The cupboard under the stairs was Harry's world. In the earliest days, it was simply where he slept, swaddled in blankets that smelled faintly of mildew. As he grew older, the space became his entire existence—a narrow, lightless box that seemed to shrink with every passing year. The walls were covered in scratches and scuffs, some from the Dursleys shoving things into it, others made by Harry himself, his fingernails scraping helplessly against the wood in moments of despair he was too young to articulate.
He didn't know why he was kept there. When he was very small, he assumed it was normal. Surely all boys slept in cupboards, their dreams interrupted by the sound of footsteps overhead or the rattle of locks when the door was opened. But as he grew older, he began to realize that something about his life was not like other children's. He knew, for instance, that Dudley's bedroom was larger than the entire cupboard. He knew that Dudley's toys, even the ones he never played with, were given more care than Harry's existence was.
And he knew that the Dursleys were afraid of him.
It wasn't obvious at first. When he was very young, he couldn't see the way Petunia flinched whenever she had to come near him, or the way Vernon's eyes darted toward the cupboard as though expecting it to explode. But he could feel it. The air in the house changed when he was around, tightening like a rope pulled too taut. He didn't understand it, but it seeped into him like damp into stone.
The Dursleys' house, for all its outward perfection, was a fortress of fear. Every room seemed designed to trap sound, to stifle the outside world. The wallpaper was pastel and cheery, but it felt as suffocating as the bars on a cage. Even Dudley's room, with its mountains of toys and posters of cartoon characters, felt somehow wrong. The house smelled of antiseptic and polish, as though the Dursleys were constantly trying to scrub away something they couldn't see.
The only space that felt alive, in a strange and unsettling way, was Harry's cupboard. It was cramped and dark, but there was something in the stillness of the air that felt watchful, as though the cupboard itself were aware of him. When he was alone in the dark, he could sometimes feel something brushing against the edges of his mind—a faint, whispering presence that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
It was in the cupboard that the dreams began.
At first, they were simple flashes: green light, the echo of a scream, the sound of heavy, labored breathing. But as Harry grew older, the dreams became more vivid. He would see faces he didn't recognize, places he had never been. A forest, dark and ancient, its trees twisting like skeletal fingers. A castle on a hill, its turrets wreathed in shadow. And always, always, there was the feeling of being watched, of something just out of sight, waiting.
Harry didn't tell the Dursleys about the dreams. He learned early on that they wanted nothing to do with anything strange or unusual. When he was five, he accidentally made a glass of water fly across the kitchen table in a fit of frustration. Petunia had screamed, Vernon had shouted, and Harry had spent the rest of the day locked in the cupboard. From that moment on, he learned to keep quiet, to hide the strange things that seemed to happen around him.
But the strange things didn't stop. They got worse.
By the time Harry was six, the tension in the house had become unbearable. Dudley was no longer just a spoiled bully; he had become something meaner, crueler. He would sneak to the cupboard when his parents weren't looking, kicking the door or banging on it with his fists. Once, he stuffed a dead spider through the crack at the bottom, laughing as Harry yelped in surprise.
But it wasn't Dudley's bullying that frightened Harry the most. It was the way the house itself seemed to shift around him. Shadows that shouldn't have been there stretched too long and too dark across the walls. The air would grow cold in certain rooms, cold enough that Harry could see his breath. Sometimes, late at night, he would hear things—faint whispers that seemed to come from the walls, voices that spoke in a language he didn't understand.
He tried to tell himself it was his imagination, but deep down, he knew better. He knew the house wasn't just a house. It was a prison. And something inside it was watching him.
One day, when Harry was seven, the tension finally snapped. It was a hot summer afternoon, the kind of day where the air hung heavy and still. Vernon was in the living room, sweating through his shirt and muttering about the heat. Petunia was in the kitchen, scrubbing the counters for the third time that day. And Dudley, bored and restless, decided to entertain himself by tormenting Harry.
He waited until his parents were distracted, then opened the cupboard door and grabbed Harry by the arm, dragging him out into the hallway.
"What's wrong, freak?" Dudley sneered, shoving Harry against the wall. "Gonna make something fly again? Gonna do your little magic tricks?"
"I don't—" Harry began, but Dudley cut him off with a hard shove.
"You're not normal," Dudley hissed. "Mum says you're a freak. A dangerous one."
Harry's chest tightened, anger bubbling up inside him. He didn't know why, but the word "freak" made something snap inside him. His vision blurred, and he felt a surge of energy, hot and wild, coursing through his veins.
The hallway lights flickered. The air grew cold. Dudley's sneer faltered, replaced by a look of confusion and fear.
"Stop it," Dudley whispered, his voice trembling. "Stop it!"
Harry didn't know what he was doing, but he could feel it—the air around him crackling like a storm about to break. He glared at Dudley, and for a moment, he thought he saw something in the corner of his vision. A shadow, tall and thin, with eyes like embers. It was there for only a second, but it was enough.
The lights in the house exploded, one by one, plunging the hallway into darkness. Dudley screamed and ran, his footsteps echoing through the house.
When Vernon and Petunia found Harry standing in the dark, his eyes wide and his breath coming in short gasps, they didn't ask what had happened. They didn't want to know. Vernon simply grabbed Harry by the arm and shoved him back into the cupboard, slamming the door shut.
Harry sat in the dark, his heart pounding, the faint echoes of the shadow's presence lingering in his mind.
For the first time in his life, he realized something important: He wasn't afraid of the Dursleys. He wasn't even afraid of the strange things that happened around him.
He was afraid of himself.