Chapter Text
Harry Potter was left on the doorstep of Number Four Privet Drive, in Little Whinging, Surrey, in the early morning of November 2, 1981. Petunia Dursley screamed so loudly when she went to put out the milk bottles and instead found him, a fifteen-month-old baby with a note tucked into his blanket, that she woke the neighborhood, which was only starting to rouse. Reading the note, Petunia learned that her younger sister, Lily, and her husband, James, had died. Petunia also read that she was now expected to take in and raise Harry Potter, the son of Lily and James, and the only survivor. The Dursleys were his closest and only remaining blood relatives, and to keep her family safe, Petunia had no other choice but to accept the burden of raising her nephew.
Vernon and Petunia Dursley were vehemently against having Harry (his eyes were killing curse green, and he didn't cry, traumatized, after watching his mum and dad killed in front of him and experiencing his house exploding around him), but after reading the note, they knew they had no other option, not if they want to protect their son, Dudley, who was only a month older than their nephew.
Harry was unlike his cousin in every conceivable way. While Dudley was a loud, blond child, Harry was a quiet baby with dark and messy hair. Not wanting to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions from her neighbors, Petunia quickly called the police and got his papers in order. Having been sent his birth announcement by her sister, even though they were estranged, Petunia knew when Harry was born and how much he weighed. She told the police that her sister and husband had died and left her their son and that she didn’t know anything else. For once, she was telling the truth. The police were very understanding and, seeing that she is now in charge of taking care of two toddlers alone - Vernon had left for work - they tipped their hats and made their way out of Number Four after ensuring that the surprise child had the necessary documentation.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the police officers had been too trusting and left too soon, for Harry was put in the cupboard almost immediately after they left, when he had summoned a bite of food from Dudley’s high chair, hungry for his own breakfast. Consequently, Harry was not let out until Vernon got home from work, when he asked what she did with the baby, not knowing since he had left. Not wanting to argue with his wife, who seemed to be at her wits' end and was surprisingly insistent that Harry remain, Vernon just nodded his head in agreement, saying that she knows how to deal with the freak best.
The Dursleys continued their cruel treatment over the years, punishing him and controlling him, seemingly at random; sometimes there truly was no reason he was sent to his cupboard other than the fact that they didn’t want to look at him. Until one day, when Harry learned that he could do things that they couldn’t, that he was special. He recognized why the Dursley family hated him and treated him so badly when his accidental magic caused the frying pan that Aunt Petunia swung at him (he had burned the bacon, too short to see the stove) to freeze and hover in the air. He was five at the time.
“You’re a FREAK!” Aunt Petunia screamed, for she was always Aunt Petunia or ma’am, never Auntie, Tuney, or mummy, he had painfully learned but never forgotten, just like all other lessons taught to him in the Dursleys' household.
“Just like your mother,” she snarled, before glaring in fear at the frying pan that continued to hover in the air next to her. It suddenly dropped to the floor. Petunia flinched violently.
My mother? She was like me?
His questions must have been clear in his eyes because he knew he did not speak them aloud; questioning Aunt Petunia was strictly forbidden.
“Yes, she was a freak like you,” Aunt Petunia answered. “Now go to your cupboard!”
Dodging the hot grease spilling on the floor and his aunt’s backhand that nearly hit him when she swung her pointer finger out of the kitchen, Harry ran. He ran to the only safe place he could ever recall. It was dark, dusty, and small, but it was a place that no Dursley would ever deign to enter, and it was his.
The years continued to pass in a similar fashion, with Harry being abused by the Dursleys in almost every sense of the word and learning to control whatever powers he had. He both loathed and reveled whenever his powers acted out of his control because it almost always guaranteed some kind of extra punishment; going to the cupboard early, no food for a few days, or even a physical beating that Vernon had taken to giving him whenever Harry's control over his powers slipped too much.
But in addition to the Dursleys’ attempts to beat the freakishness out of him - as Uncle Vernon had ever so eloquently put it - if he slipped in front of his Aunt Petunia, Harry was sometimes lucky enough to get a small piece of information about his family history, about his mum.
Lily, he learned her name was after he accidentally caused Aunt Petunia’s flowers to grow from seeds to blossoms in his hand as he planted them under her watchful eye.
“Of course, you can grow flowers too, just like Lily,” Petunia spat before sending him to his cupboard, before the neighbors could see.
So far, Harry had learned that his mother’s name was Lily, she had had red hair, unlike his own dark mass of riotous black hair that he must have inherited from his father, and Harry had what would have been Lily’s green eyes if they didn’t have that freaky glow to them when he got angry. He was angry at the Dursleys a lot. And if Petunia was to be believed, Harry also knew that they got themselves blown up the night they died.
Aunt Petunia tried to tell him it was a car crash that killed his parents, but Harry countered her blatant lie by telling her about the man who broke into their house that night with his high, cold, and cruel laugh, and the flash of green light before the house came down around him. Petunia paled in such an instantaneous way that Harry might have been concerned that she would faint if he cared about her at all.
She then admitted that his parents had been targeted by a freak terrorist, and he was left on their doorstep with a note the next morning saying they were his only living blood relatives, and for their safety, they had to take him in.
Albus Dumbledore was the one who left him and the note on the Dursleys' doorstep. Harry found the letter signed by the man when he was cleaning his aunt and uncle’s room and carefully scouring through their things for any items that they wouldn't notice going missing, when he found it folded up and hidden in a small box in the back of the closet. He read the letter quickly before returning it to its hiding place, before he could be discovered.
Although Harry didn’t know who the man was aside from his name, Harry knew he hated him.
Who leaves a baby alone and defenseless on a doorstep? He thought angrily when he was sent back to his cupboard without dinner, his aunt somehow finding fault in how he meticulously completed his long list of chores, banishing him to commiserate in the dust and dark with only the spiders for company.
And why with the Dursleys? he wondered. If you spend five minutes with them, anyone could see that they were awful and performative people obsessed with being normal and keeping up appearances.
Either Dumbledore had met them and knew what kind of people they were and decided to leave him there anyway, or he never met them and decided to assume a family with a toddler of their own could and would just happily take in another child, all because of a note from a man they had never met.
Harry could only assume that while Aunt Petunia may not have met the man called Albus Dumbledore, she at least knew of him and either respected him or feared him enough to obey. Harry couldn’t think of why else she would keep a child she hated. Why would she torture them both this way if everyone, Harry included, wanted him to be somewhere else?
Harry may have to play dumb in school; the Dursleys always accused him of cheating if he outperformed Dudley, who had the intelligence of a brick, but he was remarkably intelligent for his age. He knew that something was off about his situation, and he was determined to figure out why.