Please let me know what you think.
My thanks to CenturionAfricanus for letting me borrow an important part in his 'Harry Potter: Trickster Extraordinaire' story.
The Spider-Man Burglar.
A fortnight later and Harry was in trouble. As he stared at the teacher and the headteacher who was speaking to the Dursleys, Harry felt physically ill. He knew what was going to happen to him.
Vernon was sending him those typical purple-faced angry looks while Petunia was looking at him with her features pinched while her pale eyes were glaring at him. Both Dursley adults were definitely promising to make sure he regretted what he had done. Truthfully the only thing he regretted was he had gotten caught.
And it was all because of that authority loving tell-tale bitch. The Dursleys had luckily eased off of their starvation punishment of him, but as was typical he still wasn't getting enough to eat. Well, enough for a growing boy that was whereas Dudley ate more than enough for the pair of them. Harry had often wondered to himself if the Dursleys were deliberately trying to kill him in that manner, as opposed to what Vernon might want to do, which was to beat him to death; indeed, as the fat pig had proven when he had started breaking bone, Harry had wondered just how much he could actually take before his body gave out.
But he was still hungry. As a result, he had to scavenge for food in the lunch hall at school, and he would either hide the food from the rest of the school or smuggle it all into the Cupboard under the Stairs to eat there.
The stolen food did wonders for Harry's health and as long as he didn't leave any visible signs of what he was eating, such as wrappers or fruit peels or cores, he would get away with it; the Dursleys never expended the time to clean the Cupboard out so he had the advantage there, and they didn't particularly care much about him or his hygiene to make him clean the confined space out, but they would definitely notice if there were remnants of stolen food if they opened the door which they did whenever they dragged him out for one of those punishments, so he had needed to be careful in case they did suddenly burst in and decide to beat him; the last thing he wanted, in that case, was to give them any further ammunition to beat him even worse, which was precisely what they would do if they noticed crumbs of chocolate or biscuit or peels from fruit.
But how had he reached this position he was in now?
For the last two weeks, Harry had been developing his craft, stealing food from the rest of the kids while trying to stop anybody from taking notice of what he was doing. Or so he had thought though he hadn't known that at the time. While the end results were meagre, for a boy who was trying to eat while his so-called aunt and uncle relentlessly starved him, they were worthwhile.
How was he to know until it was too late someone was watching him quietly from behind the scenes and had waited until the right moment before they had acted?
Harry was still reeling from that, and yet as he thought about it, he felt it made a sort of sense.
The bushy brown haired girl had said that she had been watching him for a while. She had even taken pictures for crying out loud with a camera that developed the film but didn't flash, but she hadn't told anybody because she had wanted to one hundred per cent sure.
Harry imagined that what she had said made sense, but it just surprised him so much that the bushy-haired girl would wait for such a long time before she revealed what he had been doing. He couldn't help but wonder if she had noticed what he had been up to since day one and it had gone from there whenever she had noticed him wandering around the lunch hall on a daily basis but she hadn't said, so he didn't know the details.
It was just….wrong if he thought it through because he had started to decide to take extra precautions.
The rest of the school were already becoming aware someone was taking their food. Harry had already overheard one or two of the kids commenting that they had thought they had this or they were missing that from their lunch boxes. Truthfully Harry was inwardly kicking himself for making the mistake of doing it constantly instead of once every few days so then no-one would pay any attention.
The school was becoming too hot for him.
He needed to find a way to stop, or at least to ease things back a bit, maybe steal one or two things once or twice a week, stagger them so then no-one would care.
But he had been desperate for food.
He had fallen into a trap, a trap that was truly so easy to fall into and one that he had not realised existed.
He had made the mistake of stealing too often, and the little thefts were starting to become noticed. The good news was he had begun to notice it happening, but it was too late.
He had been caught out. All thanks to a bossy little busy-body who seemed so arrogant she seemed to think she was going to receive a medal for what she had done. A nice little bit of community service.
The little bitch.
Harry wondered if her parents would give her a pat on the head for it. He knew what was going to happen would not be fun. Now he knew what he had done wrong, it was going to be a learning experience, and if there was one thing Harry felt he was really good at doing, it was learning from his mistakes.
At least after this meeting, he would have the motivation. That is unless the Dursleys went too far this time. There was no doubt in his mind the Dursleys were going to beat him up, yelling they'd always known he would turn out this way and not see those statements for the stupidly worded pieces of rubbish they were.
It was ironic, really; the Dursleys always said they expected him to be like his parents, two people whom he had never known and truthfully didn't want to since their stupidity had landed him in this dump that was Little Whinging, two criminals or layabouts whatever you wanted to refer to them as, but instead of treating him right and making sure he had lots to eat, they pushed him down that path. Personally, Harry didn't really care. He also had to admit it was his own fault for becoming so taken by the power a few simple thefts had given him even if he knew it would have led him to this one way or another.
But he wasn't sorry for it.
Why should he be sorry?
Harry didn't particularly feel any guilt for what he had done. Anyone who was in his position wouldn't either. Harry had often seen those people begging on the streets - scroungers Vernon referred to them as, loudly and openly in public while he looked down with open contempt at the people who were begging, people who just wanted food or something hot to drink to get them through a cold night.
Harry knew how they felt. Granted, while he felt there were better ways to make a living and survive on the streets rather than hope every day for someone compassionate to hand them a few quid, he knew how they felt.
Ever since the night, he had been dumped on the doorstep in the middle of a cold night - oh yes, he knew he had just been dumped on the Dursley's doorstep since his relatives never stopped reminding him - Harry had felt that he had been begging all the time.
He was trying to survive and if he had to steal to do it, then so what? But in the headteacher's office, looking at the arguing adults and listening to them yelling all the time which made him want nothing more than to scream for silence since yelling never really solved a problem in the long run, did it, Harry knew he was going to suffer. And there was nothing he could do about it.
There was no escape for him.
While the adults shouted, Harry thought back to the fateful moment he had been caught out…
He had just lifted out a small milky way out of another lunch box - that and the Mars bar he had taken earlier should definitely see him through both in terms of chocolate and in sugar intake - and he had gone on his way to dumping them in the lunchbox he had.
Mentally Harry sorted through what he had just pinched. He had two chocolate bars, a few grapes, an orange. That should be enough for now, though truthfully he was already starting to become worried. He had been hearing more than once for the last few days some of the other students complaining about either their food going missing or they were positive their lunch box contained a few more bits.
Either way, it was looking bad since the teachers and the parents, if they had been informed though he hadn't heard anything just yet, would likely reach the same logical conclusion and say there was a thief in the school.
Harry knew he should have stopped there but he couldn't help but go on as he went over to a bin and happily dropped the muck his aunt had provided for him for lunch. He cast another look around, thankful for the position by the bin gave him the perfect vantage point where he could see around the hall. From where he was standing, he could see so many choices. What made it laughable, he realised, was no-one seemed to be truly vigilant about their food.
A paranoid part of his mind wondered if they were deliberately acting that way so then they could trap him. As he cast his eyes about the hall, Harry spotted a victim. A girl sitting at the edge of a table, chatting with her friends. What made her so attractive to him was she not only had her back to where Harry was standing but on the table near her were a few pieces of fruit. From what he could see of her Harry judged her to be a popular girl, judging by how much she was laughing with the others.
Harry walked slowly over to her making sure that he appeared casual though his eyes sought out the nearest teacher. Dudley was once more causing a raucous on the other side of the hall, and the teacher had gone over to once more try to shut them up.
Harry felt like laughing at the irony of it though he didn't. For a boy who loved getting him into trouble, who enjoyed seeing him bleeding and whimpering in a heap on the ground, Dudley was just so useful.
Walking over to the girls while making sure they didn't pay him any attention, reading the manner of the other students as he did, he made a beeline for the girl's fruit. As he walked over to the table he snagged a small apple and a plum and once he had the two pieces of fruit in his hand he slowly pushed them into the pocket of his trousers before he walked back to his table.
He had decided to just eat the food silently without anyone taking any notice of him, but when he got there and sat down he reached into his pocket and brought out the plum and the apple.
He had just rubbed both pieces of fruit on his sleeves when he heard footsteps closing in behind him. He looked up, expecting Dudley though his obese pig of a cousin never went anywhere without his lackeys. The sight of who was approaching him made his eyes widen with horror when he saw it was the teacher who was meant to be monitoring the whole lunch hall. Her expression was thunderous and neutral all rolled into one. There was only one reason she was coming over to him, she knew.
Harry's eyes travelled to the girl who was following behind her, walking with a stride which was both a strut and a bouncing skip while she wore a superior expression on her features. She had a head full of tangled bushy brown hair with brown eyes. Harry hated her instantly. He knew she was responsible for this mess.
"What is this?" the teacher demanded, her voice loud enough to be heard and Harry winced when he saw the reactions from the rest of the hall and the photos held in the teachers hand, though truthfully he didn't care what the others in the hall were thinking; he was more interested in the photos clutched tightly in the teachers' hand.
His eyes widened in shock when he saw the photos which she displayed like a poker player showing his hand. He only needed to see only one photo of him clearly sneaking an apple off a table to know what he was looking at while the others were just as damning.
"I asked you what is this?" the teacher repeated, louder this time.
Harry sent the teacher a malevolent look, and he glared at the girl furiously while he memorised every inch of her face while taking note of her buckteeth which was likely to make her the target of bullies and her haughty superior attitude. "It's food," Harry replied.
"Food you have stolen," the teacher pointed out, "am I right?"
Harry sneered at the teacher. He didn't bother dignifying the question with an answer. He knew it was rhetorical.
The girl, who up to now had been silent and standing with a smug expression on her face, spoke up. "The teacher asked you a question. That means you should reply to it," she said self importantly.
Harry glared at the girl again. She was starting to get on his nerves. Her voice alone was grating enough, but her manner made him wish there was a pair of scissors, real scissors not those blunt things used in art lessons so then he could cut her throat.
And I thought Dudley was obnoxious.
The sudden thought about how this girl could give Dudley a run for his money when it came to being obnoxious made Harry wince, and he knew without looking that Dudley was probably watching and loving every single second of this mess once he had figured out what was going on.
If so then Dudley was probably rubbing his metaphorical hands with glee at the thought of telling daddy and mummy dearest about what had happened today since he knew what would likely happen.
And even if he wasn't watching then the teachers would be the ones informing the Dursleys, so either way thanks to this bushy-haired bitch he was going to get a beating he was not going to forget any time soon.
The teacher seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Harry when it came to the girl. "I already know he has stolen food, thank you, Miss Granger," the teacher told the now embarrassed girl who was now looking at her with a betrayed look on her face at how the teacher had just spoken to her.
Harry knew what this girl was the moment he had laid eyes on her - a girl who was notoriously unpopular and loved burying herself in authority because she had absolutely nothing else in her life. In the case of the school, the authority figures were the teachers - the moment she had seen him steal pieces of food off of the other students, she had jumped at the chance to get evidence. The fact she had that camera showed her family was decently well-off, but the fact she had taken photographs of him stealing told Harry two things.
Firstly, she had seen he was committing thefts but feared no-one would believe her without proof. Secondly, she had taken those photographs so then she could prove to the teachers who had been taking the food all along, though really Harry didn't understand the point since she could have done this shortly after he had started taking food off of the tables.
She hadn't needed to wait this long, surely.
But the teacher didn't seem to be caring about that at the moment. In fact, she was more focused on the girl's obnoxious attitude and what Harry should and should not be doing at this point.
Granger….Harry would certainly remember the name while he sat at the back of the Dursley's car. If I never see that arrogant bitch ever again, it will be too soon.
He was extremely tense as the car drove closer and closer to Number 4. All the time he had to avoid looking at the leering Dudley who was sitting next to him, and the angry glowers he was getting from Vernon, as well as the angrily hissed whispers he could hear from Aunt Petunia who was going on and on about the neighbours and what they would think when they heard the news about what had happened.
He had just been expelled from the school, something he had not expected from the teachers, but since the headteacher was one of those people who believed in every single nasty thing the Dursleys had said about him over the years though how she had reached that wonderful conclusion, he didn't know and frankly did not care.
He also didn't care about the neighbours, he never had. He had always hated the neighbours on Privet Drive, with their attitudes and the way they looked at him whenever they saw him. He hated how blind they were to what he was going through, judging him on how he looked and all the garbage about his parents.
But he knew he would be receiving an eardrum on the point of being burst for a while because of the gossip. There was no way this could be hidden and as the car drew closer to Privet Drive, Harry looked at the rapidly approaching house with fear. There were too many parents who would probably find out from their children what he had done, and soon it would be all over Little Whinging.
But as the house came nearer and nearer, he wondered if he would ever come out of it again alive. He knew precisely what was going to happen the minute he was inside the door and out of sight of the rest of the street.