Chapter 2

"Up! Get up! Now!"

Harry woke with a start, Aunt Petunia's shrill voice piercing his brain like a sharp knife.

"Up!" she screeched, rapping on the door again.

Harry heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one, involving turning Dudley into a pig with a snap of his fingers and then flying away riding a motorcycle. He had a funny feeling that there was more to it, but his mind was too sleepy at the moment to remember.

"Are you up yet?" demanded Aunt Petunia, who was back outside the door.

"Nearly," said Harry.

"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And I want the lawn mowed before noon!"

Harry groaned.

"What did you say?" his aunt snapped through the door.

"Nothing, nothing…"

Amazingly, it wasn't until Uncle Vernon sent him to get the mail again during breakfast that Harry remembered the letter, and then he was brutally hit by the realization that he must have dreamt it all.

It had to have been a dream, right? Magic wasn't real, he reminded himself bitterly as he went to get the mail, noticing that of course there wasn't any letters addressed to Mr. H. Potter. He could check later under his mattress to make sure, but there would be no letter there, and even if there was...

Even if there wasn't, it would still make sense, said a little voice inside his head.

He might have dreamt the letter, arrived to this crazy idea in some delusional way, but there was still the inescapable fact that a glass had vanished right in front of Harry only a month ago. He had suffered the longest punishment ever because of that, just as a while back he had suffered the second longest punishment ever for jumping over a building. Harry had never understood why or how those strange things happened around him, but he had usually shrugged away the mystery or assumed there was some complicated scientific explanation. Deep down he had always known it didn't make sense, though. And now he needed to make sense of it, even if he had to consider some absurd possibility like the one of him being a freaky sorcerer.

Harry continued mulling over all these things the rest of the morning while he mowed the lawn, and then half the afternoon while he scrubbed clean half the floors of the house. By the time Aunt Petunia finally freed him Dudley's gang had gathered and were planning a game of Harry Hunting, so he made a swift escape through the back and jumped a few fences to lose them before the hunt began. He wasn't in the mood to be chased around today, and even less to be caught and beaten. It would be too rough a descent to reality after all the fantasies and dreams he had indulged in since yesterday.

So instead of walking to the play park as usual he went the other way, doing his best to avoid being spotted by the neighbours since they were all likely to report him to Aunt Petunia or directly to the police if they saw him 'being suspicious' near their homes.

While he walked, he thought, and the same thought kept going round and round in his head.

He needed to find out.

He needed to know.

If he had some freaky power, he needed to confirm it.

How, though? He had no idea how —if— he had made those things happen, he hadn't even intended to do it. Although he couldn't deny that he had wanted something to happen. Perhaps his wishes hadn't been explicit nor even conscious, but every time he had wished for something. And something had happened.

Although not always. Definitely not every time he had wished for something, else his life would have been very different.

Harry came to a stop in the shade of a tree and looked around. There was no one in sight. And he knew the Robinsons were away on vacation, so the house must be empty.

Feeling reckless —or perhaps suicidal— Harry crept towards the back garden, where he wouldn't be seen by other neighbours, and after a long hesitation —he couldn't even imagine how much trouble he would get into if he was caught doing this— and feeling quite silly he finally placed a hand over a window. He took a deep breath... and wished.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, wishing harder.

Nothing.

How had he done it in the zoo? Harry hadn't even been touching the glass at the moment, since Dudley had pushed him away. He had just been looking up from the floor as Dudley and Piers leant right up close to the glass to watch the boa constrictor moving. And then the glass had just vanished. And the snake had thanked Harry when it slid swiftly past him on its way to Brazil, as if it knew it had been him who had made it happen.

Harry sat down against the Robinsons' back door and closed his eyes, trying to recall every detail of all those freakish incidents. The time when he had been found on the school roof he had been running from Dudley's gang, and all he could remember was jumping behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. He certainly hadn't wished to end up sitting on the chimney, he had just been desperate to get away. And the time when his hair had re-grown overnight... then he had just been terrified to show up at school almost bald except for his fringe. He had also been deeply embarrassed when Aunt Petunia had tried to force him into that revolting old sweater of Dudley, the one with the orange puff balls. And he had been angry at his teacher for believing Dudley over him when his wig had suddenly turned blue.

So that was the key, then. He had to be really angry, or really afraid.

Harry stood up and placed his hand over the window again. It wasn't hard for him to find reasons to be angry. He could even get specifically angry with the Robinsons, since they had always looked at him as if he were a criminal and they had once gotten him in trouble with Uncle Vernon by accusing him of scaring their children (Harry had only said hi to them, but he had been wearing rags at the time so he hadn't looked very trustworthy). After that the Robinsons had spread around that he was dangerous and Uncle Vernon had forbidden him to look at or say a single word to any kid in the neighbourhood.

He turned away just in time to protect his eyes from the rain of broken glass. When he dared to look again, he saw in horror that all the Robinsons' windows had shattered.

Crap.

He had to get out of there fast. Breaking glass was a lot noisier than vanishing glass, and the neighbours of Little Whinging were always alert and eager to have something to report or to gossip about. And, indeed, he could already hear raised voices and doors being opened.

Crap, crap, crap.

Uncle Vernon was going to kill him for this!

Harry had wished to be invisible countless times in the past, but now, as he tried to escape the scene of the crime undetected by a dozen curious neighbours, he wished it with all his might.

Nothing happened.

He looked frantically for possible escape routes, considering the nastiness of nearby neighbours and their dogs, and seconds later he was climbing a tree, careful to remain hidden by the house as he searched for one foothold after another. This tree was very tall and had a thick branch that hanged over the Jones' back garden (the Jones were always complaining about that), so with any luck Harry could escape through their property. It was still risky, but at least there would be less attention focused there than on the Robinsons'.

Harry reconsidered his plan when he reached the intended branch and realized that it was a lot higher than he had estimated. His stomach gave a lurch at the vertiginous sight.

He didn't have any options, though.

This would be a good time to do something freakish, he thought desperately.

And then he jumped.

Part of Harry was sure that he was jumping to his death. That part was shocked when he found himself flying skyward and then soaring like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long and then landing on the Jones' lawn far too lightly.

All right, I'm definitely a freak, he thought dazedly as he struggled to calm his racing heart and focus on the next stage of his escape.

Somehow he managed to get away without being spotted, but he didn't go directly back to the Dursleys, thinking it might be wiser to be seen by Dudley and his friends at the other side of the neighbourhood and to return to the house from the direction opposite to the Robinsons. On some level he had known that not even a true alibi would have saved him from Uncle Vernon's wrath, though.

For such a generally stupid man, Vernon Dursley was always quick to connect the dots when it came to Harry and his freakishness, perhaps because he was always looking out for any threats to his perfectly normal life. He knew at once that Harry had had something to do with all the glasses in the Robinsons' house being smashed at the same time without anyone seeing the culprit, and for once Harry couldn't really argue innocence. He tried, of course, lying through his teeth and swearing that he had been running from Dudley at the time, but there wasn't much strength in his lies and in any case he knew Uncle Vernon didn't care what the truth was.

As he was roughly shoved inside his cupboard and informed that he could forget about dinner for the foreseeable future, Harry wondered how it was that he hadn't ever made Uncle Vernon's brain explode or something like that. He had done freakish things inside the house, yes, but nothing too destructive nor harmful, and that didn't make any sense considering that Harry lived in constant anger and had felt countless times as if his brain was about to explode with rage.

Harry lay down in the dark and rubbed his sore, manhandled arm. Perhaps it was fear of the consequences of doing freakish things what had kept his freakishness relatively at bay all these years. Perhaps fear and anger sort of cancelled each other out most of the time. He knew that things would get much worse if he hurt any of the Dursleys —and especially Dudley— in any way. Or if he wreaked the house. Even though he had never known it was him that did it, he had learned to fear freakish things happening around him and had wished really hard they didn't.

He had tried his best not to be a freak, hoping that they would treat him better if he was normal, but weird things had kept happening and now Harry understood that they would never stop. Because it was what he was.

Part of him felt ashamed for that. And sort of defeated. All his life he had been told he was a freak, and it had hurt, but Harry had found strength in the conviction that it wasn't true, that the Dursleys were just mean and unfair. Now it seemed they had been right all along, and for the first time Harry truly felt like a freak.

Another part of him, however, didn't really care if he was a freak. All he cared about was that he could do impossible things. Even though he couldn't control what he did very well if at all, he was now sure that he had magical powers.

And he had a letter that said there was a place for him in a magical school.

A letter that suggested somewhere, for someone, being a freak might be a normal thing. Maybe even a good thing.

No matter what it took, Harry would find the way to get there.


This chapter was posted on Mar 28, 2022