Summary: 'There stands a boy, a mere skeleton of a beaten child...' What would happen if Harry's greatest fear wasn't fear itself, but himself as a child? What makes a little boy so scary?
AN: This is a small, angsty one-shot with me trying out a strange perspective that I don't usually use to explore what would happen if Harry's Boggart was something less conventional. Though, this whole fic could be considered unconventional, haha. I hope you like it!
Rated for child abuse.
There stands a boy. Slight and meek, he is hardly more than skin and bones and swims in the folds of a battered grey t-shirt and pants cuffed at the hem three times.
A tuft of wild black hair sits on his head above a lightning scar and blazing green eyes. The class knows exactly who this is.
But he is a tiny shell of hollowed bones and it is a horrific clash of realities.
There are whispers and confused chuckles but there are no words to react to the strange creature now in front of them.
The state of shock of the boggart's victim freezes the audience in place as well, as if it is a shared iciness pausing the world in its tracks.
It puts a finger on the lips of a mocking smile so chilling that it is hard to reconcile the small child in front of them with the image of their own classmate.
"Shhhh…" he says, grinning wildly, "You've got a secret, don't you? One that nobody knows. And they can't know, can they?"
His voice rings out in a lilting melody, taunting and cruel, "Because you'll never tell!"
It's a disturbing sight to see a battered child look so deranged. He's a mixture of insanity and depravity that leaves the skin crawling and the stomach hollow with fear.
But the boggart's voice is perhaps the most spine-crawling part of it all. Paired along with its vicious content it is an undeniably ghastly combination that grates upon the ears.
"What do you think they'll say about you once they know? What do you think they'll say when they hear that their Boy-Who-Lived is scared of his muggle relatives? Do you really think they could save you from more than just your cupboard? It took them ten years for just that, didn't it?"
"Ri-riddikilus," the older boy tries, but there is no power behind his shaking wand and words. The shock stunning him into little less than a petrified statue.
"You're a freak and they don't even know it!" it jeers with a laugh, "did you think they'd care? You're nothing more than their Golden Boy, it's not you they care about! Were you honestly so pathetic as to think you'd have friends being what you are."
The tiny and frail thing of a boy looks down almost ponderingly for a moment, before breaking into a wild grin and facing the stunned classroom, "I know just what to show them! Would you like to see the truth about the Boy-Who-Fuckin'-Lived?"
The boggart lifts his shirt triumphantly to the gasps of horror from the class. Ribs stand out like sharp knives cutting against bruise-mottled skin; he is a mere skeleton of a beaten child.
He leans forward, and performs an extravagant stage whisper as if he truly were conspiring with the students for innocent mischief, "This is after almost three days in my cupboard without food. I turned my teacher's hair blue and dear old Uncle Vernon thought that my freakishness needed the buckle end of his belt and his dear Dudley's trainers to the ribs!"
The boggart turns back to the pale face of Harry Potter and frowns exaggeratedly.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Was that a secret? One you didn't want to tell?"
It suddenly snarls nastily and advances a step.
"Well, freak! I suppose they wouldn't know if you weren't such an abnormal little monster! Even to the wizards you're a freak! You can't ever be normal! Nobody wants y-!"
The boy in front of them suddenly morphs into a pale full moon and then –
"RIDDIKILUS!"
-blows away as a simple balloon.
The other boy – the real one – stands pale and shaking with anxiety.
Turning suddenly, he stumbles on his lanky limbs as he sprints through the stunned stillness of the full classroom.
There is a silence and a dread so profound that the people in the room seem to suffocate from it. And then… there is chaos. Bumbling and loud. Vivid voices ring out like bells, clear and crisp but blurred by their mixture.
There is blame, there are questions, and, most profoundly, there is denial. But they are only half-hearted attempts at confronting their shock.
They are not stupid. They know what this means. But, it does not make it any easier to accept.
The teacher cannot allow them to talk about it; cannot allow it to spread. So, he gives a speech on confidentiality, even if he knows it may be futile.
And so, naturally, the whole school knows by dinner time, at which, the boy is incriminatingly absent.
The world stands still with a collective bated breath, until… there is no reason to believe that they are being lied to.
Harry Potter was abused.
The boy does not come for breakfast but he makes his way to his first class. There are stares and whispers that follow him, along with the odd supportive cheer, but nobody dares approach him.
The boy glares harshly at his surroundings, as if he is challenging them to say something.
But, there are no words to say, and the onlookers, cowed, retreat.
His tension strung shoulders sag with relief. He is not quite ready for confrontation or the inevitable questions and the students are not quite stupid enough to push him.
Even so, the answer remains just as solid as before and suffocates the school in its immensity.
Harry Potter was abused and the circle spun truths they thought they had known about him are in shambles behind closed eyelids. The whispers of a tiny boy, half-starved and beaten flitter through ears and into the minds of anyone who'll listen.
The halls are haunted by the echoes of cobwebs in the cupboard for days.
The cupboard, itself, sits empty and hollow, like the shell of the boy who used to live there. Because Harry Potter has been so many things and he's changed skins so many times just to get by, that he will always be only an outline of a man – never quite the finished product. He will always hold a part of his skeleton with the broken bones from the cupboard.
Although he's filled himself with Hogwarts and home there are still some splinters of his soul left behind in that dusty room under the stairs.