THC Round 3
House: Gryffindor
Class: History of Magic
Category: Drabble
Prompt: Word [Pivot]
Word Count: 652
Title: Accidental Magic
Warning: Canonical levels of child abuse
Beta'd by: Celeste Magnolia, Jetainia, charliemanx.
Harry's first memory of school is not of school at all. It's of him handing Aunt Petunia a picture he drew that day in class, of the four of them with stick limbs standing in a house shaped from a rectangle. She tears off the corner with Harry's figure in it and hurls it in his cupboard with him, before pivoting on her heel and shutting the door.
He doesn't draw them after that. He doesn't draw himself, either. When Hagrid gives him photos, he looks and looks and looks, entranced to see himself depicted with love. The flash makes him wince when Colin takes his picture; he throws away the ones of just him but collects all the others like Ron's Chocolate Frog cards, cherishing his duplicates as proof they meant to, mean to, be in them. Everything moves, unlike the stillness of his stick figures. Eventually, the pictures of Privet Drive in his mind become still also.
On his twelfth birthday, he lets himself believe for a moment that his aunt and uncle remember, but of course, the pudding is never for him. Dobby smashes cream and sugared violets over Mrs. Mason's head and it is Uncle Vernon who pitches him in a room this time. When the tins of cold soup rattle through the cat flap, he imagines Aunt Petunia turning away. Each time, he tilts the tin to hold back the soggy vegetables, slicks the broth down his throat and drops the sludge in Hedwig's cage. His first hot meal that year slides from Mrs. Weasley's spatula to a plate she makes up for him, just for him, and he counts badly as she does it, maybe eight or nine sausages but definitely three eggs. He thanks her, sits and eats, and then throws it up later—too much food, too much kindness, for his system to take in.
It doesn't hurt when Hagrid touches him. Nor Ron. Nor Hermione. His godfather faces him on the grounds of Hogwarts during his third year; for the first time, he leans in first. In turning towards Sirius, he turns away, with greater confidence, from the blood he's been consigned to. He is now, in every instance, the one to close the bedroom door.
He hides cake under the floorboards and buries love in a place deep enough within himself that for years it sparks out hot and feral, beyond conscious volition, an accidental magic that he has to learn to tame.
Sirius falls through the Veil, and Harry seeks no comfort at Privet Drive. They wouldn't understand. No, they couldn't understand. The boy that threw Voldemort from his mind at the Ministry of Magic realizes there's nothing within him that they could hold onto, either. With the Dursleys, he's not yet at the point of thinking I feel sorry for you.
It is at last July 1997, and heat is baking the lawn that he will never tend again. Harry passes his finger over a toy soldier in a cupboard before standing abruptly at the sound of a knock. His head bumps the ceiling that used to rain dust when Dudley purposely jumped on a spot exactly six steps down.
Departing, the Dursleys and Harry take their final stock of things. He watches Uncle Vernon yield himself reluctantly to the protection of Dedalus and Hestia, flashing back to the man barking that MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY. When his cousin says he doesn't think he was a waste of space, Harry's first instinct is to respond, "No. I wasn't."
Aunt Petunia stands before him, a flowered handkerchief in her hand and a discomfited look in her pale eyes. Her mouth becomes a circle as it was in his picture when it opens just once before she shuts it like a door. His mouth is a grim line, beyond the point of closure: he tilts his head to her and then pivots away.
