Chapter Text
Harry wakes as he always does – to the sound of Aunt Petunia knocking on his cupboard door, telling him rather unkindly to get up and cook breakfast. Today, however, there's an undercurrent of urgency in the way that Aunt Petunia raps on the cupboard with bony knuckles.
"Up," She says through the door, tapping away – ensuring that he wouldn't be able to sleep through the noise. Her tone is less cruel and more anxious, though Harry knows that if he were to make her wait, there would be hell to pay.
(Vernon screams. Harry learned this early in life. Vernon is also very predictable – he may shove Harry around or push him into his cupboard, but the most he'll do is give Harry some bruises or withhold food from him for a day.
Petunia is … different. She hates Harry just as much as Vernon, but has a different way of showing it – through callous cruelty and a complete disregard for Harry's emotional or physical wellbeing. She'll shave his hair or make him work on the garden in sweltering heat for the whole day without water just because she can. If Harry crosses her (and he has in the past, often working out the boundaries of what exactly he could get away with without punishment) she'll punish him in a way that is simultaneously cruel and inventive.
She's terrifying.
And it isn't as if he's not scared of Vernon as well. Harry hides under a façade of sarcasm and wit, but he's quite terrified of both his aunt and uncle. The fear isn't always there and sometimes he's able to pretend his family doesn't hate him, but then he'll push Petunia too far or cross Vernon on a bad day and visceral, heart-stopping fear will claw its way up his throat at the sight of Petunia's hard stare or Vernon's reddening face. He likes to pretend he's not afraid, because he knows family shouldn't be afraid of family, but he always, always, flinches when Vernon raises his hand, or Petunia turns to him with cruel eyes and a half-hidden snarl.)
After dressing for the day (and purposefully leaving off one sock and not bothering with his hair), Harry ambles out of his cupboard, not even with the luxury of still being half-asleep. Some stupid part of him always panics when Petunia knocks on his door, so every morning he goes from being dead asleep to wide awake within moments of her knocking, with his heart in his throat and beating so fast he feels as if he'll pass out.
Aunt Petunia doesn't even snap at Harry when she sees him, as is the norm for them in the mornings. He's learned that appearing before his aunt disheveled, with his hair a disaster and only one sock on, is enough to make her irritated and angry, but not enough to incur her wrath – so naturally, he does it every day. It takes a surprising amount of self-control not to laugh in Aunt Petunia's face when she looks so offended by his hair, but it's always worth it to see how worked up she gets.
Today however, Petunia's eyes slide right over him as she ushers him into the kitchen and upon seeing the table, he immediately understands why. The table, which is fairly large and wide, is covered from end to end in immaculately wrapped presents. Only two aren't wrapped, and are placed near the table – Dudley's new television and racing bike.
(Almost bitterly, Harry imagines it buckling under the weight of Dudley's many, many presents and all of them somehow breaking. Harry pushes aside the emotion before Petunia can see because if she were, it'd mean that her and Vernon and this whole rotten family would win. Win what, Harry doesn't know – but he refuses to show displeasure at their treatment of him.
He refuses to let them know that they've gotten to him.)
It's Dudley's birthday.
Harry doesn't know how he managed to forget – Dudley's been going on and on about it for the past three months, about what kind of presents he wants, while Petunia and Vernon listened indulgently to him. Dudley going between sweetening his voice to appeal to his mother and throwing a tantrum when he felt he wasn't getting his way had been amusing, but ultimately irritating. Over the past three months, Harry has rolled his eyes so much it's a wonder they haven't fallen out of his head.
"You'll tend to the bacon," Petunia says, not even bothering to disguise her demand as a request. "Don't you burn it – I want everything to be perfect for Dudley's birthday."
Harry almost fails to disguise his scoff as a coughing fit. Him, burn food? Petunia should know he at least has more self-preservation than that. He's only done it once in his life, but once is enough to know that he shouldn't ever do it again if he wanted to live to see twenty. He had been eight, and he was still too short to cook like Petunia wanted him too, but she made him do so anyway. Petulantly, no – stupidly– he had let the eggs and bacon burn just a little bit – not charred, but just enough so Vernon and Dudley would be able to taste it.
Even two years later, Harry remembers Petunia's exact expression when she saw what he'd done.
Nostrils flaring, back tense but straight, and with eyes so cold and hard they felt like knives were stabbing him in the stomach when she turned to look at him. She was gripping the handle to the pan tight and for a few terrifying minutes, Harry was scared she'd whack him with it.
(She didn't, but she made Harry start over while she watched over his shoulder and she didn't let him eat for two days.)
Instead of replying, Harry clears his throat and makes his way around his aunt to grab a pan and the bacon from the fridge. He carefully begins to cook, well aware that if he were to burn this, Petunia would probably make him go without food for a month, but he's so used to cooking that he's able to cook the bacon perfectly without too much thinking. Still, cooking for Vernon and Dudley is a bit like playing Russian roulette – no matter how well he cooks something, if either of them were to complain that they didn't like how it tasted, Petunia would punish him.
Harshly.
And rather than waiting for Petunia to keep bossing him around as she did almost every day, after Harry's done with the last of the bacon and places it on top of the small mountain of pork, he starts on the eggs immediately, not wanting to hear Aunt Petunia's shrill voice ordering him about.
He does those in batches too – frying some, scrambling others, because Vernon and Dudley can't ever decide how they want their eggs and only agree that they want a lot of them.
Harry has scrambled only about a dozen eggs when Vernon comes thundering down the stairs, absolutely incapable of walking anywhere quietly. Upon seeing Harry, his moustache quivers and his face turns a ruddy, ugly red – obviously displeased with Harry's disheveled appearance, as he is every day.
"Good morning, Uncle Vernon," Harry says sweetly, because Harry being nice always makes Uncle Vernon's face purple and the best revenge is the revenge that doesn't come back to bite him in the behind.
Uncle Vernon turns redder, Harry's greeting only further inciting what Vernon surely deems as righteous anger. "Brush your hair!" Vernon, quite predictably, snarls in reply.
Harry turns back to the eggs on the stove rather than respond, sweet expression dropping from his face and he rolls his eyes as he continues to work on breakfast for Vernon and Dudley. And because he really does like living, he makes sure that Petunia – who is flitting around the table and checking on all of the presents to make sure she hasn't missed anything and that they really are impeccably wrapped – and Vernon, who has now sat down at his usually spot at the table, can't see him so blatantly disrespect his uncle before he does so.
Dudley comes down just as Harry is finishing frying the last of the eggs they have in the house, just as loud and obnoxious as his father. He sits in his usual place, but unlike his father, ignores Harry entirely, reaching for bacon in one hand and one of his presents in another.
Harry doesn't mind being ignored. In fact, he prefers it. He'd rather be ignored by Dudley than be bullied by him. Wrapping useless glasses in Scotch tape just so he would be able to see blurry shapes that only justsharpened when he squinted every time Dudley decided that punching Harry would be fun was exhausting in about forty different ways.
Thankfully, Dudley has grown out of that immaturity – no longer deeming it fun to bully Harry, or any of the other neighborhood kids.
(When Harry was nine, he saw Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, hurting one of Mrs. Figg's outside cats.
Though Harry wasn't the bad, violent child that Vernon and Petunia tried to paint him as, he had gained somewhat of a reputation in the neighborhood and at his school.
He was stubborn, inquisitive, and questioned rules before following them. He had his own idea of right and wrong and if the rules didn't fit that, then he didn't follow them. At nine years old, with his baby face and bright eyes, whether this trait endeared himself to the neighborhood folk or angered them was almost a fifty-fifty toss-up.
Therefore, when Harry saw Piers throwing rocks at Cinder – Mrs. Figg's favorite outside cat – Harry couldn't very well keep walking and ignore what was happening. So he did the only logical thing.
He had tackled Piers.
They fought for no more than probably five minutes. Harry had been lucky that it had been Piers he tackled and not his cousin, because Piers had been almost as scrawny as Harry, but not as strong – Harry supposed that he had Petunia to thank for that, as she made him garden and do all of the physical labor around the house that he was physically able to. Harry had almost managed to tear the rock out of Piers' hand when he had heard a familiar voice behind him, making the both of them freeze.
"Boys – oh boys, what are you doing – oh, my – Cinder, oh – "
It was Mrs. Figg. At first, she had been drawn by the sound of Piers and Harry fighting, but as she had gotten closer, she'd seen the prone form of her cat, and unsurprisingly, she panicked.
Harry had immediately detached himself from Piers at the sound of her voice. "Mrs. Figg?" Harry had no small amount of practice keeping a blank face in the face of a hysterical adult – though he was usually doing so in front of his Aunt, not a woman he sort of liked, even if she was boring and had a million cats.
There was no reply from Mrs. Figg at first. Instead, she had dropped to her knees beside her cat, unbridled horror writ across her face. "What … what happened?"
Harry's heart had begun beating faster at the question. If he told the truth, Mrs. Figg was likely to take it up with Piers' parents, who would in turn take it up with the Dursleys after punishing their son. Harry could only imagine Petunia's reaction to that.
So. Harry had to lie.
And lie he did.
"Is … is that Cinder? I – we didn't see him. Is he okay?" Harry had felt guilty for faking innocence and lying to the one adult that actually seemed to care about him, but Mrs. Figg wouldn't have understood why she couldn't tell Piers' parents about the incident and Cinder was still breathing so he was alive and Petunia would kill him if he embarrassed her and got Dudley's best friend's parents mad at their family. "Piers said something mean about my hair and it just made me so mad and I tackled him and – we didn't hurt Cinder, did we?"
Standing right next to him, Piers gave him a confused look but Harry glared at him before he could voice that confusion. Luckily, that exchange had taken place before Mrs. Figg had looked up, eyes bright with unshed tears. "No –" she had sniffled, thankfully not catching onto Harry's lies. "No, I don't think you did. If … if you will excuse me, I think I … I need to take Cinder to the veterinarian." She had scooped Cinder into her arms tenderly and Harry remembers how seeing blood crusted onto the belly of the old cat first made guilt tear his insides up into sixty million pieces, but then how cold, icy fury had flushed the guilt away – how his heartbeat had finally, finally calmed in the face of his anger.
Mrs. Figg had taken her time rising from the ground and once she had been out of earshot, Harry had turned to Piers, not bothering to hide his rage like he so often had to do in the Dursleys home. This had noticeably shaken Piers, who upon seeing his expression, paled considerably, though Harry didn't notice.
"Why'd … why did you cover for me?" Piers had asked a few minutes after Mrs. Figg had gone.
"I didn't." Harry had said, clipped and still very angry. Harry had to lie to the one adult on the entire planet who didn't totally hate him and the guilt would be (and was) very hard to bare, once the anger died down. Piers had hurt that cat for no reason, just like Dudley and Piers hurt Harry, for no reason, just because they could. Just like Vernon and Petunia hurt him, for no reason, just because they could. At that moment, an idea had begun to bloom, unfurling almost faster than Harry had been able to make sense of it. It wasn't the most ethical idea, but Harry had little care for ethics when no one else did. What was right might also be underhanded and sneaky – Harry had learned that early on in life.
"I didn't do it for you," Harry had continued. "I did it for me. You're going to convince Dudley not to bully me or anyone else anymore. Or I'll tell Mrs. Figg what really happened."
Piers had looked indignant – like he was about to say something, possibly something that would make Harry lose his nerve, so Harry had cut him off coldly, harshly. "No. Shut up – Mrs. Figg believes me, no matter what I say. She's not like the Dursleys. You're going to convince Dudley to stop bullying people. Or I'll tell her what really happened."
And to Piers, it must have looked like the truth, because she hadn't questioned Harry's rather obvious lie, though that was more because she was likely in shock because of her cat's injuries than because of her affection for Harry.
"I'll give you a week." Harry had said, keeping his eyes hard and expression neutral. Internally, he's worried that Piers will see through his lies and call him out on it, but he forces those thoughts aside to continue. "I'll give you a week to get Dudley to stop bullying me and everyone else or I'll tell Mrs. Figg what really happened and you'll be grounded for the entire summer because I know your parents aren't happy about how much trouble you and Dudley keep getting into." He had said this in a rush, though Piers didn't notice, progressively getting paler and paler, likely imagining his mother's wrath at him having got in trouble again. He had waited for a moment for his words – and veiled threat – to sink in, before turning and slowly walking away. As he walked to the park, which was his initial destination, some small part of him was waiting for Piers to catch on to how he wasn't as self-assured as he appeared, but Piers didn't.
Lucky for him, Piers isn't – wasn't, has never been – all that bright.
It had taken two days for Piers to reform Dudley.
And Dudley has ignored Harry ever since.)