Locked in the cupboard, alone but for the spiders, ten-year-old Harry's thoughts can turn morbid quickly. No connection to my other story.
I don't mind the spiders … honestly I like them. They keep me company, and they tickle when they crawl on me, though that only happens if I keep super-still as opposed to ordinary-still. When I'm in the garden, I try to catch a few bugs to put in the webs. I don't know if that's sentimental, feeding the closest things I'll ever have to pets, or cruel, capturing tiny animals to have them eaten alive. I don't think it matters. No one really notices me anyway, and the Dursleys already think I'm evil.
One of them crawls onto my hand. I know better than to start talking to it – if anyone hears me being 'freakish' my punishment will be even longer. I wonder what kinds of spiders they are. My teacher looks at me funny when I try to look at 'The Big Book Of Bugs' on the class bookshelf during free reading, probably thinking I'm coming up with new and creative things to drop down the backs of peoples' shirts like Dudley blamed me for last month, so I haven't been able to look my little friends up. I wonder if they're venomous.
Heh. If they were, and I got bitten and died, that would be something. I can already see Aunt Petunia explaining to the police. She'd call them in a panic after finding my body, of course, terrified it would cast a black mark on the Dursley name, but then she'd see the spider-webs and realize she could make herself look good and be rid of me at the same time.
"He and Duddy-kins were playing hide and seek, and he must've hidden in the cupboard; I swear I had no idea there were such dangerous spiders in there. We usually keep it locked …" And if anyone asked about my cot, "It's a storage space, old junk we don't need but just can't bear to throw away," or my clothes, "He always loved Diddy-dinkums' old things, wouldn't wear anything that properly fit …" here she'd pretend to push back a sob, "and I won't deny we were grateful, he always wore out and ruined his clothes, all his things really, and it saved a bit of money to give him hand-me-downs …"
Then there would be more crocodile tears, until the officer put a comforting hand on her shoulder and murmured that he understood, it was always hard to loose a child, and why didn't she have a cup of tea to help calm herself? If she was feeling theatrical, she might start wailing about how she felt so guilty for it, but she was so glad it wasn't Dudley, that she hated herself for feeling this way when her dear, precious nephew was dead, but she was so grateful she hadn't lost her son …
And while she was absorbed in her grief and guilt, Uncle Vernon would gruffly show the officer Dudley's second bedroom, saying it was mine. There's another bed in there, and the broken toys would cement the idea I didn't take care of my things, especially contrasted against Dudley's shiny new intact collection of whatever his latest gifts were.
If the lack of pictures was questioned, he could say I was camera-shy, and (though they'd done their best to discourage it, but didn't seem to have reached me, poor soul) I was destructive – that Petunia wouldn't admit it even to herself, but I'd deliberately ruined my clothes and toys, and any pictures with me in them I would steal and rip apart, then bury in the backyard because they wouldn't leave me alone with the fireplace anymore. He'd suspected it was due to some mental trauma from my birth parents, or their deaths, and he'd been trying to get Aunt Petunia to agree to get me some help (since she was my aunt by blood and he technically had no legal rights over me), but she'd refused to think anything was wrong, or at least thought it wasn't that bad.
Then he might even cough-sob and offer a few manly tears, saying sorry, he didn't normally go on like this, it was just … and he'd trail off like that, and the officer would force a sympathetic smile, and quietly say he'd seen enough and would leave them alone to grieve. He'd recommend they get Dudley some counselling for losing his cousin at such a young age, and maybe some for themselves, because even if I wasn't theirs they'd still raised me and this was something no parent should go through.
He'd probably take my body away, and either way I'd get to have a little funeral. I'd like that, even if it was a bit morbid; a party of sorts, all for me. Since they'd put me in school, the Dursleys would have to publicly acknowledge my death. Everyone there would act appropriately mournful over the tragedy of this pitiful, troubled child, the life that was a waste from the beginning. I might even get a picture and small article in the paper, or at least an obituary.
I can picture my teachers and even a few of my classmates, now so sorry for the antisocial brat they'd never cared to truly know – shy little boy they couldn't save from himself, of course, that's what they'd say, but the first one is what they'd mean.
Mrs Figg would probably be there, if one of her cats didn't need to go to the vet or something. She might miss me a little, no longer having a captive audience to show pictures of her cats to.
Aunt Marge might come. I don't think she would, but she might show up just to tell Uncle Vernon she knew this would happen from the start, she'd always known a runt like me would come to a sticky end, and it would've been a mercy and a kindness to have drowned me when I first appeared on their doorstep. Maybe she'd be drunk and say it loudly enough that whoever was in charge of the service would shout at her, or at least warn her off speaking ill of the dead. That'd be nice, having someone put Aunt Marge in her place, even if I wasn't alive to see it.
I try to decide what they'd put on my headstone, if they would put anything besides my name and the dates, but funeral plots are expensive and they'd probably just have me cremated. My ashes they'd toss in the trash as soon as they got home and away from prying eyes, but maybe Aunt Petunia would put them in the garden instead, so no one questioned why there wasn't an urn on the mantle or something. Our neighbours could see some of our garden from their own yards, so if she did put my ashes somewhere it would probably be there. On the other hand, that would mean part of me would be in Privet Drive forever, and the Dursleys wouldn't want that.
They'd get in the car, I decide, and tell anyone who asked that they were scattering my ashes over my parents' graves in an act of final respect, or by the ocean because I'd always wanted to see it, or something appropriately sentimental – the Dursleys are obsessed with what's appropriate – and then take me to London and dump my ashes in an alley somewhere. "One more bit of filth in such a dirty city, who'll notice?" London is number eight on Uncle Vernon's list of things he likes to complain about.
Then after, if Dudley ever got caught bullying someone, he could still blame me and the trauma of losing someone he'd been so close to, and everyone would sympathise and he'd get off scot-free like he always did. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon could pretend I'd never existed, and if anyone mentioned me, they could just say "It's too painful to talk about," and change the subject, and no one would ever, ever question that. And eventually, everyone would forget I'd existed at all.
I'd finally make my unappeasable relatives happy. Not pleased with me, or anything, but happy. And all it would take was a spider bite. A pinprick compared to what 'Harry-hunting' sometimes ended in.
But you won't bite me, will you? I think to the spider on my hand, holding it up so I can see it better in the almost-nonexistent light. I like to pretend that, in their way, the spiders like me back.
At least someone does.