AN: This is for the Quidditch Fanfiction League. The prompt is to create a story based off of the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The word count is 1,116.
Harry stared at the door to his cupboard. Day in, day out, it was always the same.
Don't go out, everyone will see.
Don't go out, you little freak.
Everyone will see you for what you really are.
His aunt and uncle never did like outcasts. How unfortunate it was that Aunt Petunia's own sister was an outcast, married to another. It was only natural that Lily Potter's son would be as much of an outcast as his parents.
One day, he dreamed of seeing the world outside of the four walls of his cupboard. A small dream, perhaps, but everything about him was small- his stature, his room, his aspirations, and, if what Aunt Petunia said was true, his potential to be loved by anyone.
Days cycled endlessly. Each day was just another day, of waiting and waiting and waiting. Another day would be crossed out by Harry on the calendars he scavenged from the trash- the days he counted until he would be old enough to find where he belonged. Eighteen years alone, and then he could seek his fortune- not money, like how Uncle Vernon spoke jealously of the Potter fortune only Harry could have when he was of age.
It was more like the fortunes of fairytales from a golden yesterday. Harry wished to see the world, find a family, and a purpose- that was the real fortune he wanted.
When I'm eighteen, Harry vowed as he stared at the faded picture of a Disney movie poster- one about some Victor Hugo novel- something Petunia regarded as trash not fit enough for her son- her real son. Aunt Petunia never failed to remind Harry forcibly of his status as the one taken in, the outcast- it was rare she even acknowledged him as her nephew. Blood denied blood, and that was the only way that Harry knew.
When ten horrible years had passed since Harry had been left upon the steps of Number Four, Privet Drive, he found the extent that the Dursleys were willing to go to to make sure that he remained there, an outcast hated.
Letters appeared, dozens upon thousands, all addressed to him, all chucked into the blazing fire, shredded. Harry had once suggested that perhaps it was a letter from someone who would take him away from the awful place. For that, he'd been lectured on how he should be grateful they were protecting him from people who would make him stranger, odder, more of an outcast than he already was.
He never forgot that. To be an outcast was a sin- but to try to fit in with outcasts was an even worse crime.
Five more years would pass, and he would watch his cousin have a huge party for sixteen years. Harry got much more for his birthday than some huge party with sixteen of everything except for the shiny red car that was the envy of the neighborhood.
July 31st, 1996. It was a morning like any other. He ticked off another day, still hopeful for that fortune that seemed to never come. He cooked the bacon, the eggs, slopped it out onto the plates and passed them out to the three ungratefuls who could care less it was his birthday. There was a knock at the door, and in that moment, Harry seized his chance.
A pretty girl, daughter of the neighbor who had moved in three years ago and the Dursleys had been complaining about since, was standing in the doorway. Harry was mesmerized. He'd seen plenty a pretty girl as he hid in the shadows of the public high school, pretending he wasn't at all a freak.
But he'd never seen one with quite the same look in her eye- a twinkle of something Harry didn't want to call magic- it didn't exist, he was too frequently reminded. She smiled, and Harry then remembered his own manners, smiling politely- except it didn't feel forced at all.
"I think the mailman made a mistake," she said in a charming accent of Ireland. "Your mail was accidentally dropped at our place. Thought I'd drop it off."
"Thanks," Harry said, silently cursing himself for not saying more, for not being more charming.
"I've never seen you around before," she said. "I'm Eileen Edwards."
"I'm Harry Potter," Harry said, shaking her bracelet-bangles hands. "I'm the Dursleys' nephew- I study a lot, so you wouldn't see me out much."
He was just happy to remember the rehearsed lie. Eileen Edwards, he soon found out, was exactly the type of girl that entranced, enchanted, and was surely another outcast.
Much to the Dursleys' dismay, she would come over and ask for Harry. Not wanting to seem rude, they let him go- after all, what was there to hide when he never appeared to be an outcast, a freak?
It was behind the bushes, on her front porch that Harry learned of magic. She made lights appear, could levitate things, all sorts of stuff he could never explain. She talked of going to a magic school in Scotland, where she went by magic train and went on all sorts of adventures.
Good times were spent at her house, sometimes doing normal things like watching the telly- a rare treat for Harry- or playing with her cat, or doing anything of the like. Sometimes she spoke worriedly of how her pureblood boyfriend was acting strange, or how there was a return of a dark lord who hated those like her- outcasts born into ordinary people.
Then there was the day she appeared pale-faced at the door with a large book in hand.
"There's something you need to see," Eileen told him gravely.
It was behind the bushes, on her front porch, that Harry discovered the truth. A photograph of a man and a woman who resembled Harry greatly holding a baby lay on the front cover. In the preface, it told that the photo was of a man named James Potter, a woman who was once Lily Evans, only to become Lily Potter. Harry could easily have explained that away- coincidence, after all those names were common, his appearance was common.
There was one thing that couldn't be explained away. It told of a Harry James Potter, lost to the Wizarding World forever. Harry demanded that night to know the truth. In his determination, he lost control of his magic. There was a flash of light, and Dudley was screaming, writhing on the ground.
Harry showed up on the Edwards' front door that night, and they let in the outcast. In the morning, he took a Wizarding bus to a place where the outcasts like him belonged.