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Harry is only six years old.
He knows because he’s been counting how many Julys it's been.
It feels like it’s been a long time since someone said happy birthday to him.
It feels like it’s been a long time since somebody’s smiled at him.
It feels like it’s been a long time since he’s felt full.
He is small, pale, and incredibly hungry.
So, so very hungry.
Dudley’s never hungry though, because Dudley’s not a demon.
At least, that’s what Aunt Petunia said earlier that evening when she handed him some stale bread and a small cup of water.
Harry sipped the water as slowly as he could, he wasn’t sure when he’d get more.
His stomach turned nauseatingly as water met empty blackness inside him.
He ignores it boredly and tries to pass the time thinking about the fairy tales he read at the library after school.
He remembers being jealous of Hansel and Gretel, even if they’d gotten eaten by a witch in the end.
Harry tilts his head and peers through the crack of his cupboard door into the dim hallway beyond, it's the only thing he can do right now really. It's quite late and the lightbulb blew a long time ago, Harry could keep playing with the broken little army men he'd scrounged from the trash but it'd be very hard to see them.
He often liked to focus on them as hard as he could, sometimes he’d even get them to move back and forth without using his hands.
He never does it in front of Aunt Petunia. She hit him with a frying pan the last time he did.
Harry really didn't like his aunt and uncle very much. His cousin even less so.
It always seemed like the smaller Harry got, the bigger Dudley became. The bigger Dudley became, the more hurt Harry ended up.
Hurt, pale and small.
Sometimes Harry wondered if he would become so small he'd disappear. Sometimes he'd wonder if that would be so bad.
Harry thinks it would be, if only because his family would get to stay.
If only because they'd get to keep living.
If only because Dudley would be allowed to get bigger, and bigger…
Dudley would get big and grow up and have all the toys he could ever want and then some.
Harry really doesn't like his family very much at all.
—
It's Tuesday after school and Harry is hiding.
He’d snuck back into the classroom to avoid Dudley and the boys who always seemed to trail behind him.
Harry doesn't like them very much, they're loud and mean and sweaty with the oncoming heat of summer.
They're also quite stupid in Harry's opinion, he had looped the same hallway thrice then ducked back into the classroom to lose them. He'd heard their pounding footsteps run back towards the school entrance.
The hall monitors never seemed to stop them.
Harry let out a quiet breath and winced at the bruising on his ribs. His right knee burned where he'd scraped it raw, and his left elbow stung. His neck felt stiff and twinged if he turned too quickly.
Harry hated his cousin.
The sound of squeaking and chittering drew his attention to the back of the class. A fat white bunny lived in a cage that was arguably too small. The class picked the name Snowball for it just last Friday.
Harry liked Snowball, his red eyes were pretty and his fur was the softest thing Harry had ever touched.
Without realizing Harry had drawn closer to the cage, his bony pointer finger easily fit through the bars to stroke the bunny's head.
For a moment Harry felt calm, content even.
He stared into red eyes and red eyes stared back.
He felt like he knew what the bunny might feel like in its too small cage, being stared at and prodded all day.
Then the classroom door burst open with three lumbering boys, and he really didn't feel calm anymore at all.
“Get the freak!”
Dudley crowed, his friends giving abhorrent war cries of their own as they rushed him in a stampede of flailing limbs.
Harry had no time to think with them crowding him back against Snowball’s cage, heavy meaty fists landing punches down on his frail collar bones and cruel fingers snagging in inky black hair.
Harry sobbed once and shook with the pain and fear, he sobbed again with eyes screwed shut and body curled forward, felt an overwhelming sensation bubble up behind his navel. It released from his body all at once with a shrill cry.
Then there was silence, so deafening and loud with the sudden lack of raised voices.
Harry braved a glance and found all three boys sprawled out before him, eyes closed and jaws slack. They seemed to be developing angry red marks on all their exposed skin.
Harry felt a surprising amount of satisfaction.
Harry let out a shuddering breath and leaned back, the bars of the cage making him flinch forward and turn quickly.
Snowball was laying on his side, eyes unseeing.
Red dripped from the rabbit’s mouth and nose.
Harry hated school.
___
Harry hasn't had food outside of lunch at school in two days.
His Aunt had screamed that ‘Demons don't deserve food!’ when he'd begged for a slice of bread that morning.
His insides hurt almost as much as his outsides.
Uncle Vernon hadn't been very happy when he had to pick Dudley up from the nurse's office then take him to the hospital. He'd been red and outraged, Aunt Petunia a shrill and inconsolable echo beside him.
The doctor said Dudley must have run into something with great force, that aside from soreness and a sizable lump on the side of his head he'd be fine.
Dudley said he couldn’t remember what happened.
Harry hoped he never did.
“Boys will be boys ma'am, just have him ice the bruising. The swelling should go down in a few days.”
The doctor was a tall man with a thick mustache and tiny wired glasses.
He offered Dudley some pills for the pain, and some sedative pills for his distraught parents.
Harry sat in a chair in the corner and tried to make himself as small as possible.
He's nowhere near small enough when he gets home and Uncle Vernon knocks him bodily into the wall beside his cupboard.
“Listen to me freak, and listen well.”,
He nods his head jerkily, tears forming in his eyes from the pain radiating up and down his spine.
“I don't want to hear a sound from you while Dudley is healing. No freaky happenings, no talking back to your poor aunt and no tantrums out of you. Do I make myself clear, boy?”
“Yes, Uncle Vernon.”
Harry's voice comes out cracked from disuse and irregular access to water throughout the day.
He's so tired.
Uncle Vernon shoves him hard against the wall again before bodily tossing him inside his cupboard and locking it behind him.
Outside his door he hears the beginning of Dudley's (fake) cries once more and Aunt Petunia’s frantic platitudes.
Harry hated his family.
___
It's Friday and Dudley and Harry have been kept home from school.
That means more chores for Harry as Dudley 'recuperates’ and more time for Dudley to make Harry's life a nightmare. Speaking of which, Harry's dreams have been…odd since he'd hurt Dudley.
Since he'd killed Snowball.
He hears whispers, you see. They are soft and melodic. They tell him that he's great, that he's too good for those around him. That one day he’ll be too big to shove into his cupboard, that he’ll be too strong to be forced under the stairs.
Harry likes the voices, even if they’re lying.
Harry scrubs at the red crayon marks on the wall beside the couch in the sitting room, Dudley had blamed his scribblings on Harry just that afternoon. Harry’s shoulder joint aches in its socket from being dragged so roughly by a livid aunt Petunia.
He scrubs in slow circular motions as his ragged nails cry out in agony, as his knees beg him to get off them, as his wrist stiffens from the abuse of repetitive movements.
Harry continues to scrub.
The front door lock clicks and Uncle Vernon shuffles inside, he looks pleased with himself in a most smug and insufferable way. Dudley bounds from the abused couch that had become his kingdom for the day and ‘limps’ towards his father.
Harry begins scrubbing softly, up and down.
Their voices blend together, Aunt Petunia’s joining them as they greet one another.
Placid greetings, inquiries after the other’s days. A rant Aunt Petunia often falls back on about the foreign family who lives down the way and the way they trim their hedges.
Up and down.
Side to side.
Up.
Down.
“Boy! What’s this I hear about you drawing on the walls? Ungrateful wretch, I’ll whip your hide for this-”
Uncle Vernon is stalking towards him, his beady eyes glinting with horrible intent. Dudley snickers behind his father and preens as his mother smooths his hair back from his face.
Aunt Petunia smiles down at the pudgy boy by her side.
Harry hates his family. He hates them with all his heart.
He hates them even more as uncle Vernon's hand connects with his cheek, he hates them with a horrid burning anger when Uncle Vernon's belt makes a sharp cutting noise through the air and sparks burning pain in his chin, on his neck and then his hands as Harry tries to protect his face.
The voice whispers that Harry only has to wait a little longer as he loses consciousness.
It tells him that soon they will meet.
Soon he will return to great love unknown.
Harry closes tired green eyes and dreams of smokey blackness in a white train station.
—
Harry comes to, inside his cupboard.
It's quiet and dark inside the cupboard.
It’s quiet and dark inside Harry too.
Harry thinks of white fur and pretty red eyes inside of a too small cage.
He thinks he knows what Snowball must have felt like if only a little.
“You’re beautiful Harry...”
The voices (or is it just one voice?) are back.
It sounds stronger, more real than a dream. A memory almost.
He feels cold slender hands in his greasy knotted hair, but they don’t snag.
They don’t pull or catch on tangles. Their movements are gentle, loving as they smooth from the crown of his head to his nape.
“You are beautiful, my Harry. Too beautiful for them to look at. Too big for this cage.”
Cold lips touch the scar Harry often forgets about on his forehead.
“There’s so much you can do, my love. So much you must do. You must feed.”
Harry blinks in the darkness as he rises to his hands and knees.
He feels strange.
He feels too heavy for his bones, like he’ll vibrate out of his own skin. Ragged nail beds curl into his filthy ratty sheet leaving bloody specks behind. His spine bends and bends and bends some more as he curls until his nose is pressed into his own concave stomach.
He doesn’t scream as his limbs elongate or his neck twists more than it ever should.
He doesn’t scream as the ever-present hunger tears through his mangled body.
He doesn’t scream when black smoke begins to pour out his mouth, trails down his face like a sick parody of tears. He doesn't scream when the door to the cupboard goes flying into the wall across the hallway.
He does scream when he floats from the floor to the ceiling, but it’s not from fear nor pain.
It’s from rage.
Harry breathes deeply though he has no lungs to do so.
He breathes deeply and suddenly he begins to feel the aching hunger abate, pictures fly from the walls, China and furniture, light fixtures and soon the floorboards all seem to come to him and fill his aching stomach. He doesn’t chew nor swallow, he doesn’t even really taste anything.
He just knows hunger and rage, so he eats to quell them both.
Harry phases through the ceiling and finds himself in his aunt and uncle’s room. They are awake and alert from the noise he must’ve caused before. It doesn’t make a difference to Harry.
No one can hurt him anymore.
“Vernon! Vernon, do something!” His wretched aunt begs her husband as Harry wills all her stupid trinkets to fly at the couple. The drawers come flying from the dresser, the toiletries on aunt petunia’s vanity fly into the mirror and soon there’s broken glass joining the shrieking melody of Harry’s creation.
Harry wills the hefty body of his uncle closer, wills the thick bones in his thighs to snap jaggedly and protrude through the man's thick flesh. The man is screaming raw, and loud and unfiltered.
Harry twists Vernon’s arm backwards like a barbie doll, he giggles as he cries louder. Harry’s enjoying breaking fingers one through seven on his uncle’s hands when he notices his aunt crawling quietly for the door.
Harry feels an ache in teeth he no longer has and lashes out at the quivering woman, he tears at her nightgown and her hair, He tears at skin and blood and bone and soft, soft organs.
The room smells metallic and dusty from the holes in the ceiling.
Harry is still hungry.
Uncle Vernon’s still conscious somehow after Harry nibbled on his legs, he got a little over excited so now Uncle Vernon is missing flesh and bone from the knees down.
Harry thinks this must have been what the roast tasted like from dinner a few nights ago.
He wasn’t allowed to have any since demon’s weren’t allowed to have any of the food he’d prepared.
Harry starts to think that's fair; demon’s need more than roast to feel full after all.
Harry’s pondering if he really is a demon or a monster as he works his way through his uncle’s ribcage, sharp snaps fill the room as the ragged edge of his magick works its way through tough fat and thick bones to get to the lungs and heart beneath.
Harry couldn’t taste when the night started but now it feels like he can’t stop.
The voice tells him he’s a growing boy, that he must eat as much as he can. That it loves him deeply and has ever since she knew she was pregnant with him.
The voice tells him to call her Mother.
Harry likes Mother.
Mother doesn’t scold him when he accidentally eats the wall to the left of Dudley’s head instead of the fat target he’d been aiming for.
Mother coos at him for being a messy eater when he spatters his cousin's viscera on the torn remaining floorboard of the upper floors.
Mother encourages him to keep going when he tears the remaining walls down to the foundations of the horrid house he was raised in.
Harry’s still hungry after consuming the hedges in the front yard and Uncle Vernon’s brand-new car. Mother tells him that he’ll be hungry for a long time.
Mother tells him that there’s a special place with food much better than here. Mother tells him he needs to feed on magick, that it's his birthright.
Mother tells him that no one will stop him, because Mother is here too.
Mother loves him very much.
Harry likes that a lot.