Secret Birthday
There's a hoot in the silence of the night. It's faint and Harry has to strain his ears to hear it. It sounds like those owls in the documentary programs that sometimes run on the television while he's dusting the shelves.
Harry holds a stolen wristwatch in his hands and watches closely as the seconds tick and tacks past. Luckily, there's just enough light in the cupboard so that he can see it.
Last year he didn't know, last year he was ignorant, but not this year. This year he has found out a small fact that, while not exactly making him happy, gives him a sense of satisfaction. It is another fact to add to the name Harry Potter.
Now he knows that Harry Potter has a date of birth and he knows the date. Harry Potter, hated nephew of the Dursleys, the target of his cousin Dudley's 'Harry Hunting' game, was born on the thirty-first of July in the year of nineteen eighty.
In another five minutes he will be seven.
It had almost been ridiculously easy to find out. Last year, when they had gotten a new teacher, he had only had to make up a tale of not remembering the exact date of his birthday and tell a lie of how he didn't want his cousin to make fun of him for not remembering. If he were to ask his aunt and uncle, again, his cousin would know as well.
The teacher was very sympathetic, and, while telling him how his cousin wouldn't make fun of him, she gave him the exact date. Harry wrote it down. He doesn't need to read the slip of paper hidden under his mattress to know his birthday anymore.
Instead he holds the stolen wristwatch, which Dudley is convinced doesn't work, and watches as this day becomes the next day.
He doesn't get to have Dudley's birthdays, filled with cake and presents. No, instead he gets to celebrate silently, in the dead of the night, his own birthday. It's the first time he can do that.
His aunt Petunia had him convinced for a while that he didn't have a birthday, he's the freak and freaks don't have birthdays. He's not Ickle Dudleykins after all. He's Harry, just Harry.
And Harry has a birthday.
As the date changes, as this day becomes the next one, Harry does nothing. He doesn't wish for anything because he doesn't know that he's supposed to.
In a way he's counting down.
In nine years he might be able to get away from this house and it's worth waiting for. When he falls asleep he dreams of what he'll do and where he'll live.
Anything and anywhere is fine as long as it's not here.
It's July thirty-first and it's Harry Potter's birthday and for the first time he's aware of that.