Title: Those Begging Eyes
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Harry Potter
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the Harry Potter characters.
Summary: Harry was three years old when she realized he was turning her into a monster.
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Harry was three years old when she realized he was turning her into a monster.
Logically she knew he wasn't doing it on purpose. It was just his presence in her life, his too green eyes, that damned Potter hair, the way he breathed...
Simply his presence in her life was driving her to do unconscionable things.
She honestly couldn't explain it, except that sometimes there were children in the world that one simply could not like.
They were too clever for their own good, always wanting things, always needy. And that damned Harry brat... he was always looking at her with those eyes, as though begging her to love him. And how impossible was that when she couldn't even like him?
It started with little things really. Breaking the biscuit in uneven halves just to watch his eyes moisten as she gave Dudley the bigger piece. Then there was putting him in time out even though she knew Dudley had been the one to break the lamp. Or buying Dudley a new toy and letting Harry watch as he got nothing. Forcing Harry to help clean up around the house while Dudley got to watch cartoons.
Dozens of little things she had done just to watch that flash of misery on his face.
The moment she realized things could go too far was when he started screaming his head off one day and she found herself locking him in the cupboard under the stairs. And then, while he wailed, a vicious voice in her head asked, "What if I just leave him in there? Then it will be as though he had never come to ruin our lives."
A moment later she was completely horrified and let him out. But when he looked at her out of big grateful eyes... her hand itched to slap that look off his face.
She knew she had never been very maternal, had never been fond of children. And the only way she could bear Dudley's presence in her life at all was because he was her own son. But she had never had any kind of desire to have more children, because she knew from babysitting experience that they were worse in pairs. Always feeding off each other to be loud and obnoxious, tattling and running around screaming.
She simply could not handle it.
The boy was making her into a monster by his mere presence. It wasn't really his fault--it was hers--but he would be the one to suffer.
And in a rare moment of pity when he had fallen asleep on the rug in front of the couch, his face angelic in sleep, she knew things could not go on in this way. She knew he deserved better than he would ever get from her.
So before she could change her mind, she had him up and bundled in his jacket and in the car.
She would find an orphanage and hopefully he would be adopted by a nice family. And even if he spent his whole childhood being ignored in some facility, at least he would have his basic needs cared for.
And that resentment and dislike growing in her chest would never become active hate. She wouldn't do anything she could ever really regret.
Petunia Dursley would never become a true monster. And Harry Potter would not be her first victim.
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=THE END=