A/N: Warning for this chapter is that there are some disturbing images of child abuse. This section is also rather short. Sorry J
Also: thanks for the nice reviews. There are a few specific questions I suppose I can clear up, since you all were very kind and didn't slam my story (by the way, feel free to flame now I guess…never mind, wait until Friday. Don't want to jinx my dad). To MarsIsBrightTonight, the muscle relaxant that Harry takes at dinner is the same wormwood-based potion that he has to take in order to live. Perhaps that one sentence about its lack of name was confusing? I was basically saying that it's a terrible medicine because it has such harmful side effects, and it can't be a terrible poison because the side effects aren't harmful enough…so no one cares about it except Harry. To Catspook, you're right, 5'9" isn't short at all. Sometimes my perspective gets all messed up, having all tall men in my family. I'm used to thinking that anyone shorter than me is short, simply because my dad and co. are 6'4"ish.
On with the show…
Harry really does remember what happened to him to make him like this. He knows when it was he started hurting himself, and it was long before the cutting started. Long before he knew he was a wizard, and long before he realized that he was meant to be the model of a savior, Harry had taken to pain like Dudley took to sweets, like Petunia took to gossip, like Vernon took to abusive emotional violence. True, Vernon never hit Harry, apart from the occasional smack when he was young, the harsh grip on his hair or ears when he was old enough to fight back. But Vernon Dursley was by no means a paragon of the loving uncle to Harry. Dark cupboards are places that hold filth, garbage, pests, and every embarrassing relic of family life that you can't just throw away, no matter how much you'd like to. That Harry was locked in a cupboard for years was proof enough for him, at the age of six, that he must have done something horrible to his uncle in order to drive him to treat a human being, a child, like rubbish.
As he grew older, Harry thankfully learned to value himself more for who he was, rather than what Vernon treated him like, but at six, Harry had created a space within him where he would go for the sole purpose of trying to comprehend what his great sin was. This pocket, which Harry liked to think of as being two inches to the left of his heart, was to become the home of every ounce of guilt that he would ever feel. Six-year-old Harry Potter, without evidence of any crime, wrote himself a past sin, which he edited day to day. Sometimes, it was a minor trespass, like breaking a favorite toy of his uncle's or cousin's. Sometimes, it was infinitely worse. For five months, six-year-old Harry Potter was convinced that he had killed someone when he was a baby. He couldn't say whom, but he was sure that he had killed someone very important in the world. Someone that Vernon would have looked up to, maybe even loved.
Then school came, new ideas came to young Harry, new notions of guilt and of ways to atone. With every year, and every punishment at the hands and words of his uncle, Harry's haven for guilt grew larger, before finally engulfing his heart when he was nine. That was the year of the school trip to the Observatory and its neighboring park. Harry was enthralled by the light show of stars in the auditorium, and he saw future friends and family in the slides of constellations. And then there was fresh air and light as the children were set loose in the park, running and laughing with abandon, rushing the sweets stand, and Harry, watching those fountains of soda, filled himself on free water and pretended that it was something more. Very soon, he was running to the restroom in a race against time and embarrassment. Walking through the door, the first thing he saw was the incredibly happy euphoric content face of an older man, one that had the stature of Vernon Dursley. The next thing Harry saw was the teenager on his knees before the older man, not looking happy at all. Harry stared, learning the act by his swallowed -up heart, until the older man opened his eyes and saw him. Harry ran then, hid around the corner of the pavilion until he saw the man leave, and then he went back in to relieve his bladder of that uncomfortable pressure. The teenager was still there, pushing some crumpled pound notes into his pocket and looking at Harry without a hint of shame, guilt, anger or embarrassment in his eyes. It was only a very measuring gaze.
"Is it hard, to do that?" Harry asked.
"Not very," the young man shrugged, going to the sink and scooping some water into his mouth, slushing it about and spitting into the drain. Harry watched him repeat this several times and was about to go into the stall when the young man laughed, said, "Just watch the teeth," and left.
When Harry went back to Privet Drive that Thursday, he was still thinking about the look on that older man's face. He'd never seen Vernon that happy, not even when he did well on the golf course. Not even when Dudley brought home good reports from school. Not even when Petunia's garden won in competition. Harry had been thinking about ways to please his uncle, to make it up to him, whatever it was that he had done. Until that morning, Harry was torn between taking on even more chores and never coming out of his cupboard again, but that man looked so happy. And the other had said it wasn't hard. Maybe…
But Vernon wasn't at all pleased that night, when Harry had come to him in the family room, after Petunia had gone up to bed. He wasn't pleased when Harry got down on his knees, pulled at the man's pants. He was shocked enough to do nothing, but he definitely was not pleased when Harry wrapped his young mouth around him, trying to watch the teeth. Perhaps he hadn't watched his teeth carefully enough, because Vernon didn't even look a little bit happy when he roughly pushed Harry away, and then followed that with the only real physical abuse that Harry would ever suffer in that house, a few punches, all silent because Petunia was asleep.
Harry didn't leave his cupboard for a month. This was his atonement, and Vernon accepted that, calling the school with a story of swollen tonsils.
And then, Harry gave up on wanting to please Vernon. He grew older and tried to comply with his family's demands, but never again for them. He did it out of habit and the hope that he would become a man one day and wouldn't have to worry about Vernon Dursley ever again. And so what if that heart of guilt within him never left? Even now, when Harry is twenty-two years old and has come to realize that he owes nothing to his uncle, he knows that he will never not feel guilty, if only for the act of a nine-year-old boy that was too eager to make things right.