Days Getting Darker

Harry was depressed, though he didn't know what it meant. Normally he did his work and treated it as a part of life. Now he hated it. After a few weeks, his aunt told him his freakishness was sucking all the color out of her roses and he couldn't work in the garden anymore. He liked the garden, but he hated those roses. How it was happening, he didn't know, but the roses were losing the reds and pinks that Petunia was so proud of and turning white.

One day when Harry Hunting, Dudley threw a rock at his head and it bounced off (like rubber) and smashed a window of Vernon's car. Harry was locked in his room for two days after that incident. Harry continued to see the little face in the mistletoe from time to time but whenever he tried talking to it, it vanished. He gave up trying and just rolled over when he would see it from that point on.

In February, it was Tracey's birthday party in school. Other kids had parties from time to time, though Harry didn't know when his birthday was. He saw other children get presents so he took some of his money from Harry Hunting and bought a small rubber stamp with a unicorn on it. He gave it to Tracey who was very happy to receive it. When they were leaving school, Tracey stamped Harry's hand with it. Just as that happened, Dudley rode by on his bike and snatched the stamp from Tracey. As he rode off, the gears on his bike jammed. This catapulted Dudley off the bike into the pavement and a tree branch fell on him. Mrs. Davis needed to call for an ambulance. Dudley had to get his head bandaged and his arm was in a sling for three weeks. His bike was wrecked, but he got a new one the next day, even if he couldn't ride it yet. Harry spent every weekend for two months in his room except to make breakfast and clean.

When school ended that year, there was a small party for the class and Harry got to have some pizza for the first time. He knew he wasn't coming back to this school, so it made him a bit sad. As he left the school for the last time that year, he could swear the paint on the side of the building turned grey as he walked away.

That summer added a new chore to his routine. His aunt started taking him to the supermarket. There he learned how to pick out food. Which fruits were ripe, how to tell a sweet watermelon, to avoid mold on loaves of bread, only the best for Vernon and her Dudders. Then at home, he learned to make dinner. Petunia showed him which spices to use. He learned quickly not to add too much salt or pepper because he would get a slap on the hand if he did.

Towards the end of summer, he made his first steak and potatoes dinner by himself. Vernon simply grunted and said he liked Petunia's more. Dudley just ate as much as he could so Harry would be left with next to nothing for himself. That trend continued with Vernon praising Petunia when the food was good and insulting Harry when it was bad. The most positive thing he would say was, "The freak can occasionally do something right."

When school started again, Harry's aunt took both of them to Dudley's school. It was located right next to his old one, separated by some houses and a large field. Harry had heard the sound of loud children playing there from his preschool, but it was too far to see anything. Harry had never ventured over there as he felt no need for additional contact with Dudley and his friends.

His Aunt Petunia walked both of them in and saw Piers and Nigel leaning against the bike racks. They greeted Dudley, commenting on his weight gain (from eating all of Harry's food), "Hey Big Dud" said Nigel, to which Dudley punched him in the shoulder. The three of them turned to Harry, "Hey Harry, it's going to be fun going to school all year long," said Piers, while flipping a 20p coin in the air. That was when Harry realized that he would be with Dudley, Nigel, and Piers every day and he began to tremble a bit.

Aunt Petunia took Harry by the arm to pull him to the main office. When they got there, she just announced, "I'm leaving my nephew here for his first-year class," and walked out. The secretary didn't get to her in time as she left and just looked down at Harry and asked his name.

"Harry, ma'am," he replied

"What's your last name, young man?" The secretary asked

Harry thought for a minute before saying, "… Potter."

The secretary went back behind the desk and looked through some paper before saying, "You will be in room 108 this year. Would you like help to get there?" Harry nodded.

Upon arrival at the room, he saw that it was a bit smaller than his room the previous year. There were desks in rows in front of the board. There were still all the letters and numbers around the board, with some additional charts he didn't understand. There was a corner of the room set up with bookcases and bean bag chairs. There was no clay table and no open area where the other students would take naps. One of the kids from his class last year waved to him and he went over to sit with him. It turned out that there were four other students that he knew by the time everyone was in the room and talking among themselves.

While Harry was expecting a teacher like Mrs. Davis, they received the opposite. Their teacher was an elder white-haired man who walked with a cane and looked like he was about to snap in half. His welcome speech was as charming as he was. "Welcome to Tanners Wood Elementary. You may call me Sir or Mr. Clifford. You are now in the first year of the foundation for your life." He sneered at the children in front of him. "I have been a teacher here for over thirty years turning out the adults that will be the next great children of England. There are rules you will need to follow."

At hearing the word 'rules,' Harry flinched. A roll of paper fell next to the board with a list of rules. "We will go through them later. When I started at this school, if you broke a rule, you got the cane." He held up the stick he was walking with. "Unfortunately, for the last fifteen years, I've had to use other methods to help you understand the rules." He punched the bottom of the cane into the floor with a loud smack. The class jumped. "Just stick to the rules and you'll do fine."

The rest of the morning went smoothly. As smoothly as it could with Mr. Clifford's remarks getting punctuated with the butt of his cane every so often. When the break came, the children started to file out of the classroom to the yard. As Harry's turn to exit came, the teacher's cane slapped down in front of him, blocking the exit. Harry jumped and the old man leered down at Harry. "I've been warned about you, boy. Your aunt says you're a troublemaker, and your cousin says you behave like a freak, not that he was much better." Harry swallowed hard and nodded before being let out into the yard.

Harry spent some time looking around to avoid his cousin and his friends, but it turned out not to be necessary because Dudley did his own thing for the most part. Harry just explored the whole area. Outside of the structures, there was a large field with a running track, some picnic tables, and a gravel football field. At the end of the track, there was a cricket field to the side and a small garden with a dark-skinned man tending to the plants, separated by an orange fence. He waved to the man right before the bell rang and he ran across the yard back to his classroom.

When the end of the day came he didn't see Dudley and his friends anywhere so he just started to walk home. He barely got around the corner before a rock struck him in the leg. Harry Hunting had begun again.

His new routine had begun.

Different things happened on different days now.

Mondays and Wednesdays they would do writing and math. Sir Clifford would teach math with the tapping of his cane. It was surprisingly effective. Even when he practiced at home, Harry could hear the tapping of the cane when adding and subtracting different numbers. Tuesdays and Thursdays he had gym class. They would run, play football, and do small exercises. Occasionally they would play cricket, but it was difficult for the first-year class to understand more than hitting and running.

On Fridays, they would alternate between history and science in the mornings and read in the afternoon with some kind of fun activity at the end of the day. Harry enjoyed science most of all. They would do basic experiments with water; freezing, boiling, absorbing, etc. They were taught that boiling other liquids would often leave whatever was dissolved in them and that leaving salt water in the sun would leave behind salt in its container. They also spent a week leaving grapes in the sun so they would turn into raisins.

Dudley had begun to get bored with Harry Hunting. They would only go after Harry once or twice a week now, but when they did it was even more difficult, and Piers started using a slingshot to tag Harry. After getting hit the first time with the slingshot, Harry cried and said he would tell his mother. Piers gave him a £1 coin and told him he would get another every time he won the game instead of 20p. Harry didn't like it but agreed out of fear.

When he got home each day, Harry would find a menu on the fridge to make dinner. Occasionally he would add a different spice or change the recipe in some way. Sometimes it was met with praise to his aunt and other times disdain for himself and a night without dinner. Harry only made little changes, remembering lessons learned from his science class. A week before, they had made a volcano and one child dumped an entire bottle of vinegar making a much larger explosion than they planned. Everyone standing close to the volcano went home early that day to clean up. So he only made little changes in the recipes as well. His uncle exploding would be worse than the volcano.

At the end of the day, he would take any money he had made from Harry Hunting and put it into the gift bag with his name on it he got at the party last year. He imagined that by now there was quite a bit in there, but he didn't have anything to spend it on. The mistletoe had long since dried up and he didn't see the little face in it anymore, but he had taken the remaining plant and placed it inside a torn cleaning cloth he had in his room and then at the bottom of his gift bag. Everything that was his was special. He put the bag itself under a board that was under his cot.

In November, he went out to play with his friends during the break, but for the first time, no one picked him for a football team. He was one of the fastest kids in class and usually got picked first, but this time, no one called him and he sat on the bench. In class, his friends from the previous year that normally sat with him had moved to the other side of the room. This trend continued for a few weeks before he confronted one of his friends Tyler about it.

Tyler told him that Dudley and Nigel had punched him and told him he could no longer be friends with Harry and to leave him alone. Harry assumed they had done that with all his friends. He noticed one of the girls he had been in preschool with had a bruise on her arm like when Piers hit him with the slingshot. Harry's initial reaction was to be angry, but that melted away as he was thrown back into the realization that this was his life. Getting angry or sad wasn't going to make a difference.

At the end of November, on a Thursday, Harry was being chased through town after school one day by Dudley and his gang. They were off the regular main streets and Harry ran around the side of a building, already with a couple of bruises on his arms and chest from Piers and his slingshot. No one had touched him yet, so he still had a chance of winning. The house he was hiding behind didn't have any neighbors and was two stories tall. As he hid there, he heard Nigel yelling from one side, "I think he's behind the house!" and then from the other side he heard Dudley, "We've got this side. We'll catch him in the middle!" Knowing he was cornered, Harry just closed his eyes and wanted to be anywhere else. Suddenly he felt like he was pressed on both sides like one time when his Uncle Vernon had tripped and pinned him against a wall, knocking the air out of his lungs. When Harry opened his eyes, he was on a roof, and he started to slide down a little before catching himself.

From below, he heard Nigel say, "Where did the little freak go?"

Piers was heard saying, "There's no way he could have gotten away, we had him cornered!"

Harry peered over the edge of the roof and saw the three boys down there looking around for him. Harry was still incredibly confused at how he had gotten onto the roof and in his confusion he knocked a roof tile off, narrowly missing Piers and breaking on the ground. Piers looked up to see Harry's head disappear over the top. "He's up there!" yelled Piers. Piers picked up one of the broken tile fragments and threw it at Harry, missing him and shattering it on the overhang. A window on the second story opened up and a man leaned out. "What the hell are you kids doing?" he demanded.

Dudley called back, "My freak cousin got up on your roof!"

They yelled back and forth about Harry being up there and Harry ended up accidentally knocking down another tile which gave proof to Dudley's claims.

Harry couldn't get down. In the end, they needed to call the fire brigade to retrieve him.

When they got home, his uncle was furious. "Not only do you embarrass us with needing to have the brigade get you down from a roof but now I have no dinner on the table when I get home. How did you get up there anyways? FREAK! You're lucky your cousin was there to help you get down. You're spending the weekend in your cupboard. Your aunt and I are going to go out and order takeout. You can have toast for dinner, until then, stay in your cupboard."

As his aunt and uncle left, Harry turned to Dudley. "You owe me £1. I got home without being tagged."

"We had to call the fire brigade, that doesn't count, and I spent my last pound on ice cream."

Harry was mad. This was the first time that Dudley had bilked on Harry Hunting. Until then, it had been a game with rules. Dudley had just broken them.

The next day, Harry came home from school without incident to find his aunt and uncle with Dudley waiting for him. His cousin jumped up from the couch, and yelled "There's the little thief!"

Vernon grabbed Harry by the shoulder, "Dudley says you've been stealing from him. We're going to take a look in your cupboard right now to see."

Vernon opened the door to his room and started throwing things out. First his cot, then his clothes, then a few random broken pencils and some lumps of old clay. There were a few loose boards that his uncle pulled up with nothing underneath, but then he pulled up the board that had Harry's gift bag under it. His uncle looked at the bag for a moment before looking away and back at Harry.

"Where is it?!" Vernon demanded. Harry was confused, it was right there, but he said nothing.

Vernon grabbed Harry and shook him, "Where is it?"

"I didn't steal anything from Dudley!" Harry yelled while being shaken.

"Fine, you're already spending this weekend in your cupboard, you can spend the next one there too," his uncle declared.

Harry gathered together all the things of his strewn around the living room and placed them back in his room. Dudley pushed him all the way in and closed the door.

Neither Nigel nor Piers made any attempt that next week to pay him when he got home from Harry Hunting first. Harry didn't think telling his aunt and uncle would make any difference, so he just did his best to avoid them. His old map had about twelve different routes marked in colored pencil to get home and he would alternate them each day, almost every day getting home without being caught. With most weekends being stuck in his room, he didn't need to worry about getting caught then either.

The first week of December, Vernon made an announcement at dinner.

"The festive season is coming up," he began. Harry immediately felt hopeful from the party last year, but then sad as he knew they would never be going back to the Abbots. His uncle continued, "My company, Grunnings, will be hosting a party this year. It will mostly be business contacts and their families. We are using this to have our company seem more family-friendly to our clients and bring in more business. They will be bringing their children, and hopefully, we will get a bunch of new contracts which could lead to a nicer life for all of us." Turning to Harry, "Boy, you will be spending the night at Mrs. Figg's."

Mrs. Figg was a lady who lived a few streets away from them. She lived alone and even though she was called Mrs, she didn't wear a ring, and never had any visitors. Two years ago she had somehow come into contact with Harry's aunt and then occasionally took care of Harry when Petunia and Vernon went out to dinner. They would just leave Dudley at home to watch TV.

Harry couldn't decide if it was a good thing that he wouldn't have to go out with his relatives or a bad thing that he wouldn't get to go to a holiday party and he'd be staying with Mrs. Figg. Her house smelled like cat pee because there was cat pee everywhere. Harry gagged a little just thinking about it. Though, by this point, he knew that being upset about it wouldn't change anything.

Just an extra nail in Harry's misery, his aunt added, "You'll also be staying with her this Saturday when we take Dudley to London for a new suit."

Saturday seemed to stretch forever. Mrs. Figg would watch soap operas in various foreign languages on video cassettes all day. Today was particularly awful. From what Harry could piece together, It was a Turkish soap, dubbed in Russian with one monotone man doing all the voices for the actors and one monotone woman doing all the voices for the actresses. The original sound was not removed, so every time someone spoke, it sounded like each person was arguing with themselves in two languages. Mrs. Figg was able to understand it with the English subtitles. She said it was a great story and incredibly romantic.

Harry would do anything to keep himself occupied. Mrs. Figg let him read books from her shelves. He was only allowed to read the ones on the lower shelves. Most of them felt like history books about things that obviously never happened. Wars between Goblins with ridiculous names or stories about sea people and their treaties with sky people. Harry read Redwall at school, a fantasy book about animals fighting wars. It was an adventure and entertaining. These books, however, would put you to sleep.

When he got bored with the books, he tried counting all of Mrs. Figg's cats. He would sometimes get up to twelve, but then one would disappear or two more would show up. A few of the cats seemed to wait until he was about to count them before disappearing. There was one new kitten that would allow Harry to pet it. Harry tried to name it Snowflake for his pure white hair, but Mrs. Figg said it was Victoria. That made no sense to Harry.

Harry made sure to make lunch and dinner for the two of them. Before he learned to make dinner, Mrs. Figg would cook for the both of them, and her cooking tasted as her house smelled. An hour before his aunt and uncle said they would be back, he was looking through the bookshelves to see if any books seemed less dull for the next time he was there. Crammed into the end of the shelf was one of the glass orbs he had seen at the Abbots' holiday party.

He called Mrs. Figg, "You have one of these too?" She came over to see what he was talking about.

She picked it up with her fingertips and smiled softly at it. "You know what this is?"

Harry nodded his head, "I've seen one, it made a flower when I touched it."

Mrs. Figg continued, "My mother gave me this when I was a little older than you. I could never get it to make more than specks of grey or red smoke. Though it was never empty, always just a little." She rolled it into her palm and a pinkish-grey plume appeared for a moment before breaking up into small bits and fading to almost nothing. She looked sad. "May I see what it does for you?" She asked.

Harry put out his hands to receive it, and when it was placed there, a beautiful white flower blossomed in the center. It stayed that way for a few moments until, like before, there was a dark red pulse from the center. The pulse grew each time like a heartbeat while Harry and Mrs. Figg watched with amazement. Small spidery lines came out of the pulse, reaching toward the edge of the flower. When they were almost to the edge, the flower pulsed strongly and the deep red vanished completely.

They both were silent for a few moments before Mrs. Figg spoke. "That was incredible, I've never seen a reaction like that. Do you have a very good memory?"

Harry thought for a moment, "I don't think I've ever forgotten anything."

"Then I wonder what was…" Mrs. Figg trailed off. "Maybe I'll tell you about it next time. For now, let me get you some chocolate."

She went into the kitchen and pulled a large bar out of a top cabinet. Each square had a diamond with HD stamped on it. He hadn't seen this brand before in the market. He popped a square into his mouth. His eyes widened at the taste, he had eaten Mars bars and a few other candies before, along with the candy in his holiday bag last year. This chocolate however was something else entirely. It had caramel in it, but somehow the caramel was warm and liquidy without melting the bar, and the chocolate itself was richer than anything he could have imagined. When he finished that square, he took the next one but savored it. Just then, they heard a car pulling up out front.

Mrs. Figg grabbed the chocolate and put it back into the cabinet, "This will be our little secret, just remember, you had a horrible time while you were here." She smiled at him and winked.

There was a knock at the door that sounded like a gorilla playing pattycake. Mrs. Figg opened the door to see Vernon standing there. "He wasn't too much trouble was he?"

"He tried counting my cats again. They didn't like that, so they kept running off to trick him." She held out her hand and Vernon put some quid in it.

"Get out here boy, we had a great day without freakishness, and now we have to take you home."

Harry left and thought that maybe things would get better. He was pretty sure later that his thoughts betrayed him, because of course things could get worse.

Two days before the party, Petunia received a call from Mrs. Figg. One of her oldest cats, a Li Hua named Chairman Meow, had just died at the age of Twenty-nine. She was going to take him up to Scotland for burial and couldn't look after Harry. Petunia was furious.

"Go try on your suit right now to see if it fits," she ordered Harry.

Harry really didn't want to go to the party with his relatives, so he asked, "Can I stay with Mrs. Davis or the Abbots?"

The look of horror on his aunt's face told him the answer even before she said, "Absolutely NOT. Go get your suit now!"

Harry was still able to get the suit on, but the shirt didn't tuck in and the jacket and pants were both a few inches short. When his uncle got home, she had a loud argument with him in their bedroom.

In the end, his uncle stormed downstairs and yanked Harry out of his room. "We're going to get you a new suit now," walking out the door expecting Harry to follow.

Vernon drove them to a local charity store and they looked through the stock as quickly as possible. Vernon was torn between the need for his nephew to look presentable at a family-themed party and spending as little money as possible. In the end, Harry received a very nice red coat with black trim that was a few sizes too big but looked stylish enough to be interesting and black pants that he would have to get hemmed up just a touch.

The night of the party, they left the house early so Vernon could help the company set up. The party was being held in one of the production halls for Grunnings. There was food and drinks in the center of the room with tables all around. At one end of the hall, a small jazz band was set up. Harry explored the outside of the room. On display were the different drills that the company produced. Some were from a dentist's surgery, others were shown to be used for sculpting, and others still seemed to be for something with colored stones. The largest display seemed to be the kind that was used on construction projects. Grunnings specialized in the internal motors for the drills and combined them with drill tips they got from another location.

From behind him, he heard someone call to him, "Hey little man, that's a nice jacket you've got." Harry turned around to see a man, younger than his uncle and certainly a lot thinner. He had a stylish black haircut and a wispy mustache. He was wearing what looked to be the same jacket as Harry, but with reversed colors, black with red trim.

His uncle decided to show up at that point with Dudley. "Good evening Joseph, what are you telling my nephew?"

The man stepped back, "Nephew? From your wife's side, I'm assuming, I can't see any resemblance." Looking at Dudley he smirked, "This big guy here couldn't be anything other than your son though." Vernon growled a bit, knowing it was meant disingenuously while Dudley puffed his chest out thinking it was a compliment.

The man turned back to Harry, "My name is Joey. Your uncle is the top salesman in the company, you know?" Harry shook his head. "Well, I'm number two, maybe by the end of the night I'll have taken his spot?"

Vernon looked like he wanted to punch the man in the face and simply replied, "We will see about that."

The guests started to arrive, and Harry needed to stay with his relatives to be used as a sympathy piece. He was the poor orphaned child of Petunia's late sister, killed by a drunk driver and left with no family but them. They took him in out of the kindness of their hearts and raised him. They conveniently left out who the drunk was. People seemed to be buying the story. Harry didn't like how he was being used, and he tried to sneak away often to get something to eat but was always dragged back.

As the trickle of new guests slowed, the band started playing and Vernon and Petunia left the children to go mingle. Every so often, Vernon would call over Harry to seem magnanimous to clients and co-workers. Every time his uncle put a hand on his shoulder while talking about his dead parents, Harry felt like he was back in the bathroom, tied to the chair. He couldn't get away and he was being used by his uncle.

Dudley found a few older kids to hang out with but there was no one younger around. After getting some food, Harry sat by himself at a table near a demonstration of the stone drills that sculptors used. He liked some of the sculptures there, a gargoyle sculpture looked scary, but the card in front of it said it was used to guard special buildings, and Harry thought he could use one of those for his room. He didn't have anyone protecting him, so maybe a gargoyle could do it.

When he finished his food, he noticed a very small girl sitting in the corner reading a book. He got up to walk over to her. Her hair had been tamed straight but a few hairs were out of place to show its true bushy nature, and her body was curled around her hands where she was reading. It reminded Harry of himself when he was expecting Dudley and his gang to sneak up on him. As he approached, he saw she was reading Redwall, which he had finished right after it was released.

Harry blurted out, "You're reading Redwall?" The girl squealed and jumped a bit, surprised at the sudden question. Harry apologized, "I'm sorry, that's just my favorite book I've read this year. I wished it was longer. How far are you through it?"

The girl's eyes widened. "I'm on page 41," she said with pride. "I got it just yesterday as an early Christmas present, it's quite a good story. I wanted to stay home and read it but my parents told me I had to come to the party, but I could read here."

Harry followed up, "My uncle works here, I was supposed to spend the night at a sitter, but one of her cats died and he dragged me here. Anyway, I loved reading about Martin the Warrior, I really hope he writes another one just about Martin."

"My parents buy from Grunnings, they were invited to the party as clients. They are dentists," the girl said. Harry thought it was kind of funny that a girl with big teeth would have dentists for parents, but he made sure he didn't say it because that would be rude. Harry was pretty sure that his thoughts must be being read by someone who was out to get him because at that moment Dudley showed up to say something rude.

Dudley appeared behind Harry, "Hey tiny, what are you reading?" he demanded of the girl.

The girl possibly thought there was another reading enthusiast arriving, so she started in on an explanation. "It's Redwall, by Brian Jacques. It was published just this year and it is about a small mouse who tries to find a magic sword to help…"

That was as far as she got before Dudley reached over saying, "Sounds great, give it to me."

The girl held onto it for dear life like the book was a treasure, and to her it probably was. Harry didn't know what to do, so he just watched as they pulled it back and forth until the inevitable happened… it tore. The cover and a few of the first pages were ripped out of the book. The girl cried out and pushed Dudley hard. He tripped and fell into one of the folding chairs that were set up around the tables. The chair warped itself and bent into a shape that held his arms and legs together. The girl picked up the pieces of her book and began to cry. This got a lot of attention and the girl's parents came running to comfort her as Dudley was struggling to get free.

Vernon saw Dudley twisted up in the chair and confronted the little girl, "What did you do to my son?" He demanded of the crying little girl, but this only made it worse and a shouting match erupted between Vernon and the father of the girl.

Just then, Joey, the salesman showed up with a cup of punch and a bar of chocolate, handing it to the little girl. She sniffled just a bit, whispered something, and pushed away the chocolate to take the punch.

Joey then said to her, "Why don't we take your parents to get a first aid kit and see if we can fix up your book." The girl then walked up to her dad who was still arguing with Vernon and pulled his sleeve until he paid attention. She whispered to him and the two walked off while the father gave death glares back at Vernon. Joey ushered the family away from the main hall and threw a wink back at Vernon, whose face turned an even darker shade of purple.

Harry's aunt and uncle picked up Dudley, with his arms and legs wrapped up in the metal parts of the chair carrying him out the front door. Harry followed after, being pretty sure their night was over. When they were just outside the front door, they ran into three men in long red coats. His aunt immediately began yelling at them.

Harry just heard her aunt yelling about fixing her Dudders and the word 'freak' over and over. Harry was too far away to see what was happening, but one of the men did something to release Dudley from the chair and the chair was bent back to its original shape. They drove in silence all the way home.

The moment they got inside the house Vernon pinned Harry against the wall and growled, "I don't know what you did, you little freak, but if you cost me my top spot, you can start spending every moment you aren't working in the cupboard."

Harry tried to argue that he didn't do anything but Vernon yelled back, "If you didn't do anything, why did those freaks in the red coats show up? What were they doing there if you did nothing? Can't think of an excuse for that? Of course not, all of you freaks stick together!"

His uncle slammed and locked his room.

Harry was pretty sure he didn't do anything, but something strange did happen. And who were the freaks in the red coats? He remembered seeing them back at the Day School when Mrs. Davis's hair turned blue. His aunt and uncle thought they had something to do with him. It was too much to think about, so he just closed his eyes and went to sleep.

The rest of Harry's winter break was split between working and spending time in his room even before his uncle found out the sales results.

Dudley seemed scared to be around Harry now. Harry wondered if his cousin thought he was responsible for the incident with the chair, or something else. Harry knew that if he could have done that, he probably would have.

Two days before school started again, the results came in. Harry didn't get any food until the morning he went back to school. He still had to make it, he just couldn't eat any. Harry felt like a robot, and he just pushed down his feelings and accepted it. There was no use in complaining or crying. There was some food he had stashed under his floorboards, he rationed that to keep from starving.

There was no Harry Hunting the next week, though Dudley and his gang had taken to poking him and pushing him at random times and then jumping back like he was going to explode at any possible moment. Harry realized that they were experimenting as he did with spices when cooking. It was the first time he observed Dudley being capable of complex thought, though perhaps getting tied up by a chair jump-started his brain.

The second week of January, Harry was walking around alone at lunch and managed to get to the far end of the yard. The dark-skinned man he had seen before was tending to the garden there. From the third year and up, the students got time each week to learn about plants in their science classes. Harry had to wait a year and a half before he would do that. Harry stood at the orange plastic fence and watched the man work. He was one of the tallest men Harry had ever seen in person, but he knew from watching some sports on the TV that there were even taller people too. He wore short sleeves, even though it was winter and on one arm there was a thick scar that seemed to run from his elbow, under the shirt, and up to his neck. Harry rubbed his own scar a little self-consciously as he looked at it. The man put down a large bag of fertilizer and walked over to Harry.

"Do you like plants?" The man asked in an accent Harry hadn't heard before.

Harry nodded, "I did gardening for my aunt for a while. But she said I take the color out of her roses, so I don't do it anymore."

The man frowned, and walked over to a tomato plant, plucking one off the vine. He tossed it to Harry who caught it out of the air. "Nice catch. Is the tomato still red?"

Harry looked down at it, it was still red. The man said, "Still looks red to me. Would you like to help me over here? Come around the fence." Harry walked around and as he was entering he saw a weed growing up from a box containing a plant he didn't know. Instinctually, he reached down and plucked it up by the root. "Good, good, you know which plants to pull. You can help me if you would like. My name is Tekle Tekula, though some of my friends have recently started calling me Mr, T or just 'T.'"

"My name is Harry… Potter. I see a few more weeds over there."

Tekle nodded to him and got back to his own work.

The next few weeks were good for Harry. Dudley and his friends weren't chasing him, and he got to work in a garden again, but this time it didn't feel like work, it was fun. He learned more too, about different plants and how they grew in the soil. Tekle let him take home some mint they grew in the garden and Harry found that when put it in his aunt's tea she didn't seem to yell at him as much.

At the beginning of March, Dudley and his gang got their courage back to start chasing Harry again, though now they did it at school. Harry would race the boys across the yard to the garden because they wouldn't want to mess with Harry around the tall groundskeeper. A couple of times Tekle would watch Dudley and his friends run away, then chuckle a bit and then say, "I pity those fools" in a voice not quite his own.

The garden had grown quite significantly since Harry had started working there on his class breaks. Tekle had made sure to mention that this growth wasn't normal and in his four years at the school, the garden had never given this much fruit or been this big. Harry felt proud of his work, though the positive feelings put him on edge and made him very anxious because whenever he felt good, something bad seemed just around the corner.

The third week of March on a Monday morning, Dudley was very fidgety on the way to school, he was mumbling something to himself, repeating it over and over in his head. When they arrived at the dropoff point, he saw the principal, a middle-aged woman with a very stern face and small glasses that rested on the tip of her nose, and Mr. Clifford waiting there. They stepped up as his aunt was letting them out.

"Mrs. Dursley," the principal began, "Please bring both of your boys up to the office, we need to have a meeting now."

His aunt rounded on him, "What did you do now you little freak?" Harry was confused but said nothing. He looked over at Dudley who just smiled. Deep down he knew that Dudley had done something, but he didn't know what yet. They arrived at the office and they saw that Mr. Tekula was there as well. Petunia kept the man in the corner of her eyes as she sat down on the chairs in front of the desk with Dudley. Harry stood to the side.

The principal began, "Yesterday, there was an act of vandalism at the school." Both Petunia and Dudley looked at Harry immediately. The lady nodded and continued. "Where were your boys yesterday afternoon?"

Petunia responded immediately. "My Dudley went to his friend's house in the morning but he came back at around four. The boy here was home all day until the evening when he went to the supermarket."

"How long was he gone for?"

"I don't know exactly, but he was in time for dinner at seven. What did he do?"

"The garden that Tekli here manages for the school was vandalized, a few of the planter boxes were broken and some plants were smashed. Your nephew works with the man during his breaks, and we received a tip from a neighbor that a boy with messy black hair was seen wrecking the boxes."

Harry knew the game now. Dudley had been doing things for years now that he would blame Harry for. Nothing he would say could ever convince someone he was innocent, it wasn't even worth trying. So he just looked down at his feet and said nothing.

Mr. Clifford spoke up. "I was warned about him before he got here, that he was a troublemaker. I hadn't seen it until now, but there it is."

Petunia spoke, "We're so sorry for the boy. He takes after my sister and her husband. Troublemakers and freaks. They were driving drunk the night they died." Harry felt hot anger at that, but just kept his head down and rubbed his scar. "What will happen now?"

Tekle spoke next, "Mr. Potter will spend the next week after school here repairing the damage he caused and helping me with some of my more difficult jobs. If he feels like he can destroy things without consequence, he will be taught otherwise." Harry felt immensely sad with the tone that Tekle was speaking to him, and couldn't bear to look up and meet the man's eyes.

They left the office and the boys went to class. At the first class break, Harry found Dudley, Piers, and Nigel waiting for him in the yard. Piers stepped forward, "Such a shame, that was a very nice looking garden too. Why'd you have to wreck it?"

Harry's eyes narrowed, "I know it was you."

Behind Piers, Nigel pulled a tomato out of his pocket and took a big juicy bite, "But you don't have any proof, now do you?"

Harry saw the tomato and launched himself at Nigel punching him in the nose and knocking him over he got a few more hits in before Piers and Dudley pulled him off and held him up as Nigel hit him in the stomach twice.

Just then, Mr. Clifford came running out. "Stop it, right now, all of you!" His cane slapped the ground. The three older boys had him as a teacher the previous year and immediately jumped to attention. "I saw all of it. Were this 1975, you would all get the cane for fighting." All of the boys stood perfectly still, though Harry was still on the ground wheezing. Some blood dripped down Nigel's nose. Looking at Harry, "You started this boy, I guess your punishment earlier wasn't enough. You can spend the next two weeks in my classroom during the break, cleaning up after everyone. Get inside, now!"

Harry slowly got up and walked inside while Dudley and his gang walked off chuckling.

After school, Mr. Clifford walked him out to the garden to meet Tekle. Harry kept his eyes on his feet, ashamed and not wanting to meet the disapproval in the eyes of the groundskeeper. After his teacher left, Tekle spoke to Harry, "Look at me, young man." Harry looked up at the groundskeeper, but the disapproval had vanished from his face. "I know you didn't do this. I am sure your cousin is responsible for this. I know what it is like to be blamed for things just because of who you are." He absentmindedly touched the scar running up to his neck. "If I had spoken up for you in the office, they would have placed you with someone else and you would not get to work in the garden again."

Harry was reminded of the time when he was at Mrs. Figg's and lied about her treatment of Harry so they wouldn't send him somewhere worse. Some people would look out for him, they just needed to tell everyone else he was a horrible child.

Harry looked up from his feet and saw the damage for the first time, Harry's mood dropped again. Plants were stepped on, wood boxes were broken up, and soil was everywhere. He was furious with Dudley and his friends, but he focused on the work that needed to be done.

Harry made sure to salvage any plants with unbroken roots and pulled all the seeds from the crushed tomatoes to dry for replanting. Harry helped arrange any wood that could be reused for the planters as well. This continued for the whole week and on Thursday he was allowed to use the hammer to nail together some of the new boxes. On Friday, they added new soil to the boxes and started planting the seeds. Harry promised to come by when his cleaning punishment was over to keep working on the garden again.

So far this week, he didn't need to worry about Harry Hunting. Leaving school so late meant that Dudley had already gone home. Friday when he went home was different. They were waiting on their bikes right in front of his hidden path, blocking his entrance. His anger which he had been repressing since he saw how they destroyed the garden suddenly boiled forth but before he could cross the street and punch Nigel again, a street sign fell off its post and slapped Nigel hard in the face. Even from where he was, Harry could hear a crack of Nigel's nose breaking and he could see the flinches across Dudley and Piers' faces.

An ambulance was called and Nigel was taken to the hospital. Harry could see blood all over the boy's face when they put him on the stretcher.

Vernon yelled at him at home, "WHAT HAPPENED?"

Harry tried to assert himself, "I don't know! I was on the other side of the street, It was like magic!"

His aunt's face twisted with indignation immediately and pulled back. His uncle picked him up by the shirt and leaned in close. "There is no… such… thing… as… magic!" He punctuated every word by poking Harry in the chest with a meaty finger. Vernon opened Harry's door and threw him into his room. Harry hit the back wall and the house lights flickered. He lay on his cot and groaned as his uncle slammed the door and locked it from the outside.

Harry spent the weekend in his room, he got bread and water twice a day, but no one paid any attention to him otherwise. As he ate the bread and water, he remembered the soggy sweetness of the crumbs in white liquid he had tasted after Dudley's birthday two years before; it had a similar texture in his mouth, but none of the same taste. Listening to the sounds from the house he heard his aunt complaining to the open air about needing to do chores all the chores he would do for them, and he heard Dudley watching cartoons. The voices in the cartoons sounded stupid compared to the few books Harry had read, it was like hearing people talk to small animals or babies.

At school that week, he dutifully did his cleaning, even getting some small measure of praise from Mr. Clifford for how well he did. Nigel came back to school, a large bandage around his face. He had broken some other bones in his face too, not just his nose. He refused to meet Harry's eyes, but even the small glances he gave Harry had some fury in them.

Harry started working in the garden again, and things returned to normal. On the days that there was rain, Harry would spend in the classroom reading fantasy books. He had started The Hobbit, though it was taking him longer because the book was meant for older children. He liked that when Tolkien introduced something new, he spent time describing every detail of it so he could form a rich picture in his mind. Tolkien's goblins sounded a lot more interesting than the ones in Mrs. Figg's books.

Two weeks before the end of the year, Harry was called to the principal's office. He was taken over to the nurse's station next door and was met by the school nurse and a woman in a business suit.

The principal spoke to Harry, "We recently found out that Mr. Tekuli"

"Tekula," Harry interrupted.

"Tekula," the principal continued, glaring at Harry, "was found to have a communicable disease he did not disclose to us when he was hired. It is contagious and oftentimes deadly to children." She gestured to the woman next to the nurse. "This is Madam Argent from the Public Health Office in London, you will need to answer her questions and get an exam from the nurse." With that, she left the office.

The school nurse stepped forward, "I am going to need to give you a complete physical and check for any visual symptoms of the disease. Please remove your shirt and pants Mr. Potter." Harry noticed a twitch in Madam Argent's face in the same way he occasionally saw in others when his name was mentioned but had learned to dismiss it. Harry sheepishly took off his clothes and the nurse looked closely at every inch of his skin. He was asked about the scar on his forehead to which he simply replied it had been there since the night his parents died. Mentioning that got a choking sound from Madam Argent.

After he was dressed again, Madam Argent stood up and asked him many questions about if Mr. Tekula had ever touched him, scratched him, bit him, or if he exhibited any other unusual behavior. Harry just responded that they worked in the garden together.

At the end of the questions, Harry asked, "What is going to happen to Tekle?"

Madam Argent replied, "He will receive a fine for seeking employment in a field he was restricted from. There aren't many jobs in the UK that he is allowed to take. Most likely, he will leave for the continent. Many others with his condition do the same."

Harry didn't see Tekle Tekula for the remaining two weeks of school.

When school was out, Dudley got a party for his friends for graduating in the second year.

Harry got to make the cake for his cousin's party, his aunt slapped his hand with a wooden spoon when he tried to lick some frosting from his fingers. The pain made him angry, the anger made his head hurt and his scar itched.

When the cake was in the oven, he returned to his room without prompting and read from the copy of The Hobbit that Mr. Clifford had allowed him to take home.

Author's Note: Figg's soap operas are just something that my wife actually does and it felt like a fun place to complain about here.