Schadenfreude
the pleasure derived from someone else's pain
Freak and Dudley were meant to start school in September and ended up in the same class. Miss. Honey was a very nice teacher who wanted to get to know everyone in the class personally because it was her first time teaching a class. When it was their turn, she wanted everyone to tell the rest of the class their name, what their parents do for a living, and what they got for their birthday. Miss. Honey gave everyone seating charts based on the first letter of their surname, and so Freak was placed in the back of the classroom while Dudley sat in the front. Dudley was the tenth to go and told the class that Uncle Vernon worked at a company while Aunt Petunia stayed at home and that he got thirty presents for his birthday. When it was Freak's turn to introduce himself, he told the class that his parents were dead but that his father was a drunk and his mother was a rotten egg who ran off with his father, and that he had never received anything for his birthday before.
There was a funny look on Miss. Honey's face after he finished his introduction. Since he was the last, she had her teaching assistant, Mrs. Clayton—one of the ladies that Aunt Petunia loved to gossip about because two of her former husbands had left her and her third husband was rumored to be seeing another woman. She took Freak to the headmistress's office and had him repeat his introduction to her. The headmistress's face became just as funny as Miss. Honey's was when he finished, and she called Aunt Petunia to the school. Miss. Honey had him sit in one of the chairs and gently told him that his name wasn't his real name. He was Hadrian James Potter, but he didn't like how his full name rolled off his tongue, so he decided to go by Harry on the Headmistress's suggestion.
When Aunt Petunia arrived, the Headmistress sent him to a room next to her office with Miss. Honey to talk to Aunt Petunia privately. Afterward, Miss. Honey brought him back into the office and left to return with Dudley. For some reason, Aunt Petunia took Harry and Dudley home early and sent him to the cupboard without any explanation and told him that he wasn't allowed to come out until Uncle Vernon came back home from work. The cupboard was initially meant to hold cleaning supplies, so it came with a child-proof lock. Aunt Petunia has been particularly upset because she only ever locked him in his cupboard when he upset her.
When Uncle Vernon came home from work that evening, Harry could hear Aunt Petunia talking to him in the dining room in a solemn tone. Uncle Vernon slammed his fist on the table and could be heard shuffling to the living room. With the conversation ended, Aunt Petunia unlocked the cupboard door and practically dragged him out by the arm and brought him to the living room. Uncle Vernon was purple and had an angry look on his face. Uncle Vernon yelled at Harry for being so daft as to tell the entire class about his family when it would make the Dursley family look poorly. He was utterly confused, and Uncle Vernon seemed to notice his confusion because he began spitting furiously, unable to speak coherently in his rage.
Instead of settling for another lecture, Uncle Vernon slipped his belt out from the belt loops of his trousers. Harry was made to take his shirt off and lean against the coffee table so that his back faced Sir. He still felt confused and didn't understand what was going on, but Harry still complied obediently. Whatever he had expected Uncle Vernon to do, he didn't expect him to whip the belt against his back. The tongue of the belt buckle dug into his skin, and when Uncle Vernon pulled the belt back, some of the skin on his back tore. He was screaming in pain before the sound even registered. His screaming infuriated Uncle Vernon even more and encouraged him to continue to flog him. His back was burning hot, pulsating with pain, and felt wet and sticky like the time Dudley had poured honey all over him to catch a squirrel. There were black dots in his vision, and he felt light-headed. There was bile in the back of his throat, which felt raw and abused from how hard he screamed.
He didn't remember when he had blacked out, but he woke up in his cupboard. He was disoriented, his head pounded painfully with a headache, and his throat was parched. When Harry tried to open the cupboard door, he found himself locked inside, hungry and in dire need of water. His back throbbed painfully, but it was dull enough that he could ignore it soon enough. Thick dried blood caked his back, but thankfully, there weren't any open wounds even though Harry could feel fresh scars. The burning heat of his back had seceded and felt strangely cool, like a breeze against wet hands. He didn't give it too much thought because he was just glad that he didn't with the pain that would've accompanied his back injuries had it not mysteriously healed overnight.
Harry felt as though his heart was ripped out from his chest. While Dudley was treated much better than him, he was still glad that the Dursley family treated him kindly. He never expected for Uncle Vernon to suddenly flog him because his actions painted them in a bad light. Aunt Petunia and Dudley surely would've heard his screaming, but neither lifted a finger to help him. It made sense in a way. Miss. Honey told him that he shouldn't talk about his parents that way because it wasn't right even if Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia said so. The Dursley family did take him in, but now that he put more thought into it, it didn't seem to be out of the goodness of their hearts.
If they wanted to look good in the neighborhood, they quickly could've sent him to the orphanage and sent small but periodic donations. They could tell the community that they afford to feed another mouth but were concerned for his wellbeing so that it made them look like sympathetic citizens who were doing the best they could to help their nephew. They could've cleaned out Dudley's playroom so that he could stay in it and move Dudley's toys to his closet since most of his clothes were in a large dresser. Aunt Petunia always managed to make enough for Uncle Vernon and Dudley to stuff themselves to their heart's content and for herself, so she could've easily made enough for him to eat since he didn't have that large of an appetite in the first place. They always had enough money to buy Dudley new clothes, for Aunt Petunia to buy new perfume and jewelry, and for Uncle Vernon to buy himself nice suits every so often so they could've purchased clothes for Harry. Dudley always got at least twenty or more presents for his birthday and on Christmas, so they could've afforded to buy him at least one gift for his birthday and Christmas.
The Dursley family could've easily given him Dudley's second bedroom, clothes of his own, full and proper meals, and presents for his birthday and Christmas—they chose not to do any of that, though. Harry's entire life had been a twisted lie that the Dursley family fed him and that he believed wholeheartedly. He genuinely thought that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were the kind folks that they portrayed to the community. Now that he knew that he had just been deluding himself the entire time, Harry felt lost and strangely empty—what was he going to do with himself now?
Harry was never the most talkative of children, and he wasn't all that sociable either. He only spoke when spoken to, responded in a soft-spoken voice, and kept it as short as possible. While his peers turned it into a game to see who could get him to speak at all, and later to who could get him to talk the longest, they quickly grew bored of him. None of his peers were interested in playing with someone who hardly ever spoke. The teachers were worried that he wouldn't make any friends, but they were quick to dismiss him since he wasn't causing any trouble just by being a lone wolf. They figured he would leave his shell eventually when he grew lonely of being all by himself and wanted to join everyone else.
Sir didn't like that he had a big mouth and believed that he didn't deserve any friends. Harry had the living daylight beaten out of him until he finally got a clue to what Sir was hinting. He seldom spoke after the third beating and stopping talking at all—until Miss. Honey called on him during class first—after the fifth beating. Dudley chased off most of the children who approached Harry, but after the sixth beating, he rebuffed any attempts his peers made at becoming friends with him. Dudley seemed to have reported that to Sir because the beatings stopped after that. While he stopped talking as much as he used to and rebuffed advances from his peers, it didn't—couldn't—change the longing Harry possessed for friends that he could pour his heart out.
Things simultaneously got better and worse—better because Sir didn't beat him anymore and the flogging seemed to be a one-time-thing and worse because the Dursley family began to treat him even lesser than before. He still stayed in the cupboard under the stairs and received all of Dudley's old clothes. It would look suspicious if he kept wearing the same few outfits every so often since the Dursley family could just tell the community that they were trying to teach Harry to be more grateful for what he already had. Harry's meal portions grew even smaller; he was only allowed to shower with cold water and lye-soap, and couldn't leave his cupboard to go to the restroom in the middle of the night because Ma'am would lock him in.
On Halloween, Harry learned that it was his parents' death anniversary after opening his eyes to the truth behind the Dursley family and sickeningly sweet façade, he took everything that came out of their mouths with a grain of salt. He learned that the world was truly a cruel place. No matter how hard he cried, or how desperately he pleaded to any of the higher powers at work, no one would ever come to save him. His pleas fell on deaf ears, and no one would ever bother to listen to them in the first place. The Dursley family's lies spread far and wide, and now the entire community looked at him as though he was the spawn of the devil, as though he would follow in his parents' footsteps—the image of his parents that the community believes, that is.
Halfway through his third year, the flogging became a bi-weekly occurrence—Harry still had school to worry about, and even if his injuries could heal overnight because of a strange miracle, he couldn't hide the aching pain that remained—when progress reports came in the mail. Harry's teacher, Mr. Anderson, suggested that he should be bumped up a few grades because he was very advanced for his age on his progress report. Dudley's teacher, Mrs. Laviano, however, commented that Dudley was doing poorly compared to his classmates and suggested summer school or after-school tutoring. It infuriated Sir to no end that a freak like Harry was one-upping Dudley when it should be the other way around because according to Sir, abnormalities were beneath regular folks and Harry belonged underneath the Dursley family's foot. From there on, his punishments grew worse and evolved to invoke more pain.
It certainly didn't help that Sir and Ma'am hated it whenever Harry's wounds from the night before would just disappear with only faint, pink scars. Sir could be loose with his tongue while Ma'am was extraordinarily tight-lipped so Harry always fed Sir's ego and acted weaker than usual around him to get information out of him. Harry learned that he was a freak because of how his wounds never failed to heal overnight, but that still didn't explain why his injuries could recover in the blink of an eye.
When he put more thought into it, Sir's words made much more sense. Harry had long since chalked his mysterious healing ability to something he wouldn't be able to figure out anytime soon. Sir and Ma'am were never strict with Dudley and loved to spoil him, but there were still things that they wouldn't budge on no matter what; it frustrated Dudley to no end, but he learned not to approach it with a ten-meter stick. Harry had initially thought it was because the Dursley family were devout Christians that they didn't allow anything that could be the slightest bit related to magic in the house. Dudley wasn't authorized to watch any programs that let his imagination run too wild, couldn't buy any comics or toys that were related to fantasy. When Harry was especially hungry, food and water would sometimes appear in his cupboard; it was mostly brown bananas and a handful of Dudley's juice packets since Ma'am always bought them in bulk and would never notice a few go missing.
Ma'am never joined in his beatings, but she made sure to let him know that she wouldn't lift a finger to help him either. Occasionally, she would rant about his mother angrily as Sir whipped his back open with The Belt. At first, it was hard to focus on what Ma'am was saying because all he could process was excruciating pain. Eventually, his pain tolerance went through the roof, and Harry finally learned how to tune things out, to focus on a single something, or to divide his attention between multiple things. He learned how to turn the pain into blurred nothingness—which was a small price to pay when it was amplified when he was broken out of his "zone"—to listen to what Ma'am had to say about his mother while Harry still pretended that Sir's whipping hurt him horribly. While most of what came out of Ma'am's mouth was ridiculously biased and made Ma'am sound like she had an inferiority complex, Harry still learned more than he expected about his mother.
His mother's name was Lily, and even though she was younger than Ma'am, their parents doted on his mother more than Ma'am. While Ma'am had ashy blond hair and dull blue eyes, Lily had vibrant red hair and brilliant green eyes. All of the neighborhood boys had crushes on his mother, but no one wanted to go near Ma'am because most of the children were still at the age where they believed that girls had "cooties." Where Lily managed to be tall and graceful like a fae, Petunia was lanky and clumsy with her limbs. Harry had apparently inherited the exact shade of green, and the shape of his mother's eyes, which made it seem like Lily was watching through his eyes. His mother was bright for her age and outshined Ma'am in academics, which explained why Ma'am looked even angrier than Sir did when progress reports came in the mail and Harry was doing much better than Dudley was faring. Ma'am saw Lily in Harry and compared every little thing he did to his mother.
Sir was sadistic, and his mood would always improve when he made Harry scream in excruciating pain. Watching him cry had Sir smiling with twisted pleasure because he had caused Harry to cry. Flogging was Sir's favorite punishment for Harry, but once Sir realized that Harry got used to whipping, he changed his game. Sir poured hydrogen peroxide over his back because it made Harry scream even louder and helped prevent him from getting any infections since it would be an instant sentence in jail if Harry's injuries got discovered. Sir started to shove his head into a tub full of apple cider vinegar so that Harry would accidentally swallow some and vomit stomach acid because there wasn't much of anything in his belly. He strung up Harry in the air and watched him dangle and choke, enjoying the rush of adrenaline at seeing him struggle and the risk of killing Harry if he went too far and didn't let him down quickly enough.
Harry learned to hold everything in, to bottle his emotions so that Sir couldn't have as much fun seeing him in pain as he could've. When he realized how futile it was to cry, his tears slowly dried up. It wasn't as though anyone would ever care enough to save a freak like him. He stopped pleading, ceased to pray, for someone to save him when he grew used to the pain. Everything he did was for his self-preservation now. He had learned to abandon his nativity. To live another day, Harry had followed the rule of survival of the fittest—his mind wouldn't have been able to take it if he didn't adapt to what his life became.
There were times when he wondered if there was someone, somewhere in the world, who would be willing to take him far, far away from the Dursleys. But he had always ended that thought with a bitter laugh. He doubted there was anyone like that still out in the world—pessimism was one of the ways he coped with things since he wouldn't delude himself with any false hope as a pessimist. Even if there was, Harry liked to think that he would've killed them if he was physically capable of it. His life was full of pain and suffering, and at times, he felt like he was better off having never been born in the first place. He would dream of the world where he was never born, a world where his parents were alive and living healthy lives, unlike the image Ma'am painted for him and the neighborhood. And then Harry would wake up to reality and brace himself for another round of pain and misery that would disappear overnight, with only pink scars to remind him that this was his reality.