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It's so hot in the cupboard this summer.
Fast little puffs of air fan out from the boy’s white lips. Despite the fact that he's not allowed to be naked in here, he has already stripped off his trousers, shirt, and saggy y-fronts. Though he should have folded them neatly, they lie at the foot of his mattress at the lowest part of the cupboard, stiff with sweat and crumpled. The mattress is bare as well. Rough ticking rasps across his grimy arms and legs. His skin feels soft inside, like thick, boiled custard. At least his sweat is finally dry.
He's been lying on the damp mattress for days with sodden hair and wet, stinking, slippery skin. But finally, his hair has dried and the mattress, still bare and itchy, doesn’t cling to his skin as he lies almost perfectly still. It doesn’t feel cooler in the cupboard, but it must be since he’s no longer sweating. When he exhales over the downy brown hairs on his arms, it feels like warm air from the oven when he takes out the baking.
He thinks about the last thing he made before his relatives went on holiday. Now that he can lift the heavy baking dishes and thick crockery, Aunt Petunia has shifted off the evening meal onto his shoulders as well. Shepherd's pie and Yorkshire puddings perfectly risen. For a while, the scent had lingered and made him hungry. Now, he can only smell the nauseating stench of his bucket. At least he hasn't had to piss today.
The litre-sized bottle of water only has a few more centimeters of water at the bottom. His relatives haven’t returned, though they were supposed to have been back yesterday. Usually, he rations his water better, like the food, which ran out two days ago. They don’t care about the food, of course. According to his relatives, people can live four minutes without oxygen, four days without water, and four weeks without food. It has been his mantra for as long as he can remember. So hunger is uncomfortable but not dangerous, and the boy still has the remaining water plus four full days before he has to worry.
Except, it’s been so hot.
The boy puts it out of his mind. There’s no use in wondering about when his relatives will return. They do what they want --- when they want --- and always have done.
What the boy wants:
A name. To go to school. To know how to read books and not just recipe measurements and symbols on cleaners warning of POISON and INFLAMMABLE with à skull or a smouldering matchstick. To have his own clothes. A life. To be a person like Dudley with friends and not a freak that had to be kept inside, unable to look out a window or see the sun. To breathe the strangely unscented air from the outside. To see if grass is soft or scratchy or something in between.
Somewhere, far away, he hears the chime like a siren. Yesterday, there had been a pounding on the door and people in the house and voices worried and talking. The boy thought they were probably robbers, and the boy knew his relatives would be furious when they finally returned. They had called for someone "Harry Potter" in increasingly frantic tones. The boy had remained totally quiet. Even when it felt like invisible eyes had passed over his body, he had stayed hidden. Even when it felt like invisible hands were pulling him, he was still. Uncle Vernon had told the boy once about "foster care" and what happened to freaks like him in boys homes, and while the boy hadn't know what most of those words meant, he took Uncle Vernon at his word that he would be burned and hit and hurt even in his private places if anyone ever discovered that his Aunt and Uncle had taken him in.
The boy wondered if it were a test or a trap. Perhaps someone had tattled on his relatives that they were harboring him and they had been arrested. Maybe this Harry Potter fellow was missing or hurt. The boy hoped that the poor thing was all right. These people were clearly very worried about him. The boy was scared and couldn’t help, so he stayed out of it.
Eventually, a voice had cried out, "There's no evidence he has ever lived here at all! Where could he be?"
He felt bad for the lady. She had a funny accent like someone on the telly but she did seem to care for this poor, lost person.
“No photos of him. No bed in the third bedroom. Only one set of clothes. What can they have done with him?”
A calm murmur had come from somewhere, but the lady would not be soothed.
“No! I told you what sort of muggles these were. Even if the warning alarm is going off accidentally, where is Harry Potter?”
There had been more talking and arguing and stomping up and down the stairs above his cupboard. Doors opening and closing. Strange smells like grasses and herbs. Voices had come and gone. They had even said strange words, and unusual lights had sometimes flashed through the vent in his door.
Today, there was an awful throbbing in his forehead, and the scar on his face burned something awful. He'd been really angry, maybe for the first time in his life and kicked the cupboard door and banged his fists and screamed and screamed. He'd felt tingling in his hands then, like the bad thing was going to happen again. He'd wrestled control away from it and pushed it down. Eventually, that had gone quiet too. The raw place in his head had snapped like an over-stressed bed spring and faded into a tender bruise.
Exhausted, he'd collapsed and maybe cried at little even if his eyes didn't get wet. That little scream in his head had gone quiet too. His head ached, but the scar beneath his fringe no longer throbbed.
The last time. His mind shies away from thinking about it too much. Uncle Vernon had taken the belt to him. Ten lashes for the broken dish. Ten for the bad thing. The boy couldn’t count that high without concentrating, which he couldn’t do the buckle tearing strips off him, so he’d counted to ten twice. Then three days in the cupboard without the light. His relatives had gone away for the weekend because of it. When they returned, the boy’s back and legs were healed, and no one said anything about it.
He drinks his day's water ration. His eyes feel so heavy and his mouth is so dry. He thinks about finishing the bottle, but it seems like too much effort. He needs to save it for tomorrow anyway.
He feels himself drifting to sleep. His breath has been coming fast, but it slows. The fight starts to go out of his muscles. The bad thing hums sadly, and he sinks down into the deep, cool dark.
The siren gets loud again, but the boy is too far away to hear it. Then …
Oh, sweetheart.
A voice, familiar.
A cool hand on his chest. He is lifted out of his cupboard like a little baby and held up soft hands. She has the most beautiful, shiny hair and the coolest, softest hands. He has never met her, but he knows her.
"Mummy," he sobs, begging in his voice that It was true.
Oh, my darling. My poor, sweet, darling boy. I have missed you so much.
He is much too big to be carried like this in her arms, swaying like they are dancing, like they are air and light. Maybe he is small again. Maybe he is safe for the first time in his whole, short life.
"Mummy," he whimpers, feeling stupid and childish.
But even that is fading. His naked skin feels soft and clean. She sways him gently past horrified faces of oddly dressed strangers. Like they aren’t even there. He hears the sound of his cupboard being thrown open. It doesn’t make much sense. The closed locked door and the late afternoon sun and his dead mother gliding past these people. It’s midday, but the sun goes dark.
A cry goes up, like a missed goal at a footy match. Despair from the English crowd.
That's right, my beautiful boy. Mummy is here to take you home.
“Thank you,” the boy tells her. “I missed you so much.”
I missed you too, my love.
She walks through the crowd and right through the front door into the sunlight. Over her shoulder, he sees the man in black again, the one who had carried him away from the place where she died. Black eyes bore into the boy’s own. The man's face is pale as old milk.
She stops.
Severus. She says over her shoulders. I have never blamed you. But if you need to hear it, I forgive you.
The man’s face crumples. His hands grip his elbows. Something like a stick falls from his hands with a clatter. He sways. The boy realizes that this man is only the fourth or fifth person he remembers seeing in his whole life. The man, he remembers, carried him to the giant who left him here. The boy isn’t sure why he’s only remembering this now. Yet, it doesn’t really matter.
Bye. The boy whispers.
The man fades, or the boy does. His mother is there, and his father is so proud. There is a whole line of friends and family who love him, and he has forgotten pain and hunger and thirst. He remembers the years in the cupboard, but they feel like a lifetime ago. Then he is light and sound and the wind, flying over the earth like a bird, wings spread wide. He is sunlight and cool, clear rain. He is soft cotton and music. He is the air that sways the tall grass and the rich earth that feeds it.
The world spins on in the dark.