Chapter Text
3rd Person POV:
Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived. The saviour of the Wixen World. Albus Dumbledore assured the public that he was being raised by loving relatives, that he wanted for nothing at all. He lied.
The Dursleys were normal people. They lived normal lives, in a normal house, on a normal street, in a normal neighborhood. Mr Dursley had a normal job manufacturing drills at a place called Grunnings, and Mrs Dursley was a normal housewife. Mr Dursley prided himself on his salary, which was enough for he, his wife and their son to live normal lives. Mrs Dursley prided herself on her home, well decorated, always spotless. They both loved their perfectly normal son, Dudley, more than anything else in the world. If you looked up the word ‘normal’ in the dictionary, you would probably get a description of the Dursleys. Well, if you ignored their nephew, that is.
Boy-Freak was freakish. It did freakish things. When that happened, Boy-Freak was punished. But it was grateful. The Dursleys took it in, fed it, clothed it, even though it didn't deserve their kindness, their generosity. They told Boy-Freak that it had to earn those things, they were privileges, ones that things like Boy-Freak did not deserve. It did so without question, because it didn't want to live on the streets. Cousin Diddy says that the hobos eat freaks, and Aunt Petunia says that Cousin Diddy was always right.
Well, Cousin Diddy was wrong about one thing. Boy-Freak wasn't an idiot, it was smart, very smart, and it realised that it only did freakish things when it had feelings. Freaks didn't deserve feelings. Boy-Freak would sit in its cupboard every night, trying to force those feelings away, so that the freakishness would stop. And it worked.
Until it didn't.
The Incident happened when it was four. Boy-Freak had dropped the heavy, cast-iron pan, and the bacon and eggs spilled onto the no-longer-pristine kitchen floor. Boy-Freak watched in horror (lock it away, freaks don't have feelings) as the pan fell, cracking the tiles. Aunt Petunia rushed in, snarling in anger as she took in the scene before her. She raised one perfectly manicured hand to strike, but before she could do anything, the pan returned to the hob, and the cracked tiles repaired themselves. That wasn't normal. Aunt Petunia hated things that weren't normal.
“VERNON!” She shrieked. “THE FREAK DID IT AGAIN!”
Boy-Freak couldn't help but shrink back in fear as its uncle waddled in as fast as his fat legs would carry him, his face already an interesting shade of puce.
“BOY,” Uncle Vernon thundered. “WHAT FREAKISH THING DID YOU DO NOW?”
“I-I’m sorry, Uncle Vernon, I-”
“The boy did one of its freakish things again, Vernon. After it dropped Diddy’s breakfast and cracked the tiles.”
Boy-Freak could only cower as its Uncle’s face twisted unattractively, steadily deepening in colour as Aunt Petunia told him what it did. Boy-Freak tried to push down its tears, because crying only made the inevitable punishment worse.
"YOU SELFISH FREAK! After all that we've done for you, you go and break my tiles and give my wife a scare! We took you in out of the kindness of our hearts, we feed you and clothe you and keep you alive, and this is how you repay us?"
Uncle Vernon grabbed Boy-Freak by the arm, dragging it up the stairs. It went willingly. It did a freakish thing. That meant punishment. Usually the Belt.
Boy-Freak quite liked the Belt. It hurt and bled and scarred, and sometimes the bleeding made him hot and cold and twitchy and numb and made going to the toilet really really painful, but the Belt meant that it was getting more normal. Less freakish. Uncle Vernon had a special belt that he kept in Boy-Freak's cupboard, which he used to beat the freak out of freakish people. Usually Boy-Freak. If Uncle Vernon beat the freak out of Boy-Freak, then maybe it would get its own room, like Cousin Diddy did. It might even be allowed to eat with the good, normal people and have a proper name!
Uncle Vernon kicked the bathroom door open and flung Boy-Freak into the bath. Uncle Vernon hissed — flecks of spit flying at Boy-Freak — to “Stay there,” as he slammed the door behind him. When he returned not a minute later, he was holding the Belt in his meaty hands. Boy-Freak dutifully took off Dudley's its shirt, and lay face down in the bath as Uncle Vernon locked the door.
Boy-Freak didn't scream during beatings. Screaming only made things worse. But it did wince at each thrash, watching the crimson blood stain the white bath as it oozed from the broken skin. It could hear Uncle Vernon huffing and puffing from the effort. “Don't– you– ever– do–something– so– freakish– again!” He gritted out between each thrash, panting heavily.
The beating only stopped when Uncle Vernon ran out of stamina. The man was huffing and puffing and wheezing and panting, each of his many chins were wobbling, and he took at least 10 minutes to regain his breath. Boy-Freak spent that time trying to count how many injuries it had. It bit its lip, realising that some wounds from last week's beating had reopened.
Last week, Aunt Petunia tried to cut its hair again. That never worked. Boy-Freak always did freaky things when its hair got cut, no matter what. It always grew back overnight, longer and thicker and shinier than before. It always got belted for that. By now, Boy-Freak's hair reached its waist. Cousin Diddy said it made Boy-Freak look like a girl.
By the time Uncle Vernon regained his breath, Boy-Freak's vision was waning. Uncle Vernon waddled back towards the bath, turning on the shower and aiming the head at Boy-Freak's bruised and bleeding back. Boy-Freak swallowed a gasp at the high pressure, and it squeezed its eyes shut as the freezing water turned scalding hot. The water was sprayed until the cuts stopped bleeding, then Uncle Vernon threw the shower head at it and told it to wash.
When Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut, Boy-Freak sighed in relief and stood up, hissing in pain as it limped towards the bathroom door, locking it. Boy-Freak quickly washed its hair and body, trying to be especially gentle with its back. Boy-Freak didn't think that it's spine was broken this time, so that was good. Whilst the shower ran, it stared, transfixed, at the pink-tinted water going down the drain, watching as it turned clear. Boy-Freak usually spent most of its shower-time carefully detangling its hair. Even though the length made it look like a girl, Boy-Freak always felt bad when it was cut or damaged or unwashed. Aunt Petunia had once told Uncle Vernon that she felt the same things, though not for the same reasons. The dizziness, the shakiness. She called it ‘low blood sugar’.
Once it was finished, Boy-Freak shut off the water. It searched, shivering, for a towel to use. The ones on the rack were dry, clean and fluffy, but those towels were for the good, normal people, not freaks. It took Boy-Freak at least five minutes to find an old, damp, unwashed towel to use. It had lost its fluffiness long ago, and Boy-Freak winced as it dried its sore back. Once it was dry, Boy-Freak pulled Dudley’s its shirt over its head again. Its trousers were wet, wet enough to drip, so it left those off. There was another pair in the cupboard.
Boy-Freak bundled up its wet trousers, put the towel back where it was before, and unlocked the bathroom door. It hobbled towards the stairs, where it was accosted and shoved by Cousin Diddy. Boy-Freak braced as it tumbled down the stairs, and was dragged by the arm by Aunt Petunia, who was waiting at the bottom. She hurled Boy-Freak unceremoniously into the cupboard, locking the door behind it. Boy-Freak struggled into its other pair of trousers, stopping multiple times to regain its breath. Once it finally managed to wriggle into them, Boy-Freak laid back onto its mattress, and winced, its wounds protesting.
The mattress was very lumpy, and it smelled funny, and it wasn’t very comfortable, but Boy-Freak didn’t dare complain. It deserved this, because it was a freaky freak that did freakish things, and the Dursleys were very kind and generous to even take it in, and working to earn its keep was the least that Boy-Freak could do to repay their generosity, and complaining about something as trivial as a mattress when it didn't even deserve one in the first place would mean that Boy-Freak was ungrateful. Boy-Freak didn’t want to be ungrateful.
Boy-Freak’s eyes began to sting, and it realised that it was crying. No! No, it couldn't cry! Crying made freaky things happen! Boy-Freak tried frantically to wipe its tears away, but they just kept coming. It could feel something bubbling beneath its skin, a pressure that was steadily becoming painful. Boy-Freak’s long hair stood on end, and its breathing was becoming shallower. Everything hurt, not just its back, and the cupboard was getting hotter. Boy-Freak could feel its shirt sticking to its body, and it started coughing. Blood coated Boy-Freak’s hands, and the tears just kept coming. Fear gripped its chest, slowly squeezing its heart and lungs until it could no longer breathe, and Boy-Freak’s cupboard started lighting up.
In an effort to remain silent, Boy-Freak bought a hand up to his mouth, muffling its sobs as the pain just worsened. The blood still coating its hands stained its face, warm and sticky, and the stairs above Boy-Freak started creaking. Boy-Freak tried to calm down, to think happy thoughts, but it had none. It instead imagined a place where it wasn’t a freak, where it had people who loved it like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon loved Cousin Diddy. The pain beneath Boy-Freak’s skin was becoming unbearable, its ears were ringing, and the light in the cupboard was blinding. Boy-Freak lost consciousness just as a loud BOOM rocked the house, its world becoming black. The last thing it heard was a loud crack.
??? POV:
“ジン？ 大丈夫か?”
“ああ、くそっ！ 今のは何だ?”
“外国人?”
“彼女は血まみれだ!”
“彼女を連れてこい!”
“彼女に何が起こったのか?”