Chapter Text
Six year-old Harry Potter, more commonly known as Freak, lay on the floor of his cupboard bleeding. The day before, or at least he thought it was the day before, he had been running away from Dudley and his gang and tried to jump behind some trash cans to get away. Instead he had felt some weird feeling and instead found himself up on the roof of the school nauseated, like that time Dudley had pushed him in the dryer.
He had had to bring a note home from the school and the Dursley’s had been even more furious than he had expected since it wasn’t like he had been suspended or anything. He had got the worst beating of his life for that before being thrown in his cupboard. He thought it had been a day, but he wasn’t positive as he had been in and out, mostly out, of consciousness. He knew he was going to be in there for a while as Vernon had shouted he wouldn’t get to eat for the entire weekend, not that he ever got much to begin with, especially when compared with his cousin.
His eyelids felt like they were made of lead as he tried to keep them open. He remembered hearing that if you’ve been hit in the head you shouldn’t sleep, but he knew he had been out for a while. He was also worried about the amount of blood soaking into his mattress, it was a lot more than normal. Normally, after a few hours his cuts and bruises would start healing, it was why no one ever saw a mark on him and could figure out what was happening.
Harry was once again going in and out when he noticed something had changed. He was feeling a lot better, although his entire body ached like after a long day of chores. But he was also feeling different.
He tried to move around so he could see if he was healing, and that was when he started to truly freak out. When he tried to put his hand down to lift himself into a sitting position instead he saw a fluffy paw.
It was the paw that was freaking him out the worst though. If the Dursley’s opened the cupboard finally only to find him with paws they would kill him. No wasting their time with beating him senseless, they would just snap his skinny neck, and he knew it. It was just another instants of freakishness and he knew it. Even at six he knew the Dursley's were going to kill him one day.
He tried to push himself up again and failed. Taking stock of himself he realized the problem, he had somehow become a cat, tail and all. Odd things often happened around him, but this had to be the oddest of them all. But somehow he found himself accepting of the whole feline thing, it was the Dursley’s reactions that had him worried.
When Petunia finally got sick of doing the cooking and cleaning herself so took him out of the cupboard to force him to do it only to find a cat she was going to lose her mind at the freakishness. He had no doubt about that. And he knew she would be getting sick of the work soon and then he would be called out.
What Harry didn’t know was that Petunia had already gotten sick of the cooking and cleaning and tried to get him, but she couldn’t wake him up. She had poked him with her broom a few times just to make sure he was still breathing before leaving to go do the work herself, furious at how lazy the freak was. He hadn’t been going in and out for the weekend, it had been a full week before he changed. Petunia was just hopeful he would wake up soon since they could only give excuses to the school for so long, plus she wasn’t sure how to get rid of the body if the worthless brat really had died.
When they had registered the freak for school, only because they legally had to, they had told them that he had behavioural issues and was a compulsive liar. It had come in handy the few times the brat had tried to tell anyone that they hit him or made him do the housework, honestly, it was the least the freak could do since they had taken him in out of the goodness of their hearts.
And when he couldn’t go to school since his freakish healing hadn’t fully gotten rid of any marks or injuries, and they couldn’t be hidden by their precious Duddykins clothes, they told the school he was meeting with his behavioural councillor. That’s what they’d been telling the school for the past week, but that excuse would only work for so long.
All that Harry knew was that he needed to get away. And he thought he knew a way.
He was going to do whatever it was that had ended up putting him on the school roof. Maybe, if he could focus on recreating that feeling it would work.
But it didn’t. No matter what he did he couldn’t grasp hold of that feeling. He could feel a funny staticky feeling in his chest when he focused really hard, but the hole being a cat thing kept messing with his concentration.
Giving up on the idea of just thinking about the feeling he tried to remember what his emotions had been like at the time since he knew things happened more often when he was upset or angry. He thought about how he had been feeling when he was thrown in the cupboard, about the fear and the pain. And as he did that he got angry. He just wanted to be treated like a person, not the freak nephew that no one cared about.
As his anger and fear grew as he thought about all the beatings he had been forced to endure he wished with all his heart to be somewhere safe, and for those responsible for hurting him to pay.
And with a crack that echoed through the entire neighbourhood, Harry Potter the cat, was gone from his bloodstained cupboard.