Chapter 2: Birthdays and Broken Things

Petunia rapped on the door of his cupboard under the stairs. "Get up, Freak!" She heard movement behind the door and swung it open to reveal a small boy with matted hair. He wore an enormous shirt that hung past his knees. He did not look up as he muttered "Yes, Aunt Petunia." He shuffled to the kitchen, holding one arm awkwardly against his chest, and began to prepare a breakfast for his relatives. Today was his cousin Dudley's ninth birthday, and his aunt had left specific instructions for a large meal, with all the family's favorite dishes. An hour later, the boy returned silently to his cupboard, a piece of toast held tight in each fist.

As he savored the scraps he had been able to take, the Freak beneath the stairs waited for the Dursleys to leave. Dudley was always treated to an outing on his birthday, leaving the house empty till after sunset. The light coming from the grate in the cupboard door allowed the boy to see the countdown to school that he had marked on the wall with a pencil. Normally he was not allowed pencils, but this one had been stuck in his leg by Dudley and his friends when they had caught him on the way home from school the year before, and neither Vernon nor Petunia felt like removing it. In the otherwise empty cupboard, the pencil was the boy's hidden treasure.

Unlike normal children, the Freak could not wait for school to begin, even if it came with the fear of Dudley's gang. There, the boy had a different name, Harry Potter. He learned that on his first day of primary school, as he had waited mutely to hear the name Freak in the roll call. When he had told the teacher as much, she had scolded him for joking around. She had, of course, been told by his relatives that he was nothing but a trouble maker. Four years later his reputation had only grown worse, but it certainly beat spending all day in his cupboard.

At school, Harry could eat the meals provided, and he was even allowed to shower in the locker rooms after physical education class. The Dursleys usually refused to have him waste water at home, and he reveled in the feel of warm water running down his back. He was especially happy to learn things in his classes, as he knew being smart sometimes kept him safe from Dudley, who never cared to learn anything if he couldn't use it to hurt Harry.

Harry's very favorite part of the day was the hour following lunch in which he was allowed to visit the school library. It was there that he learned the most, all on his own time, and all by his own choice. Stories of ancient gods and heroes were his absolute favourite, and he had read every book he could find on the subject. The librarian, one of the few adults who seemed to tolerate him, even ordered books from the city public library, with the condition that they remain in her care. It was happy thoughts like those that entertained the boy in the cupboard as he sketched on his wall, the soft scratching making the only sound for hours in the empty home. The Freak named Harry looked happily at his finished drawing as he laid down to sleep. Even his broken arm seemed to hurt less and for the first time in a year, he fell asleep in peace.

The next morning, Harry woke before sunrise and waited for his aunt, as always. The day following Dudley's birthday was always one of the most difficult, as the Dursleys knew they had given the "freak" a day off. Aunt Petunia soon came down the stairs and sent Harry to weed the garden before the neighbors woke up. Most didn't know that Harry lived with the Dursleys and that's how they liked it.

The weather was already hot and soon Harry was sweating from the exertion. Moving to the back yard to avoid the prying eyes of the residents of Privet Drive, Harry wiped his face on his shirt and sat for a moment in the shade of the hydrangea bush. Years of living with the Dursleys had sharpened Harry's sense of danger and it gave him a sudden compulsion to move from his resting spot. As he jumped up he heard a small voice saying, "ssstupid boy digging up my home!" Harry looked around, bewildered, until his eyes fell on a small snake staring at him from where he had been sitting just a moment ago.

"Did you just speak?" he asked, wondering if perhaps he had been in the sun for too long.

The snake cocked its head at the sound of Harry's voice before responding hesitantly, "I apologize, Ssspeaker, I did not mean to ssscare you."

Harry jumped back in shock with a shout that drew Aunt Petunia's attention. The back window slammed open and she glared at Harry before she spotted the snake in front of him. With a shriek, she flung the pan she was holding at the snake and hit it as it turned to face her. The snake struggled to move away, hissing loudly, "Ssspeaker help me!" Harry had no idea how to make sense of the situation, but he allowed the snake to wrap around his arm as Aunt Petunia slammed the window shut and ran to the yard. No doubt Harry would be punished, though for the life of him he couldn't understand what had happened. The snake stayed coiled around his arm, hidden in the sleeve, as Harry was dragged by the ear to his cupboard and thrown in unceremoniously. Petunia slammed the door on Harry's leg once before he quickly withdrew further into the cupboard and was locked in without another word. When his heart stopped pounding he took a deep breath and whispered, "what the bloody hell just happened?" The snake hissed in a way Harry could only interpret as laughter.

Two full days passed before Harry was finally allowed to leave the cupboard. In that time, he had learned quite a bit from the snake and he was confused by more than half of it. The snake, who asked to be named Balthasar, refused to call Harry anything but Speaker, which he said was a sign of respect. When Harry questioned him further, he discovered that being a Speaker was a rare talent among magical people and gave him power over intelligent serpents. After two days of hearing wild stories about wizards and an unseen world of magic, Harry couldn't decide whether to believe it, or if he had finally gone insane from his time with the Dursleys. When he said as much to Balthasar, the snake paused in his storytelling and asked Harry in a deadly calm whisper, "Have you ever made sssomething happen, sssomething you couldn't explain, when you were sad or angry?" When Harry said that he hadn't, Balthasar told him that he must be a wizard in order to speak to snakes. Thinking harder about anything unusual in his past, Harry decided that the only thing he could consider strange was how quickly he recovered after beatings from his relatives or injuries at school. Balthasar was livid at the casual acceptance of abuse, but told Harry he could simply be a squib, a person born with too little magic to use it properly. By the time Aunt Petunia came to free him, Harry had decided that being a squib was better than having no magic at all, if only so that he could survive life with the Dursleys.

Balthasar mostly stayed with Harry and would hunt whenever he was sent outside to work in the garden. For the first time in his life, Harry Potter had a friend, one who just happened to be a talking corn snake from a world of fairy tales. It was, as far as Harry was concerned, the best thing that had ever happened to him. On July 31st, Harry's ninth birthday, the good times came to a very sudden end.

Vernon Dursley was not a patient man, and he knew it. In fact, he was proud of what others might call his failing because it intimidated people and made them unlikely to test him. Beginning seven and a half years ago, his patience had been tested almost daily by the demented, scarred infant that had shown up on his doorstep. Vernon had thought he had done quite a good job torturing the freakishness out of his nephew over the years, but the past few weeks had brought about an unwelcome change in the boy. The freak no longer seemed as afraid of him, even daring to look him in the eyes on several occasions. It seemed impossible that his treatment of the boy had allowed for this rebellion. He had whipped and beaten and even once branded the boy at every sign of abnormality. Now, it seemed that somehow the submissiveness he had tried so hard to establish was deteriorating, making way for a character he hardly recognized. Vernon Dursley was afraid, and he hated the feeling. He decided to get rid of the Freak once and for all.

Petunia Dursley always hated the last day of July. It only served as a reminder of the fact that she was forced to shelter the child of her wicked sister and her good-for-nothing husband. He was proof that her sister had made a life for herself with some wealthy politician's son from her own freakish world, and left Petunia behind to settle for the likes of Vernon. She hated the boy even more than she hated her sister, if possible, and treating him like a slave was a pleasurable irony, since she knew he would have been spoiled by his own kind. As was her tradition, she left Privet Drive early that day to drink away all thoughts of magic and her own rotten luck.

Harry woke up the morning of his birthday with the usual sense of dread. Birthdays were spent alone with Vernon and Dudley, who were far more inclined to physical confrontation than Petunia. He knew he was about to pay for his recent rebellious streak and spent a brief moment wishing Balthasar was a venomous. The one benefit of the day was that both male Dursleys were inclined to sleep in long after his aunt had left for the day, and Harry had time to brace himself for the coming storm.

Light filtered into the cupboard through the grate as Harry waited, illuminating the finished drawing on the wall. To Harry, it looked a bit like a character he had seen in one of Dudley's Star Wars movies, with wrinkled skin and long drooping ears. Harry liked his drawing better. He felt that it was somehow familiar to him, though he knew he had never met such a creature. Perhaps the wizarding world had something like it, but he had never asked Balthasar. A loud grunt from upstairs pulled Harry from his musing and he began fidgeting as his tormentors awakened.

Slow heavy steps crashed on the stairs above him as his uncle's voice called out. "Today is the day you get what's coming for you, Freak. Nobody here is going to miss dealing with your freakishness when I've finished with you, your worthless sack of shit." Vernon reached the bottom of the stairs and stood in front of the cupboard. He didn't bother with the lock as he kicked the door in, smashing the thin wood against the back wall. Small chunks of wood cut across Harry's face and arms, leaving slivers as they dug into his skin. Balthasar cowered behind him, wishing he could help his friend, but knowing it would only be sealing his own doom.

Vernon had never once entered the cupboard before, fearing it contained too much of his nephew's freakishness, but now he reached into the corner and grabbed Harry by the throat, heaving him up into the low ceiling and knocking his head on the corner of the stairs above. Harry's eyes glazed over as he struggled to remain conscious. A thin trail of blood from his scalp ran down his forehead into his eye. He was slammed back to the floor as his uncle's fist smashed into his chest, cracking a few ribs in the process. Harry was sure his uncle was trying to kill him this time, and he was going to die a painful death in his cupboard. He had never seen Vernon so exultant in his rage. He looked once at Balthasar curled in the darkest corner of the room, and with pain tearing his lung, Harry yelled for help, wishing without hope that someone would hear him. As he blacked out, he heard a sharp crack and wondered briefly which bone had just been broken.