Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: Do you know how hard it is to not give into the urge to be in the "present scene"? But some stories really just want to be written in the more global sense.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 12); MC4A
Individual Challenges: Death's Inevitable Master; Sett to Destroy; Seeds; Golden Times; Interesting Times; Old Shoes (Y); Advice from the Mug; Neurodivergent; Quiet Time; Letter of the Day; Tiny Terror; Flags & Ribbons; Ethnic & Present; Rian-Russo Inversion; Hold the Mayo; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux; Two Cakes!
House: Hufflepuff
Assignment No.: Term 12 – Assignment 2
Subject (Task No.): Amulets & Talismans (Task#7: Write about someone with vision problems or someone who is blind.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Insane Prompt Challenge [809] (No Dialogue); 365 [70] (Depend)
Other MC4A Challenges: Wi Bingo [2D] (Vigil/Mass)
Representation(s): blind Harry Potter; autistic Harry Potter; Desi Harry Potter
Bonus Challenges: Lettuce Hold Hands; Second Verse (Nontraditional; Unwanted Advice; Lovely Coconuts; Corvid Brain; Hot Apple; Bad Beans; Under the Bridge); Chorus (Wabi Sabi; Peddling Pots; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; Eternal Boredom; Abandoned Ship; Sitting Hummingbird; Hot Stuff)
Tertiary Bonus Challenges: T3 (Terse; Tether); SN (Rail; Negate); O3 (Oust); SHoE (Terse; Onus); DP (Terse; Taciturn; Yearn)
Word Count: 965

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Adaptation
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Harry had adapted to the darkness. He hadn't had much of a choice about that. The doctors had been very clear that there was nothing that could be done to restore his sight. Maybe if he hadn't been so malnourished when the accident happened, things would have been different. By that same line of thinking, if Dudley hadn't chased him into traffic, things would be different.

He didn't dare think about how different things would be if his relatives hadn't hated him or if his parents hadn't died. No matter what anyone told him, he still had trouble believing that he hadn't deserved the way they had treated him. It didn't help that occasionally he would have dreams filled with laughter and green light that left him with the distinct feeling that he had lost everything.

He didn't like thinking too much about the what-if of things. It was better to just adapt to whatever came his way, to go with the flow while making the best of everything. It was better to be quiet and never draw too much attention to himself. It had worked well while he had lived with the Dursleys, and there had been no reason why it shouldn't have worked in the group home that he had been sent to after the accident.

He was already good at not asking questions or for help. It had been surprisingly easy to learn how to translate the strange bumps of Brail into the letters that he was mastered before he had even started school. The switch also helped him hide the scope of his reading, because the casual observer could no longer tell what the topic of his book was or what language it was. Learning to navigate on his own was a bit harder, but thankfully, no one in the group home wanted to steal his stick or went out of their way to make anything more dangerous for each other.

The strange events that had happened occasionally at the Dursleys' seemed to be a thing of the past. Harry couldn't help the sense of freedom he felt whenever the memory of them crossed his mind. They had haunted him while he had lived there, making every day seem like a pointless struggle for survival because how could he ever hope to be normal so long as the freakishness followed him?

Only after the accident had taken his sight had he ever saw himself as potentially being normal.

After being hit by that car, Harry had spent a full month in the hospital. A week of that had been in a coma. The doctors all said that he should have been dead. In fact, he had apparently died on the table for long enough that the lead surgeon had actually declared a time of death. Then he had just came back but had slipped into the coma. Aunt Petunia had been more than willing to have him taken off life support, too.

Her inability to hide her feeling of glee at the thought of his death along with her loud rejection of the idea that she sit vigil by his bedside had been the reason for the report to Child Protective Services. The agency had immediately begun poking around Privet Drive and the private affairs of the Dursley household. Harry didn't know exactly why they had been upset to find out where he slept and how the Dursleys had treated him, but then again, his caseworker seemed convinced that no one deserved to be routinely locked in cupboards, no matter how many rules they had broken.

By the time Harry had been released from the hospital, the paperwork had gone through to remove him from the Dursleys' house. Apparently, there had been some issues with the way that he had come to be there at all. His caseworker was still trying to track down his parents' will or even a death certificate for them. All she could find was birth certificates and primary school records for his mother.

Not that Harry was supposed to know that, of course. He only knew because he had overheard his caseworker updating the woman in charge of the group home. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop. He had just been passing by the office while his caseworker had been visiting and heard his name. If they didn't hear him walking down the hall, it wasn't his fault.

Yeah, the other kids always walked louder than he did.

Yeah, maybe he shouldn't have stayed to listen when he realized that they were talking about him.

But he liked it at the group home, and he needed to know if that was going to change. He also had to know if the freakishness had started to creep back in. He was finally free of it, free from the need to explain away the inexplicable. He had already paid with his ability to see.

Now he just had to keep it.

So Harry adapted to the darkness that was his life now. He adapted to living in a group home where he had learned yet another language but now didn't have to worry about people noticing what he was reading from across the room. He had adapted to not being expected to do all the chores around the facility. He still didn't ask more questions than he absolutely needed to, preferring to do his own research before going to others (and then only when he absolutely needed to). He went out of his way to not annoy anyone, especially those who were in charge of his placement. He bit back every bit of sass or cheek that came to mind.

He had adapted to his new status quo.

He had adapted to the darkness.

He had adapted.

He had.