2: The Vanishing Glass

WARNINGS: Contains graphic scenes of abuse and neglect of a child. Caution advised.

The children at St. Grogory's Primary School in Little Whinging, Surrey, were not known for an overflowing of the milk of human kindness. Many of the children were much like life: nasty, brutish, and short. These are the sort who most often accompanied Dudley Dursley, a stout lad with his father's ruddy cheeks and a slicked-back mass of blond hair, which subdued what his mother referred to as "his angel curls."

While these young hellions were superficial, almost sickeningly obedient and deferential to the faculty of St. Grogory's, absent the close supervision of the staff, they tended towards venality, petty cruelty, and a generalised antipathy for anything unique, different, or alternative. Despite this, a few members of the out-group managed to maintain their individuality in this environment. Karl Kreischer, the trainspotter, was protected by his relative wealth and the need for the other children to appear friendly towards him for their parents' social mobility. Davey Llewelyn successfully brought a sack lunch of hummus and carrots without punishment by virtue of being the best striker in the county for under-twelves football.

Harry Potter, Dudley's cousin, was not a member of this protected elite. Instead, he had perfected the art of becoming unnoticeable. Already small for his age, Harry was swallowed up by his clothes, distressed hand-me-downs from his much larger cousin. His too-large shoes were often held on by wearing multiple layers of mismatched woolly socks, aligned carefully so the holes did not overlap. Instead of a belt, his threadbare uniform jumper and short pants were secured to his body with a length of twine. His round eyeglasses, held together with Sellotape and a twist of wire from a bread loaf package, helped hide his eyes. His eyes were a deep, verdant green and tended to draw attention when Harry looked up. He did not enjoy attention and thus kept his eyes downcast. His stature, quiet nature, and slumping posture combined into what he privately considered his "cloak of invisibility." When moving about the school under this "cloak," Harry could go days without being accosted by Dudley and his gang of hangers-on.

Today, however, on a brisk, windy day in October of his ninth year, Harry had mistakenly answered a question correctly in class. Worse, he had missed that Dudley's best mate, Piers Polkiss, had failed to answer the same question correctly moments before. Now, urged on by Piers, Dudley was roaming the schoolyard, looking for Harry so that they could deliver an instructional message.

Harry was in his best, most private hiding spot, behind the bins outside the school canteen. The benefits of this spot were several. The bins were almost as tall as Harry, so he could slump or sit behind them and be virtually invisible from the yard. The smell of the refuse bins also discouraged casual investigation of the area. Finally, there were sometimes abandoned or surplus foodstuffs, which could do much to ease the hunger pangs that frequently accompanied Harry to school. Consider, for a moment, the desperate reality of a child who finds food unsuitable and discarded by a British school lunch program to be a welcome relief.

It was a weak chance of the weather that was Harry's misfortune that day. The bins were fitted with heavy lids to keep pests out of the rubbish and compost materials. One of the bins was overfull this afternoon, and a gust of wind got under the hinged cover and flipped it over, where it struck an unsuspecting Harry on the crown. His untamed black hair, which defied any attempts at styling, provided insufficient cushioning for the unexpected blow.

Harry cried out before stifling his outburst.

Dudley and two of his mates were passing by at just that moment, and they shouted with exultation at discovering the smaller boy. Without hesitation, Harry leapt to his feet and dashed away, narrowly dodging Dudley's outstretched hand. Despite Dudley's girth, his greater size and better health quickly negated the head start of his smaller cousin. With Piers a step behind, Dudley rapidly gained ground, nearly catching up with Harry as they neared the corner of the school kitchens.

A gust of wind blasted Dudley and Piers in their faces as they rounded the corner, and when they blinked the wind and dust from their eyes, they stopped in mute dismay. Harry had run into an odd nook between the canteen and the main hall, a brick area some ten feet on each side, open to the sky above, with no doors or passages. Piers had already raised his fist to strike the cornered Harry, but no Harry was found. He had, to all perception, simply vanished.

Above the narrow cul-de-sac, above the roof of the kitchens, there was a tall brick chimney, stained with grit and old soot, rising some twelve feet above the rooftops. Atop this chimney, clutching the filthy bricks with white-knuckled hands, young Harry Potter, his face pale, blinked owlishly behind his eyeglasses. Every gust of wind caught at his oversized clothes, threatening to pull him from the precarious perch and hurl him out over the paving stones below.

"Erm, help?" The wind snatched away his tentative voice, and only the flapping of his jumper breaking free from his twine belt alerted the boys below to his location.

"Blimey," Piers said.

"Yeah," Dudley replied. "Blimey."

"Help! Someone, help!"

The two boys laughed as the terrified voice drifted from the chimney top far above.

Vernon Dursley gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to school his features before entering his house. Dudley had jumped from the car before the wheels had stopped turning and was already inside, being fed by his adoring mother. Harry was cowering in the back seat, his head down, shoulders slumped, wrapped in his private cloak of invisibility. There were limits to what even that tactic could achieve, however.

"I'll give you one more chance, boy," Vernon grunted through clenched teeth. "What were you up to on that roof? What were you thinking, you disgusting freak?"

Harry shrugged, at a loss for how to explain what had happened.

"Answer me!"

"One minute, I was running from— from some bullies, sir. The next, I was on that chimney, holding on for my life."

Uncle Vernon turned, his face florid, eyes narrowed. When he spoke, flecks of saliva spotted his brushy moustache and flew from his mouth.

"HOW?"

Harry cowered down, getting as far away from his uncle as he could manage without openly flinching. It was worse when he flinched, always worse.

"Don't know, sir."

Vernon erupted from the car, all pretence of calm lost. He flung open the backseat door and grabbed a handful of Harry's unruly hair. By main force, half dragging the slender child by his hair, Vernon took the boy inside, slamming the doors behind him.

Across the lane, casually walking along, was Imelda Frye, one of Albus Dumbledore's covert witches, assigned to check in on Harry whenever there was a notice of contact between the boy and any Muggle authorities. She nodded to herself and walked past. Frye had carefully modified the memories of the three boys so none would remember the inexplicable flight by Harry to the chimney top. She wished she could do something about the uncle's treatment of the child, but she and her partners were under the strictest orders from Dumbledore. They were not to be observed nor intervene in any fashion inside the Dursley house on Privet Drive.

She sighed, not for the first time. Surely, it couldn't be too bad? Harry Potter was unique, a hero, an historical personage. No doubt his family was just excitable, blustering for show to keep the boy humble. Surely.

She continued to the end of the lane, and instead of turning the corner, she ensured she was unobserved and gestured under her jacket with her wand. With a muffled crack, sheapparatedaway, leaving Harry, his family, and Little Whinging far behind.

Inside No. 4, Privet Drive, events were progressing very much as Harry had feared. First, his Uncle Vernon had beaten the boy's forearms with a willow stick that he kept for solely that purpose. He would demand that Harry tell him the truth about "whatever nonsense" Harry had been up to at St. Grogory's. Harry would deny knowing, insisting he had no idea what had happened. One moment, he was on the ground, running for safety, and the next, he was high above the schoolyard, clinging to the chimney-top. Vernon, a broad-shouldered man with the build of a youthful athlete long gone to fat, with bristly greying hair that he slicked down with a pomade that made it appear sleek and dark, towered over his nephew. Vernon Dursley easily filled the doorway of the cupboard under the stairs where Harry had been sleeping ever since Dudley had annexed the second bedroom to store his forgotten hobby and sports gear, his broken VCR and smaller television, and all the books and "educational" toys he had been given by people with no knowledge of his interests and aptitudes.

It was in the dark and dusty cupboard, with cobwebs in the corners and a stained, bare mattress, that Harry cowered as Vernon laid about his arms with the switch. Harry's uncle was careful to avoid bruising the boy's hands where they barely reached past the rolled-up arms of his oversized jumper, instead stroking the willow rod against the boy's thin arms, devoid of the muscle which might have cushioned his bones, striking the boy with measured violence to leave him bruised and aching but not visibly cut or marked.

The Dursleys had no aversion to leaving marks and scars on the boy. Still, Vernon and his wife Petunia were acutely conscious of their reputation and appearances, so they were careful that Harry's discipline left few marks that might be visible during a typical day to an outsider. Harry was well-marked underneath his short pants, stretching from the top of his thighs across his back and belly and reaching near his collar on his narrow back. Bruises in layers, old and new and in between, cuts, welts, and a few burns marked Harry in a tapestry of enforcement. Still, they were careful to make no marks that would require explanation on the visible portions of Harry's body. That is until Harry made his dreadful error.

Vernon was winding up his punishment of the boy, already thinking of the dinner his wife was preparing in the kitchen for the Dursleys. To Harry, of course, they would begrudge any scraps after he cleared and cleaned when the meal was done. Almost distractedly, almost reasonably, he asked a final time, "What did you do, boy?"

The change in tone caught Harry off guard. He had learned long ago that any lie or evasion he attempted would shatter under the abuse inflicted by his relatives, so it was best always to tell the truth whenever possible. In a small but clear voice, he made the damning statement.

"I didn't do anything. It was like magic!"

No sooner had the words come from his mouth than his uncle huffed like a steam locomotive on a steep grade, his eyes bulging in his red-faced wrath. They could hear the shattering of a glass from the kitchen, dropped by Petunia in shock at the taboo utterance.

Vernon grabbed Harry by one arm and, nearly dislocating the boy's shoulder, jerked the child to the kitchen. Dudley was at the table, eating his "tiding over" snack of bacon, beans on toast, black pudding, and a half quart of milk while he waited for his dinner. Petunia stood at the counter, one glass in her hand and another in small pieces where it had fallen to the tiled floor. The glass had not scattered much but had collapsed into a collection of finger-sized shards and sparkling powdered glass around Petunia's long, narrow feet.

Vernon threw Harry to the floor, to Dudley's glee, and Harry's hands skidded across the tile and through the outer edges of the glass debris as he tried to stop his face from falling into the pile of glass. His hands had ground into the glass and left two bloody smears where Harry had prevented himself, just barely, from skidding to a stop face-first in the broken glass.

"How many times, boy?" his uncle hissed with simmering rage too powerful for shouting, "How many times must I tell you?"

Vernon put his foot onto Harry's back, his work shoe heel digging into the boy's spine between his bony shoulder blades. He pressed down, and Harry's arms collapsed, putting his face just above the glass. Harry wanted to hut his eyes, to protect them from the sharp, irregular pieces of glass sticking up from the tile, but he could not look away. His ill-repaired glasses had flown off when Vernon threw him down, so there was nothing to protect his face and eyes now from the glass. Vernon pushed harder, driving the wind from Harry's lungs as his face descended towards the glass.

"There. Is. No. Such. Thing," Vernon grunted, twisting his foot from side to side and grinding Harry's face into the kitchen floor. "As MAGIC!"

Vernon stomped down a final time, and Harry felt something crack on his right side. Vernon backed away, and Petunia grabbed Harry and hauled him to his feet. Not from kindness but to confirm the damage inflicted for using the forbidden word "magic." She gasped when she saw him and let go of him in surprise.

"Come on, let's see you then," ordered Dudley around the entire rasher of bacon he had in his mouth. "This should be good."

Harry turned. He spied his glasses a few feet away and, grimacing, bent to pick them up. He put them back on as Vernon gaped, and Dudley stared, confounded.

Harry's face was red from rubbing the floor, but there was no blood. No cuts, no glass driven into his skin. No glass at all, to be seen on his face or the hands, which moments ago had been leaving bloody trails across the tiles. Harry was unmarked, and the broken glass had vanished.

Vernon moved Harry aside and looked around at the tile where the shattered glass had been, even lifting one of Petunia's feet to look under her shoe, nearly making her fall over. There was no glass, pieces, powder, or evidence that it had ever existed.

Vernon huffed and gasped, unable to speak in his rage and disbelief. He simply pointed, jabbing his finger towards the cupboard under the stairs. Harry understood, but his aunt shrieked at him before he could move.

"Go! Now! Let me not see, hear, or imagine you until Monday and school! Now!"

Alone in his cupboard, locked with a bolt from the outside, Harry lay quietly in the dark. He ran his fingertips carefully all over his face, finding nothing. He traced the ribs that showed through his sides, found the one that was broken and made a grinding, scraping sensation as he breathed. Painful, but not new for Harry.

What had happened to the glass? For that matter, how had he wound up on the school kitchens' roof? If, as the matron said, a gust of wind must have caught him up, why didn't he remember it?

Am I going mad? Harry wondered. Do people going crazy know that they are crazy?

You're not mad, Harry, a quiet, calm voice said. It took Harry a moment to be convinced that the voice was in his head.Get some rest. I'll look out for you.

"Erm, thank you," Harry whispered as softly as he dared. There was no reply, and not long after, he was asleep.