Harry's dreams most nights, weren't the type that he imagined everyone else had.

Because when he dreamed, he died (he woke up) and sometimes it showed, and sometimes it didn't.

(He wasn't sure what was real anymore)

Sometimes, like when he drowned, or was electrocuted, he would simply wake up feeling the effects.

water filling his mouth, and he couldn't breath, no matter how hard he tried. Sparks jumping between his fingers, his heart feeling like it was a second away from jumping out of his chest, or simply stopping. He could say which one he wanted to happen more.

But for other things, like the beheading, or being stabbed in the heart, left a mark.

A perfect circle around his neck. A faded line on his chest.

He traced them sometimes, to remind himself that he was awake, that he was alive. (It didn't help.)

His body was riddled with the after effects of his dreams, but he could never really bring himself to care.

Maybe his dreams did something to him besides the obvious. Maybe they broke something, or changed something inside of him, because no matter what happened to him, he never felt anything.

(He was numb. Always, numb. His emotions blinking out like the stars in the sky, being swallowed up by the night, or a candle flame being snuffed out. Even the pain eventually faded away, from a dull ache, to almost nothing.)

Half the time (most of the time, almost all of the time if he wanted to be honest) he didn't know if he was awake or dreaming.

If he was alive, or dead. Because if dreaming brought death, and death brought waking, brought life, how could he tell if he was ever one or the other? He couldn't, so he stopped trying.


Sometimes, he would look at the people around him, and wonder, as they lit up all different colors.

He would look at the smile on Dudley's face, the sunshine yellow outlining his body, and wonder what it meant to be happy.

He would stare blankly up at Vernon when he would yell at him, his body burning fire red, and wonder what it meant to be angry.

Vernon liked to call him a "monster" when he looked. Said that with cold, dead eyes like his, he couldn't be anything besides the Devils child, something other. Not human.

He would say this, and though his face would be twisted up in an angry snarl, his body would glow a sickly green.

(And Harry wondered what it felt like, to be afraid.)

But all Harry would take away from these rather frequent rants from Vernon, was a question.

What did it mean to be human, it that was something that it was decided he wasn't?

Harry didn't have to be able to feel things to notice the distinct difference between how Dudley and he were treated. To notice how the other children at their school treated him, and even the neighborhood bullies.

All "normal". All "human".

So Harry came to the conclusion that if being human meant acting like them, then he was fine being a monster.

Something definitive that he could label himself, something concrete to ground him, when he was caught between being one thing or another.

He was deadalivedeadalivedeadalive.

No

He was awakedreamingawakedreaming.

No

He was Harry, and he was a monster.