Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter!
Chapter 2
As he is walking to the living room, Harry wonders why they want to talk to him about his behavior in the living room, and during a punishment nonetheless. In the past his imprisonment was rarely interrupted, and when it was Vernon was generally the one to do so, because sometimes got angry enough to whip Harry with his belt. The beatings never left anything permanent, and were few and far between, but the night of them he would be quite sore and more uncomfortable than he normally was.
They must either be very upset, or they wanted to congratulate him on his grades! Though he had already come to the conclusion that he was alone, he was still eager to be accepted, and if they did so it meant that he could do the assignments that the teachers assigned him, not ones of his own volition that would never be recognized. The teacher's praises when he did something especially difficult, like pronouncing long words still made him glow with pride just remembering them, and he would not be adverse to gaining more of her kind words. He was not so unrealistic that he thought this was their reason for calling him there, but the hope that it was for that very reason could not be eradicated from his conscious.
This hope was fostered once he saw the smiles upon the male Dursleys' faces. He sat down on the floor quickly and looked expectantly at the family seated on the couch across the room.
The first words out of Vernon's mouth disillusioned him from his dream of acceptance. "Guess what Boy? Dudley here saw you cheating at school, and we made a complaint to the teacher of the class. Your report card isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and your teacher is going to punish you when you return to school," he finished, all with the same smile he had been wearing when Harry had walked into the room, which he now realized was a smug smirk that was not a harbinger of goodwill.
Harry couldn't believe it. They had convinced the teacher? He had done no such cheating! Harry's new outlook was further reinforced by his thoughts that he would now be forced to set himself goals, as the teacher was unlikely to do anything to help now that he was a convicted 'cheater'.
Harry's isolation among people now felt even more pronounced, because if the teacher believed them she would never praise him again, she might even call him a freak. He couldn't even be consoled by his good grades, which were apparently all wrong if he understood what Vernon had said. Dudley spoke up, breaking Harry from his depressing thoughts," Since I did so much better than Harry, and didn't cheat, do I still get the extra presents?"
Of course, that must have been why Dudley had a smirk identical to his father's, besides getting Harry into trouble of course, he thought that he still had a chance with his reward, even though he hadn't earned a single A. "Now Dudley, just because the freak couldn't refrain from his freakishness doesn't…" Petunia never finished her sentence, due to Dudley's indignant outburst," BUT YOU PROMISED!"
The following so-called discussion (it was more of Dudley shouting out the phrase "BUT YOU PROMISED!" until his parents caved) lasted about five minutes before Petunia and Vernon were bullied by their Perfect Little Duddykins into buying him an extra 20 presents, despite their earlier arguments that they had only promised the presents if Dudley had gotten A's.
Harry was thrown back into his cupboard after being forced to listen to the Dursley's ramblings about him being a cheating freak. He found that he was becoming callous to their insults, as their opinion was not as important as his own, and he knew that he was no cheater.
After becoming as comfortable as was possible in the cramped, damp, spider-infested conditions, Harry began thinking of how to earn his own A's.
He had seen some larger books in the hands of an older student once while leaving the school, and thought to himself that learning to read something that gigantic would be a great accomplishment.
His first goal would be to get a book like that, and his second would be to read it, and find out what it taught. All the books he had read taught something, like the alphabet, or a nursery rhyme, and one taught him how to pronounce words, which he had taken to like a fish to water.
Maybe the big book would teach him something really useful, like the difference between normal children and freaks! With that happy thought, he succumbed to the pull of sleep and his breathing slowed to a steady hiss.
AN: I am probably going to skim by the rest of his time at the Dursley's except for the incidents from the canon, like vanishing the snake's cage. There isn't much more I want to develop about his time with the Dursley's, except the progress he makes on his goals. Please review and tell me what you think!