Disclaimer: I own nothing of the 'Harry Potter' universe. I don't make any money at all from writing this drivel. For entertainment purposes only!

A/N: Well, I just got through with the cliffhanger known as Chapter 5, so I figured I'd post this chapter early. Here you find out just how badly 'old' Harry screwed up with his counting! (Well, give him a break, he was rather distracted with his thoughts!) Many things are set up here, so sit back and enjoy! (Word Count: 3787)

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Chapter 3: Just Another Ordinary Day

Wednesday, March 2nd, 1988 7:25 AM

A scrawny, seven-year-old boy lay shivering, curled tightly in a small, threadbare blanket, which was really nothing more than a torn and dirty scrap of cloth that was barely the size of a dish towel. He had been awake since his portly cousin, Dudley, came stomping down the stairs that served as a ceiling to his cramped 'bedroom' that was actually a tiny storage cupboard under those same stairs.

The boy laid there wishing he was still asleep. If he were asleep, he wouldn't know how cold he was. As the smell of the breakfast that was currently being served to his cousin and uncle drifted in through the cracks around the cupboard door, he doubly wished he was still asleep. If he were asleep, he wouldn't know how hungry he was.

He closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would overtake him once again, but unfortunately, the sounds of silverware clattering loudly on plates and the roars of lighthearted laughter and conversation from the kitchen prevented him from doing so.

Some time later, he heard the chairs being dragged across the floor and two sets of heavy footsteps rambling up the staircase above him. A few moments later, he heard the bolt being briskly undone on the cupboard door. It opened, sending in a wave of bright, early morning daylight that temporarily blinded him.

"Get out of there, boy!" came the screeching voice of his aunt, "You are not going to have a lie in all day when there's work to be done! Get out here and eat your breakfast, and don't forget to wash the dishes when you're through!"

The blinded boy reached out his hands to find the edge of the small doorway when he felt her thin, claw-like fingers firmly grab hold of the collar of his shirt. He let out a yelp of pain as he felt her long, sharp nails scratch along the skin on the back of his neck. A moment later, he tumbled into the kitchen after being roughly pulled from his cupboard and hurled through the doorway.

He heard his aunt's voice call waspishly back from the stairway, "You had best get a move on, boy! You've half an hour to leave for school, or you'll be late again!"

The boy picked himself up from the floor and looked at the stack of dirty cookware piled in and around the kitchen sink. His eyes then drifted hopefully towards the table, but they were only met by a stack of the nearly empty dishes that rested upon it.

He plugged the drain in the kitchen sink and turned on the tap, running his cold, stiff fingers through the warming stream of water. He then walked to the table, picked up the stack of dishes and carried them to the counter by the sink. One by one, he picked up a dish, licked whatever scraps and crumbs he found on it, then placed it into the soapy water. He smiled when he reached the bottom dish, for there he found a half-eaten slice of bacon that was obviously overlooked during the morning feeding frenzy, or maybe it had been dropped on the floor. It didn't matter to him, he just happily stuffed it in his mouth and greedily chewed and swallowed it. He liked to imagine that his aunt had purposely hidden it there for him. He knew that idea was a totally unrealistic fantasy, but fantasizing like that helped to make his wretched life a bit more livable.

After hastily washing all of the plates and silverware, he started on the cookware. He found a few more small bits of bacon left in the fryer that were much too overdone for either his uncle's or cousin's liking. They were rock hard and tasted like crumbling bits of ash, but at least it was something. After scraping off the cloudy layer of bacon grease in the fryer with his fingers, he licked each digit clean before he submersed the pan in the dishwater and began scrubbing.

After he finished drying and storing the last pan, he began scrubbing along the counter and was thrilled to discover a single piece of dried toast that was left forgotten in the toaster. At the same time that he noticed the toast, he heard the heavy footsteps of his uncle thundering down the stairs. In a panic, he snatched the toast from the toaster, shoved it down the front of his oversized, hand-me-down shirt, and then turned to face his uncle who was just reaching the bottom of the stairs. He silently prayed that he wasn't wearing a guilty expression.

He tried to look as innocent as possible as his uncle paused at the bottom of the staircase and sent him one of his usual, menacing sneers. His uncle's beady eyes glared at him for a few moments longer than he usually did, which caused the boy's pulse to immediately quicken. After a tense moment, the boy turned away from his uncle, and with cloth in hand, began to hurriedly wipe down the countertop. He could feel his uncle's stare boring through his back for a few heartbeats longer before he heard the framework of the easy chair in the living room groan under the man's formidable weight. The boy felt the tension leave his shoulders as he finished cleaning the countertop.

He placed the dirty rag in the laundry chute and headed for his cupboard to get his books and papers ready for school. He was on his hands and knees, reaching into his cupboard when he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him.

"What have you done, boy?" he heard his aunt's scolding voice just above him.

He froze in place for a moment, but then tentatively looked up over his shoulder. His aunt was standing right behind him with extreme displeasure in her eyes. His hand instinctively made his way to his waistline, and he could feel the slice of toast still securely nestled under his shirt. Knowing that he couldn't be in trouble for that, a confused look appeared on his face.

"Put on another shirt this instant!" his aunt commanded, "Do you want people to think that we abuse you?"

The boy almost… almost… snorted at that last statement, but he was in no mood to pay that kind of price again.

She roughly pulled the back of his collar, stretching the loose material around so that he could see the streaks of blood on the back of his shirt. He knew it was from when his aunt's fingernails scratched the back of his neck as she pulled him from the cupboard earlier that morning, but he knew better than to put voice to that particular fact. Again, that would cost him more than he was willing to pay.

The boy hesitated, realizing that he couldn't remove his shirt with the toast tucked underneath it. Of course, his aunt took his hesitation as a blatant act of rebellion, and that type of behavior would never be tolerated in that household. Well… that kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated from him in that household.

Immediately, he felt his aunt's bony hands grasp his shirt at the shoulders and she began pulling the offending garment up over his head. This caused him to drop his books and papers so that he could place both his arms around his stomach to keep the hidden toast concealed from view.

It was then that a much larger, meatier hand grabbed hold of the hair on top of his head and violently jerked him back, dragging the boy from the confined space of the cupboard. The pain of having whole locks of hair being ripped from his scalp caused his hands to instinctively reach up to protect his head, which, in turn, caused the pilfered toast to slide out from under his oversized shirt and drop to the floor.

The boy watched in horror as the eyes of his aunt and uncle focused on the toasted bread lying upon the floor.

He closed his eyes, knowing full well what was to come next.

Heartbeats passed in silence. Curious as to why he had not felt the slap to his face that he would have bet everything he owned, not that it was much, was coming, he opened his eyes just in time to see his uncle's shiny, black wingtip shoe connect with his abdomen. He felt his back connect painfully with the wall opposite the cupboard door before he slid heavily down and doubled-up on the hallway floor.

"Stealing food right from out of our mouths, are you now, Potter?" bellowed his uncle as he reared back his foot again, sending a vicious kick to his chest.

The boy could feel a 'pop' inside of his chest as the foot connected. A sharp pain tore through his lungs, making it impossible for him to immediately draw a breath to replace the wind that was knocked from him.

His uncle placed his foot on the boys' chest and leaned heavily down while panting from the exertion, saying in an enraged hiss, "This is the last straw, you mutant! You're just a worthless leech on this family! I'm warning you now, boy… if you step out of line one more time, just once, and you're out of this house for good!"

His uncle pushed off hard with his heel, causing the boy to roll onto his side, still making that horrid, high-pitched gurgling sound as the air still refused to enter his lungs properly.

The boy watched through teary eyes as his uncle stooped down with a wheeze and picked up the offending slice of toast. Standing right behind his uncle was his obese cousin Dudley, who was wearing a wide, leering grin. His uncle turned around to head back to the sitting room, and in the process, handed the toast to his son, Dudley.

Dudley took the toast, and making a grand show of it, prepared to take a large bite. His face suddenly screwed up in disgust as he whined, "But… but there's no marmalade on this!" Still leering at the other boy, Dudley walked to the rubbish bin, spit on the toast and then carelessly dropped it inside. He was still snickering heartily as he made his way back up the stairs to finish preparing for school.

After a long, harrowing minute, the boy on the floor finally managed to draw in a wheezing breath, in spite of the burning pain that ran across the right side of his chest. He coughed piteously a few times as he tried to regain some semblance of normal breathing, but it just wasn't coming easily.

The boy wasn't sure how long he was on the floor, because he seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. It wasn't until he felt the bony hand of his horse-faced aunt lift him easily from the floor. He choked out a groan of pain as she roughly pulled the oversize, bloodied shirt over his head. In doing so, his arms were forced over his head so that the sleeves could be removed, which caused the stabbing, burning pain in the side of his chest to increase tenfold. As soon as the shirt cleared his head, he bent over and retched what little he had put into his stomach onto the floor.

His aunt screeched in anger and she pushed the boy roughly towards the bathroom, "You get in there and clean yourself up, and when you're done, you will clean and disinfect that mess you just made! I'm certainly not going to do it!"

The boy lay still on the cool, tiled floor. Tears were running down his face, not from fear or anger, but from the blinding pain. A hiss escaped him as his fingers tentatively touched the growing purplish-brown bruise on the side of his ribcage.

After a few minutes, he pulled himself up to the sink and ran the cold water. After rinsing the sick from his mouth, he splashed some of the water to cool his sweaty face. As he turned off the tap, his eyes met his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

He stared at the reflection of himself. He lightly touched the fading bruise on his left cheek that he received when he accidentally received a better grade than Dudley on the Mathematics exam the week before. He involuntarily shuddered as he recalled the look in his uncle's eyes when his piteously weeping cousin informed him of that little fact. Of course, everyone at his school believed that he got the black eye from an enraged older brother of a neighbourhood child that he was bullying… or that was the story Dudley told everyone, anyway.

When he was finally able to leave the bathroom, he heard the tires of the family car crunching through the freshly fallen snow as it pulled out from the driveway. His uncle Vernon was behind the wheel with his aunt Petunia in the passenger seat, and Dudley taking up nearly the entire back seat. Vernon would drop Dudley off at the school, and then take Petunia to the local beauty salon for her weekly appointment, which was clearly an exercise in futility, before driving himself to work at Grunning's. That left the boy to make his own way to the school, after he cleaned up the mess that he made, that is. Fortunately, the school that Dudley and he attended was only a few short blocks away, but God forbid that his obese oaf of a cousin would be forced to walk like he had to.

After cleaning up the hallway in front of the cupboard, the boy looked at the clock and found that he only had ten minutes to get to the school. Normally, he could have run that distance with a few minutes to spare, but with the stabbing pain in his ribs, along with the snow covered sidewalks, he knew for certain that he was going to be late. With considerable effort, he managed to don a relatively clean shirt, and, after ensuring that all of the doors to the house were locked, he made his way as quickly as his condition would allow towards his school.

As he expected he was over ten minutes late to his first class. He didn't bother apologizing to the teacher, just as he didn't bother to explain his tardiness, because he already knew that his cousin would have already told some wild story about why he was late. The teacher just gave him a disgusted look and pointed to one of the few empty seats in the room, a seat which just happened to be next to one Veronica Sbardella, a somewhat dim-witted girl with greasy black hair, a rather pronounced Roman nose, and a wide, round face with olive skin that told of her Mediterranean heritage. Veronica took great delight in making those around her ill by her near manic aversion to soap and water and her apparent fondness for beans of all kinds.

With a resigned sigh, he made his way to the indicated seat. He could see his cousin sitting in the back of the classroom between two of his friends, Dennis and Piers, all three of whom sneered menacingly at him… indicating a promise of a round of 'Harry Hunting' later in the day. He carefully sat down in the hard wooden seat and gingerly leaned into the backrest, thankful to feel the blissful pain of the pressure against his aching ribs.

The morning passed slowly, partly because of the constant nausea that he felt from the relentless pain in his side, and partly because Veronica seemed determined to find out exactly how he did so well on the previous week's exam. Her incessant prattling during each of their classes earned him a detention in each. He noticed that for some reason, the teachers seemed unwilling to give Veronica detention. Honestly, he didn't blame them in the least. If he were a teacher, he would ensure that the unpleasant girl spent as little time in his classroom as possible.

By the time that lunch rolled around, he was more than anxious to get to his latest hiding spot, a small alcove concealed by the school's rubbish bins behind the cafeteria hall. Even in his sluggish state, he knew he could make it there before Dudders and his gang came looking for him… After all, Dudley's gang of hoods couldn't expect his portly cousin to chase him on an empty stomach.

He sat in the dirty, snow-strewn alcove with his back against the back wall while quietly trying to read one of his textbooks, but the thought of Dudley stuffing himself in the cafeteria kept dragging his focus back to his own empty stomach. He could even hear the clinking of silverware, the clatter of trays and the echoes of the differing conversations through the cracked-open window above his head. He wished he had some money to buy food. It wasn't very comforting knowing that he would see nothing until the Dursleys finished their dinner that night, and if history was any indication, what he would get then wouldn't satisfy a mouse.

With a sigh, he redoubled his effort to concentrate on the book in his lap, and even managed to get through two pages before he was startled out of his reading when the door to the kitchens opened. A stout woman with graying, red hair emerged from the doorway carrying a large rubbish bin. She hefted up the heavy can with ease, emptying it into the large rubbish container that blocked the view into the alcove that he was sitting in.

Just as the door closed, the first afternoon bell rang. The boy unsteadily stood from the ground and brushed the dirty snow from his baggy pants, silently giving thanks that he made it through another lunch break without getting beat up by his cousin and his gang of thugs.

As he walked past the large rubbish bin, he glanced inside and saw the pile of refuse that the kitchen worker had just dumped on top of the rest of the snow-covered garbage. It looked as though the kitchen staff had just cleaned out the older staples from their larders. There were a few wrapped sandwiches and desserts, presumably past their freshness date, along with a few dozen containers of milk.

The boy briefly glanced around at the now empty schoolyard, and then looked back longingly into the bin again. He was about to leave for his next class when his stomach let out a mighty rumble which stopped him in his tracks. He reached into the bin, picked up one of the small cartons of milk and tore open the seal. He nearly gagged when he smelled the sour liquid within. He opened three more before he found one that didn't smell too wretched and greedily drank it down. While it wasn't completely spoiled, it still burned slightly as it slid down his throat.

With all sense of embarrassment abandoned, he reached in and began sifting through the sandwiches. The egg salad and tuna salad were all far from palatable, and it even looked as though the maggots weren't entirely enjoying them. He came across what looked like a meatloaf sandwich, and aside from the bits of mold on the bread, seemed to be the least spoiled of them all… and there weren't that many maggots on that one. Deciding that it was probably edible, he brushed off what few maggots he could find and carefully tore off the moldy bits of the bread before digging into it. He just managed to force down the last bite when the final bell rang…

'Damn,' he thought, 'late again."

The afternoon progressed much like the morning had, trapped next to the olfactory nightmare that was Veronica Sbardella and being glared at threateningly by his cousin and his goons.

Sometime during his last class, he began feeling queer. He was sweating profusely, and could feel a cramping in his lower abdomen. The combination of Veronica's odoriferous assault, the stifling heat that was coming from a grate in the floor right next to him, and the constant stabbing pain in his chest began to make him very queasy. Five minutes after he had first raised his hand, the teacher, who it seemed purposely avoided noticing said hand, finally looked to him and derisively asked, "What is it now, Mister Potter?"

"Sir, I need to use the loo, if it's not too much trouble."

The teacher let out a dramatic sigh, then, while glancing up to the clock on the wall, said, "Come now, there's only twenty minutes left to class… surely you can…"

The teacher's words were interrupted by a loud, heaving belch as the half-digested dregs of partially soured milk and spoiled sandwich made its encore appearance on the floor of the classroom beside the boy's desk.

"Why didn't you say something earlier, you stupid little boy?" yelled the teacher before pointing to the door, "Out with you, Potter!" The teacher turned towards the boy's cousin and commanded, "You! Dursley! Go summon the janitor to clean up this mess!"

Dudley narrowed his eyes at the retreating back of his cousin, angry at the fact that he had to actually move his bulbous body when it wasn't absolutely necessary.

Moving as quickly as he could, he made his way down the stairs to the nearest lavatory, which happened to be in the basement near to the boiler room. He made it inside the lavatory, and was just a few yards from a stall when he felt the first push against his colon. Before he even made it to the stall door, he felt his bowels release into his pants. The odor almost instantly met his nostrils, which caused his stomach to clench and launched a new wave of vomit out of his throat, fortunately, aimed at the toilet that was now in front of him. The compression of his abdomen sent a jolt of pain through his chest, and the effort of vomiting caused yet another explosion from his bowels. He could feel the liquid waste creeping down his legs under his trousers. Being next to the boiler room, the air inside of the lavatory was stifling hot, and the heat, along with the smells of his vomit and waste, made his head spin. He could hardly breathe.

The next thing he knew, he was lying on the warm concrete of the lavatory floor just before unconsciousness claimed him.

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