else happy.
And his life was still relatively normal until the letters arrived. At first he simply delivered them to his uncle, who looked as though he would explode in rage before calming himself and telling him to leave. Harry did so, and went to wash his hands. Who knew what could have been on that letter.
When even more letters began to fly in a few weeks later, Harry's chest constricted and panic rose within him. Those letters shouldn't be here! They could be infected with something, he didn't knew where they'd been!
"No, no…" he muttered, keeping himself as far away from the streams of letters bursting in through the window. The boy followed his ordinary route outside of the room and busied himself with tweaking a picture frame that appeared to be lopsided, and tried to get his mind off of the slowly vanishing panic.
The moment Vernon decided that they should leave in order to escape the mysterious letters, Harry was terrified. Couldn't they see that it would be better to just stay?
But he went, eyes dilated and chest constricting all the while. The moment they entered the hotel for the night, Harry was worrying about every possible thing to get his mind off of the mind-numbing anxiety he was experiencing.
Who would take care of the house while they were gone? Would it be dirty and filled with diseased?
Would somebody tend the flower beds and make sure that the plants were perfect?
And the panic only got worse as they got onto the rickety boat, and Harry's carefully perfected routine and stable world was completely shattered when they got into the shack.
It was so dirty, he shuddered. He hurriedly worked on tidying the meager furniture up and dusting the dirt and sand off of the beds. The Dursleys did not speak to him, and they went to bed.
The overriding terrible panic kept him awake, and he couldn't ignore the dirt. He found the old sink in the corner and a bottle of soap he had brought along with him, and scrubbed the dirt off his hands until they were practically raw. He ignored the pain, and focused on fulfilling the need to be clean. It made him feel a little bit better, relieved in a way.
It wasn't until Hagrid arrived and he was unwillingly whisked away to a magical society that his problem began to truly torture him.
He needed to get back to Privet Drive. This place was dirty, and unfamiliar, and didn't have a sink anywhere. The man who had taken him made him touch the unfamiliar, germ-covered instruments. And that old man made him touch the wands, no matter how he shuddered and asked for them to be disinfected.
They just look at him oddly and then made him continue.
The magical world would not be kind to him.