They called it a miracle.
At two AM of March third, the small water heater on the back of the young family's home burst open from uncontained pressure. The exploded hot water and heat caught the house on fire, trapping the family inside the house and killing the mother and father, who had rushed into their child's room, where the water heater was located.
The boy should have been trapped in smoke. He should have been dead by suffocation, by the heat and the fire nipping at his body. But he was found unconscious by the firefighters, completely unharmed and was peacefully lulled into a deep, deep sleep, with no physical problems so to speak.
They all should have died- mother, father, and son. But the boy survived, and no one knew why.
The story was one repeated for a few months after as more and more people came up with speculations. He was downstairs the whole time and just fell asleep. Maybe he was the one who caught the house on fire. Someone came into their house that night and caught the house on fire, sabotaging the water heater so it looked like an accident, but the attacker saw the boy and felt pity and saved the boy from the fire, so they wouldn't feel so guilty.
Some suggested that he had a Guardian Angel that saved him.
Every time he was asked, Harry Potter answered the same thing.
"I don't know." He always sounded so dull, so lifeless. He lost his family. His home. His normal life. He was questioned, under suspicion of something he didn't do. He had no idea how he lived, what made him survive. All he knew was that his parents were dead and he had no one to live with, since all his family members were dead or would have nothing to do with him.
Harry Potter was a mystery to the public.
'The Boy Who Lived', they called him, talking about the strange little boy who lived when he should have died. He was a mystery, an enigma. Alive when he should have been dead.
Some people resented him for living when his parents, James and Lily Potter, had died. James and Lily were young and in love. They were well adored by all those who knew them and still had their admirers even though they had been married for a good seven years, with Harry born two years after their marriage.
Some thought he had no reason to live, when James and Lily didn't live themselves. These people were the ones who thought that maybe Harry had set the house on fire, accidentally or not. Others felt more pity for the boy with no home and no one to love him.
It left him with a scar. Harry Potter would always have a scar on him from his parent's deaths, that was agreed on by the general public.
But a few months passed and the world forgot about 'The Boy Who Lived'. Harry Potter was shuffled into one foster home to another, always switching schools and never staying long in one place.
He was called cursed.
He was called haunted.
He was soon hated by most of the people in the system for his coldness and lifeless attitude.
They called his survival a miracle, but while he didn't suffer any physical injuries, Harry suffered many mental ones instead.
Well, I'm not positive where this came from.
This is for the Shakespeare challenge- Merchant of Venice.
I don't own Harry Potter.