Only Six

Summary: Dudley was always the favourite, but he had been cared for, too, if never loved. /Semi-AU/
Date written: March 17, 2009 (crossposted from LiveJournal)
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Word Count: 663
Warning: Mentions of child abuse.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potterseries and all related characters, settings, and plots.

Dudley was always the favourite, but he had been cared for, too, if never loved. They had tried to do their best, before the time - the time that Aunt Petunia caught him at it.

The freak - no, no, Harry, his name was Harry, it was what the teachers called him, it was what Dudley used to call him before Aunt Petunia saw him being a freak, it was his name. Harry buried his head in his cot, his fingers scraping at the mattress. He had to remember who he was, how the Dursleys were in the wrong, that he wasn't bad. He had to.

"I don't deserve this," he told himself aloud. "I don't, I don't. I'm not a freak. Dudley's huge, and really strong, but they don't call him a freak, do they? No, he's special, he's Duddikins. Yeah. I'm the same as him, they just don't see it. I am. I really am." Yet the last two statements were whimpered, and he cringed against the cot as if that would protect him from the spiders spinning their webs across the ceiling of the cupboard. He missed his bedroom, his nice, big, soft bed, the window, the toys, and the lack of spiders. But freaks didn't deserve bedrooms, or nice beds, or windows, or toys, or freedom from spiders, Aunt and Uncle said. But he wasn't a freak, he wasn't. He wasn't.

If one of them had to clean the floors and weed the garden, Dudley should, he was bigger and stronger. Harry was thin - and had been only getting thinner, with what had been going on since Aunt and Uncle began to call him freak - and puny. But they made him do it, because freaks were unnatural and worthless but since they were saddled with him they had to put him to some use. He wasn't a freak, he wasn't, and even if he was, he didn't deserve this.

He was only six.

Even as he protested, though, and resented them a thousand times over for making him do all the chores and cooking and throwing him in the cupboard and calling him names and cheering Dudley on for bullying him, he wondered involuntarily if they were right. Maybe he was in the wrong, and they were right, and he did deserve all this for what he was. No, no, it wasn't true, it wasn't right.

But even if they were wrong - he knew why they called him a freak. He knew what they hated in him. He couldn't help it, he insisted, but was that true? Not really, he admitted to himself no matter how much he didn't want to. Maybe he could, if he really, really wanted to. And... if he could, maybe he could go back to not being a freak. Maybe they'd care for him again, and if they didn't love him, at least they wouldn't hate him. Dudley would be, if never nice, nicer. He'd only hit him every now and then, and wouldn't bring all his friends along for the fun. They'd give Harry his bedroom and toys back. Maybe they'd even let him make friends - hadn't he and Dudley been friends, before Aunt Petunia saw him being a freak, doing tricks for Dudley's amusement? Freaks could make friends, he thought, no matter what Aunt and Uncle claimed. He'd be happy again. He'd never be Dudley, but he'd be Harry and not the freak.

He resisted, oh how he resisted, he fought it like a tiger, but with every passing day, his resolve crumbled just a little more. With every passing day, he crept a little closer to being broken, to giving in, to denying his freakishness, to shutting it away from the light of day. Every day, he became, even in his mind, just a little bit less Harry and a little bit more freak.

He could only resist for so long; after all, he was only six.