"Don't leave us too long," Morgan hissed at him as they slithered away into the hedges, all three of them invisible in the darkness. They would hunt for a few hours before coming back to find a place to nap until he could sneak them back into his cupboard.
His cupboard took thirty minutes to scrub clean. The kitchen was worse. It looked as though no one had so much as wiped a crumb off the counter in the month he'd been locked away. Harry doubted the rest of the house was any better, and dreaded what his day would look like.
Around his fifth birthday, about the time he started schoo, Aunt Petunia had increased his chores from just helping to him doing them entirely. She had, without him noticing, stopped cleaning at all, instead choosing to make him do everything. If it wasn't up to her standards, she'd hit him and make him do it again until it was. Every failure was met with a palm to the face or a twist of the arm. When dinner had burnt for the fourth night in a row, at six years old, she'd hit him with her frying pan. Every time she had to hit him, when Uncle Vernon came home, he'd get beaten bloody. Then he'd be locked in the cupboard while they ate the dinner he'd prepared.
Harry scrubbed until his wrists hurt and the skin on his fingers cracked. The dishes were done, and the smell of cleaner burned his nose. He'd been preparing a bucket to scrub the baseboards when he heard the sounds of movement above him. He hadn't even noticed the sun rising though the window.
It would be better to wait, he decided. Both Dudley and Uncle Vernon were messy eaters, and he'd have to clean the floors a second time. Instead, he started on breakfast.
Harry shoved a bite into his mouth and put the plates of egg and bacon on the table just as Uncle Vernon came through the door, demanding his morning coffee. He liked his with more milk and sugar than Aunt Petunia liked in her tea, which was entirely too sweet.
A moment later, Dudley followed Aunt Petunia into the room, complaining.
"But it's summer!" he whined. During the summer, Dudley routinely slept until one in the afternoon.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon looked a lot alike. They both had large, pink faces and very little neck. Their eyes were watery blue and small. Uncle Vernon was beginning to bald and had a thick moustace, but Dudley had blond hair that sat neatly on his fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel – Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.
They sat down and began eating as Aunt Petunia explained to him that they had an appointment in London to get his uniform for school at nine. It was already seven, and Dudley whined some more, until Aunt Petunia told him they'd go out for a treat afterwards.
Once they had finished, and everyone was bustling out the door, Aunt Petunia fixed her eyes on him.
"To Mrs. Figg's with you. No detours," she said and shoved him out of the house.
Harry swollowed the retort, as painful as it was, and set off for Wisteria Walk around the corner to the only person in Little Winging that would accept him into their house.
Between the Dursley's telling everyone that Harry was a delinquent they'd had no choice but to take in after his parents died, and Dudley's bullying being blamed on Harry, no one but the old woman would even look at Harry. Incedentally, she'd been minding him any time the Dursley's wanted rid of him or went somewhere since he was a toddler. Harry wasn't allowed in the house by himself.
Mrs. Figg was odd, and completely obsessed with the dozen or so ugly cats she had. His time there was spent with her showing him photos of all her cats and telling stories of their mischief making.
There were only so many times of hearing how Snowball tackled Peanut Harry could take before he wanted to scream, or set her and her cats on fire. He put up with it though. Mainly, because Mrs. Figg didn't make him clean anything, and fed him real meals where he could eat as much as he wanted. Not that he ever ate much. He'd made that mistake more than once when he was younger. Luckily, Mrs. Figg though he'd caught something and called Aunt Petunia to get him when he got sick from eating.
He sat in her cluttered, dusty drawing room listening to her drone on endlessly about the cats for hours. The whole time, he thought about how much longer he'd have to put up with his misery at the Dursley's. He would be starting at Stonewall this year, and for once, Dudley wouldn't be there. That meant, he'd no longer have to be careful about keeping his grades low. Seven years until he could take his A-Levels. Then he'd go to University and prove everything they'd ever said about him wrong.
His plans for after University were less concrete, but they were still plans. He'd study hard and make something of himself. While he was doing that, he'd learn more magical things and get stronger. Then, when he was powerful and successful, he'd come back for the Dursleys. One day, they would regret everything they'd ever done to him. But that was a long way away yet.
He'd lived with the Dursley's almost ten miserable, long years. He'd been with them since he'd been a baby, and his parents had died in a car crash. He couldn't remember anything from before him time with them. Although sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn't remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and there were no photographs of them in the house.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only family. He'd given up that dream a long time ago. Now, he waited and took everything they did to him in silence. And he plotted the revenge he'd be able to take one day.
The phone rang, startling him from his thoughts. It was Aunt Petunia, calling him home. When he arrived, she promptly put him to work, like she always did when she felt like he'd had too long of a break.
That night, after dinner, Dudley paraded around the living room in his new uniform. Smelting's Academy was where Uncle Vernon went, and Dudley would be following him there when they went back to school. And it was a boarding school, so Dudley would be gone for several months every year. Harry couldn't wait.
Of course, he had to make it that far, and it was very hard to keep from laughing at the moment. The Smeltings boys uniforms were ridiculously ugly, with maroon tailcoats and orange knickerbockers. They even had flat straw hats, boaters they were called. They also carried knobbly sticks that Uncle Vernon encouraged Dudley to hit the other boys with when the teachers weren't looking.
As he looked at Dudley, Uncle Vernon said it was the proudest moment of his life.Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up.
The entire display was sickening, and hilarious. It was almost painful holding back his laughter. A dark look out of the corner of Uncle Vernon's eye sent him scurrying into his cupboard for the night.
There was a new stack of Dudley's old clothes and a packet of gray dye on the counter when Harry went to start breakfast the next morning. In the sink was a large metal tub.
"What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia when she came downstairs.
Her lips tightened as they always did on the rare occasion he dared to ask a question. "Your new school uniform," she said.
Harry looked in the clothes again. "Oh," he said. Normally, he was left to pick through Dudley's old things. Not the good ones, she donated those to the charity shop down the street, but the ones destined for the rubbish bin.
"You're to dye some of Dudley's old things grey," Aunt Petunia snapped. "They'll look just like everyone else's when you've finished."
Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. He set the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High – like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably.