Since he had left university and joined Grunning's full time, Vernon Dursley did not take part in physical activity like rugby or training anymore, and yet he did not adjust his diet to his sudden lake of movement. Slowly but steadily, his muscles turned to fat, and his fat started growing. He already had the beginnings of a pot belly and double chin. His hair was a light, mousy brown, parted down the middle and he had a bushy moustache as he attempted to replicate the look of 'successful businessman' that he idolised.
Appearance and money had, and would always be, the most important thing to Vernon – keeping up an image at work and in his neighbourhood was part of his image. When he started at Grunnings, he started with an entry position of only £17,890 a year, but within five years he had worked himself up to assistant manager who earned £22,350 a year. He hoped to make manager in another five years, and director of his department two years after that who earned £26,700. No mater what position he managed to reach, he would always have 32days of holiday, plus another 10 of paid sick days, a year.
Despite his current average pay level, Vernon worked to spoil his son and maintain appearance in and around his home. He was constantly buying his son the latest toys – even ones he would never use, and once a year he would take his family on a two-week vacation to a four- or five-star hotel. He was able to afford the holidays and toys because he didn't have a mortgage to pay. The house he lived in was gifted to his wife upon their marriage, paid for in full. He also didn't have any car related expenses beyond road tax, since the car was owned and maintained by the company and they paid for his work-related fuel expenses and he rarely used the car for anything else except the once weekly shop that his wife took it on.
As well as a focused desire to appear normal, Vernon was also the proud owner of a volatile temper. Anything that wasn't normal, anything that contradicted his authority or questioned his ability to look after his family or run his home triggered his anger. Before, in university he could work out his anger at the gym or on the field, but now he didn't have such an outlet and so he turned elsewhere to knock out his anger. At first, that was alcohol, but before long the alcohol simple fed the anger.
Petunia was a woman of average height, with a long neck and a bony facial structure which gave her a resemblance to a horse. Because of her time looking to be a ballerina, Petunia had always been very careful of her food intake, even after she moved to become an accountant instead of a dancer. With her food watching, Petunia had always been very skinny which made her bone structure more pronounced than it would otherwise be. With her pregnancy right out of college she hadn't gotten a job and chose to remain a stay-at-home mother while Vernon went to work to support them.
Without work to occupy her time, Petunia dedicated her life to upholding the image of normalcy that she valued as much as her husband. Normalcy in her world included keeping the house spotless at all times, hosting tea for the ladies of the neighbourhood, visiting other ladies houses for tea and being part of the lady's book and garden club. Then off course, was taking her son to the local parks and day care as an opportunity to spend more time socialising with the mothers of her neighbourhood. The thing she hated the most, was maintaining the house because it required hard work to hoover every day, dust, do the laundry and the washing up. Things that needed repeating, day in and day out that took time out of looking after her son or taking part in social events.
Dudley Dursley, being the centre of his parent's attention, grew to be a spoiled child with little emotional control. Because his mother didn't know how to say no to him, Dudley was an obese child from the moment he transitioned off milk. When he was at the day-care, he spent his time in the 'construction area', building up and knocking down blocks or banging foam hammers around. He didn't play with the other children, regularly scaring them off with his loud noises and banging. At home, Dudley spent his time watching TV and eventually, playing video games. He didn't spend time listening to his mother read him books or flickering through picture books on his own, because he didn't have the attention span to look a something so stationary. Because of this, he struggled to learn basic reading and spelling, even though his speech and comprehension of words was on-par with his age group.
When Haydon was left on their doorstep, things in the Dursley's household changed – but not for the better.
Before being left at the Dursleys, Haydon had already shown that he was a quick learner. He'd walk at five and half months, talked at ten months and was trying to put words into a sentence by fourteen months. Using the potty was one of his favourite games, next to wiggling out of his diaper and stealing his father's glasses. His mother only put him in diapers at night since he was fourteen months old, because that was the only time he couldn't get to his potty and he didn't know when he was going to go.
Within the first month at the house, the Dursley's noticed Haydon intelligence and how fast of a study he was. As the one at home, Petunia was the first one to notice that Haydon could already communicate his basic needs and that he didn't need diapers during the day. Learning this caused jealousy and resentment to spike, because she knew for a fact that it took her son longer to reach the same stage and she was starting to see parallels between herself (average, forgettable) and her sister (intelligent, pretty).
The first rule Haydon learnt was 'don't speak'. A rule that Petunia re-enforced by withholding food, and Vernon enforced by backhanding him. After two weeks at the Dursleys, they moved him from the spare bedroom he had been kept in, to the downstairs cupboard since they were fed up with being woken from his cries. So, when he spoke out of turn or woke from nightmares, they started locking him into his new room.
The cupboard under the stair was five metres long, a metre deep, and the tallest point was five and a half metres. The lowest point, where the first step was, was eleven centres metres tall. If the cupboard had been emptied out before he was placed in it, then there would be a decent amount of room. Instead, Petunia simple pushed the mop bucket, vacuum cleaner and cleaning supplies to one side and put a blanket down for Haydon to sleep on.
Living in the cupboard under the stairs came with several problems for Haydon due to the lake of air-circulation. During the summer, the cupboard got very hot and stuffy, the dust getting in his lungs and making his breathing difficult while he sweated out what water he was allowed. Winters were a different kettle of fish because the floor was made of stone and so held cold very well. The cold came in from the vent in the door, and since the Dursley's didn't sleep with the heating on (the heating was set to a timer, turning on an hour before Vernon got up in the mornings), the downstairs hallway always got very cold in the winter, and therefore his cupboard also remained very cold during the winter.
By the time he had been living with the Dursley's for six months, Haydon had learnt not to talk unless spoken to, and he had also managed to control his bladder enough that he didn't need to go at night time and so no longer needed the diaper at all. Since Dudley was three years older than him, he didn't need to use the potty and so the Dursleys didn't have one in their home. Because of this, Haydon also learnt how to use the toilet when he needed to go.
During his eighth month at the Dursleys, Petunia started teaching him how to do the chores around the house, because she did not see why she had to continue wasting her time and effort when she had a free loader who could do it for her.
At first, she started by having him shadow her as she pulled weeds in the garden so she could ensure that the plants he was pulling weren't her flowers. Then they moved onto washing the floors, whipping the sides and folding and sorting the laundry. Once she was sure he could do all that without messing up, she started adding more chores to his list and leaving him alone for the ones she had taught him to start with. By the time he was three, he was left alone to do all house-hold laundry, gardening (except for the lawnmower), washing up, mopping, dusting and hoovering.
The last in-house chores that Petunia introduced Haydon to was cooking, which didn't start until after his third birthday because she felt that he wasn't strong enough to do so reliably without burning the food before then. While showing him how to cook, Petunia would point at labels and say its name which helped Haydon start learning the written word. Petunia also started taking him shopping once a week, which helped him learn some maths because she taught him how to find prices and add them up. Although she couldn't assign him the weekly shop, she could send him to the local grocery shop for any top up shopping that needed to be done.
During the first two years that Haydon spent under the Dursley's care, he mostly faced emotional abuse and neglect; rarely being hit with anything but a light backhand if he'd stepped out of line in front of Vernon. By the time his third birthday had past, and Petunia started passing chore responsibility onto him alone, Vernon had decided that he was old enough to understand his actions and therefore old enough to be punished for them.
The Dursley's always addressed him as 'Freak' or 'Boy', or ewhen Vernon was really frustrated 'Creature'. They never called him by name unless they were in public, which was very rare, and even than they would call him 'Potter' since they weren't in the habit of loudly announcing their business to strangers unless they were bragging about something or other.
Petunia enjoyed ranting about Haydon's 'good for nothing, drunkard' parents who went and got themselves killed in a car crash. It was only his amazing memory that allowed Haydon to recall the truth about his parents – the love that his parents had for him, and the truth about the world of magic.
Since the death of his parents, Haydon had developed hyperthymesia since he refused to let go of the memories of his parents or their time together. He was always going to have good memory, his ability to learn things indicating such, but following the trauma of losing his parents that good memory became unforgettable.
With his excellent recall and rapidly developing consciousness, Haydon started teaching himself things beyond what he needed to know to ensure that the chores he was assigned were completed quickly. He snuck into Dudley's second bedroom and stole all the 'young' and 'beginner' reading books and guides that were stored in there. As well as the books to help him learn, Haydon stole as many writing books and letter picture books (to teach him how to form his letters), and writing equipment that he could find. With Dudley's aversion to learning and Petunia and Vernon's tendency to overindulge their son, there was plenty for Haydon to work with.
The books had been brought for Dudley in order to help him prepare for school, and to help him stay ahead of his classmates, but Dudley didn't have the motivation or desire to study so they had gone unused and remained in the second bedroom. Which was always where the various children's dictionaries and thesauruses ended up, following Petunia's brief deserve to have her son be multi-lingual. Books which Haydon stole, so that he had something to read as he began learning more about his letters – developing his vocabulary was something that he found to be very useful in helping him express himself through words – even if he couldn't speak those words to people.
Haydon wanted to be like his mother, who always used words that she had to explain to his dad and Sirius. Using the children's dictionaries for different languages, Haydon picked up several European languages. His mother had been the one who used big words, but Sirius had often slipped into different languages just so that he could see the confusion on the faces of those around him. With something in common with his mother and his uncle, he just needed to find something in common with what he remembered of his father.
Using the fact that he lived under the stairs to his advantage, Haydon removed the backs to eight of the steps. He made it so that he could slide the edge over slightly using the slight gap between the understairs and the enclosed unit. In order to conceal what he had done, he simple had to line the plank up and slot it back into place. He dusted the underneath of all the stairs, even those he didn't yet remove the back off, in the hopes of removing as much of the loose sawdust and other particles that accumulated under the stairs so that he could reduce the damage that would be done to his lungs and make it easier to breath.
To give himself more space in the cupboard, he relocated the vacuum cleaner to the air-cupboard on the second floor, while the mop bucket, foldable mop, bleach and other cleaning supplies were relocated to the cupboard under the sink. Petunia wouldn't have been impressed with his re-arranging of her cleaning supplies and cupboards, if she'd known what he had done. Fortunately, by the time he thought to repurpose the stairs and be creative with his storage, she'd already stopped doing any cleaning around the house.
Inside the back of the stairs, Haydon placed all the writing equipment, along with all the writing and reading books that he had stolen into the back of the stairs. After scourging through the house after the Dursley's went to bed, Haydon also added bottles of water (which was the only type of water Petunia drank), old pillows, random healing supplies that he managed to sneak, long lasting food like tins of fruit and snack bars (which Petunia assumed her husband and son ate), and he even managed to get his hands on an old spare blanket which he stored under the stairs until winter. The last things to go under the stairs, was what he found in the bag his mother had left with him.
Within the bag, his mother had mostly packed books, money, a healing kit and sentimental items. He didn't take everything out of the bag, just things that he felt his current skill level matched up to. The bag itself was stored into one of the stairs, and he would swop out the books as needed, although the healing kit was placed inside the step that had the other random healing supplies that he took nothing else out of the bag.
Of the books that his mother packed, they covered an extremely wide rang of topics. Looking at the titles of the books, Haydon assumed that his mother had packed books on things that they would have taught him before he went to Hogwarts, although there were books that look to be of a greater level then he thought they would have taught him before his eleventh birthday. Of the none school related topics, there was books on Wizarding Etiquette (after beginning this book, Haydon knew that he was going to have to look up non-magical etiquette to, so he didn't accidently make a grave error), Occlumency (a topic he was grateful his mother had included, despite there being a note from his father about not attempting any of the exercises before he was nine), Society, law and Government (with the focus on the wizarding world, Haydon knew that this was another topic he was going to have to find books on the non-magical equivalent), History (his mother added Britannica Encyclopaedia books to the bag, he had a magical prospective and a non-magical perspective), Finance and Money Management, Business and Economy, The Potter Family and even a hand-written book on Hogwarts that included an enchanted map.
The school related books were focused on magical education as opposed to non-magical education which he would have to pursue on his own, with a focus on his English and maths so that he could actually understand what it was that was written in the books left to him by his parents. The subject books seemed to be weighed heavily towards ones that his parent's thought were most important or that were their favourites: Healing, Potions, Charms, Runes and Transfiguration. The Hogwarts book had more subjects than those five listed, so he assumption was that his parents wanted him to excel in this five subjects above any of his other magical classes once he made it to Hogwarts. Like the Hogwarts book, the subject books had all been hand-written but this time his parents signed as authors. The Hogwarts book had been written by several hands, and he recognised his parents writing by comparing the books side by side.
The Potter Family book seemed to have been written by many hands going back generations. The first page, which never changed even as new pages appeared to be written in, explained how every Lord or Lady Potter kept the book up to date since the formation of the family. Only someone with Potter blood could read or write in the book since the book doubled as the Potter Grimoire and held many charms and protections. One of the most impression charms, Haydon soon discovered, was one that meant he didn't have to learn the various language changes in the book, although he did still have to know his English very well.
Of the books that his parents left him, Haydon started with the diaries that had been left with him. His mother's diary started when she was six, while his fathers' diary started when he was eight, so the developing language in the diaries corresponded with his learning. Much to Haydon's amusement, his father's first entry was mostly an adamant refusal to admit that he was writing a diary despite the fact that he had addressed the first entry with 'dear diary' before crossing it out. The rest of the entry explained how every Potter was given a blank enchanted diary on their eighth birthday which they were expected to fill in. His dad only used the diary once a week until he was thirteen and started using it daily. His mum had more than one diary until she was eleven and brought an enchanted diary – she wrote every day, even if it was just a sentence or two.
After reading about the family tradition, Haydon got his hands on a blank book and started his own diary.
While working around the house, Haydon would pick up and hide loose change until he could return to the cupboard under the stairs. His mother had packed one bag of wizarding money, and one of non-magical money, but he didn't want to use that money because they were in large denominations and not loose change that a child could get away with using. If he walked into a shop with a fifty-pound note in order to buy some oat and snack bars, he would be held and the police called along with his guardians so that they could either detain him for theft or confirm that the money is his.
Whenever he was left unsupervised in the kitchen, or he was able to get out of his cupboard late at night, Haydon would steal or refill a water bottle since he never knew when he was going to get locked into the cupboard and having water meant he would have something to drink as well as something to clean out any injuries he gained. The plastic water bottles typically held out for thirty refills before he was forced to bin and replace the bottle, so he tried not to use the same bottle day after day so that he could spread out the number of bottles he had to take since he didn't want to capture Petunia's attention. Fortunately, he was in charge of recycling and so was able to sneak bottles out of the bin to wash and refill at night. water so more important to him then food, so he always made sure to have a large stock of it – using the 800ml bottles that Petunia brought, he could easily fit forty-four into one of the steps.
Despite viewing water as more important, Haydon also made sure that he never ran completely out of food, stock piling the long-lasting food that he knew Vernon and Dudley wouldn't eat and Petunia would brush off as someone else eating. He would eat something from what he stored once a day, typically one of the bars since he could spread the cans across two days, as what he was 'allowed' by the Dursleys was not enough to sustain him. As well as eating once a day, he also tried his best to try and keep up to three weeks of stored food since Vernon had a habit of locking him in for days at a time and he saw the righting on the wall. When they went on holiday for two or more weeks, Haydon knew that he was going to get locked up, and starving to death wasn't acceptable to him.
New Word Count: 3,733
Old word count: 4,899