Chapter Text
Harry Potter is seven years old, and he is going to die. When Petunia finds him in front of the broken pieces of her best china, she will not fret over his bleeding hands or the gash on his face from where the glass nicked him. She will shriek, and if he’s lucky, he will be locked in his cupboard and starve to death. She will shriek, and if he’s unlucky, he will be dragged by the shock of white hair in his fringe that the Dursleys sneer at, presented to Vernon, and beaten to death. Maybe with the belt, or with the fire poker again, or perhaps worst of all, with Vernon’s meaty fists.
The panic welling within him is a storm. A great big storm that Harry cannot control because he is no good.
He prays—he begs to the God that Petunia tells him he so desperately needs— that the plate was never broken. That he hadn’t dropped it with his trembling fingers, that Dudley had no doubt broken. No one responds. God never does. Not to him. Petunia says it’s because he’s no good, he’s a sinner. Vernon reckons it’s his parents' fault, but Harry wouldn’t know. They’ve been dead longer than Harry ever knew them.
The storm in Harry is roaring; it’s wrestling with him, and for once, Harry lets the cold seep in. The cold takes place in that spot between his ribs and his lungs; it purges the blood from his veins and replaces every bit of it with ice. There’s anger there. Next to his frustration and desperation, and if he could just fix the bloody plate, this wouldn’t be a problem–
And then something brilliant happens. The storm in him pushes out, all the rain, and lightning, and ice pushes out and wraps itself in the shards of porcelain on the floor, and one minute the pieces are flying around him in a brilliant cyclone, and the next there’s a plate in his hand. The same plate he just broke, complete with the ugly green flowers.
Harry laughs, something broken and amazed. The plate is fixed. He fixed the plate, he won’t die–
“What on God’s green Earth did you do?!” Petunia shrieks from the doorway of the kitchen. She looks pale, and her dull brown eyes are alight with fear and fury and something Harry can’t define. Panic ebbs and flows into him once again. How long had she been there? Did she see him break the plate?
“I– I fixed it! See, I can make things better! I can be good! I fixed it!” Harry is trembling, eyes wide and welled with tears.
“Make things better?” Petunia guffaws, the sheen of sweat highlighting the hysterical look in her eyes. “Are you so lost in Sin you can’t see what you’ve done?! I should have known you would be just like her. The spawn of the devil, you are!” She cried and shrieked. “I won’t stand for it! Not again! Not in my house!”
Harry is seven years old, and he is going to die. Petunia grabs him with her too-long fingers by the white streak in his fringe, gripping so tightly Harry can feel strands of hair being tugged out. He chokes on silent, heaving sobs as she pulls him through the house. Petunia opens the door to his cupboard and throws him in. It’s so dark. It’s always so dark.
He can hear his aunt rampaging through the house. When you’re shoved into a dark room all of your life, you learn to use your other senses. He hears her punch the numbers into the telephone rather frantically.
“Vernon! Oh, Vernon, it’s awful–Everything is so awful!” Petunia's shrill cries are hard not to hear, in all honesty. “The boy–Oh, that wretched boy! He’s finally done it! I can’t have him here anymore! He’s–He’s just like her. He’s the Devil!” She sniffs as she listens to what Vernon is saying on the other end of the line.
“Yes!” She cries out, relief flooding her tone. “Yes, that’s perfect!... Of course…Yes, darling, you are so brilliant!” She hangs up the phone with an aggressive click. Suddenly, her sharp, high-heeled foot-steps are beelining for Harry’s Cupboard.
The padlocks on the outside of the door click as she opens all three of them. Light floods the tiny space, and Petunia’s face is puffy and red, with thick chunks of her eye makeup running down her cheeks. Despite this, there’s a vindictive, satisfied gleam in her eyes, and her thin lips are pulled in a mean smirk.
She grabs him by the wrist and throws him behind her. Harry merely watches, still on the floor, as she throws his tattered school bag out of the closet. She then begins to take everything of Harry’s, every hand-me-down piece of clothing, and the two old toys of his cousin’s that he was allowed to keep, and stuff them into the bag. It all fits, with much more room to spare. She walks to the filing cabinet next to the cupboard and takes out a manila folder with his name on it.
“Up!” She snaps, grabbing him by the wrist. “Put on your shoes, we’re leaving!” Harry doesn’t ask where they’re going. He doesn’t think he wants to know.
The drive is tense, full of Petunia’s mutterings of “Bloody Devil worshippers,” and “Godforsaken freaks.”
They drive for very long, so long that the sun has gone from just above the east horizon and towards its peak. Or he thinks it did. It was hard to see through the perpetual clouds.
Eventually, they arrive at a run-down, gothic-looking building. The house, if it could be called that, was made of decaying white wood and dark bricks. In front of where Petunia had parked the car was a vast, black, iron gate. Fog hung low to the ground, and all the trees seemed devoid of any leaves, save for a great, towering willow tree that was off in the distance, but clearly still part of the property if the black gates were anything to go by.
Outside the gates read a big, haggard-looking sign. “St. Lucy’s Christian Home for Orphans.”
An Orphanage. Harry was being put in an Orphanage.
That was…was it okay? Was he okay with being totally abandoned? Even if it was by the Dursleys?
He didn’t have much time to deliberate on this because Petunia rather hastily opened the car door and dragged him out by his wrist, rough enough to bruise. If she twisted, even slightly, Harry was sure it would break. He clung to his book-bag as she dragged him inside the eerie building.
Moments before they got to the door, it creaked open. There stood an elderly man with greying hair and glazed over blue eyes.
Petunia, for the slightest of moments, hesitated. It was gone as quickly as it came, though, and she dragged him forward, a blank look on her face.
“Good day, ma’am.” The man blinked slowly. “I am Father Michael,” His attention turned to Harry, a curious look on his face, “and who might you be, young man?”
“Hadrian Potter,” Petunia answers. The sneer on her face was imperceptible to anyone who hadn’t spent their life needing to know her mood by the twitch of her eye. “This is an orphanage, yes? You’ll take him?”
Father Michael stares with a calculating look in his eye, “We will. He’s a bit old, is he not?”
Petunia’s left eye twitches slightly, a frown jutting out her bottom lip. “He was my sister's. She died when he was a babe, and we tried our best. Oh, Father, how we tried. But my sister was a Devil Worshiper through and through, and I’m afraid it’s predisposed for him.”
“I see,” Father Michael nods slowly. “Well, then, come along, and we shall get everything sorted.”
Petunia only stayed long enough to sign the papers before she pulled out of the gravel driveway, the form of Vernon’s car losing its shape the farther away it got.
Father Michael puts a clammy hand on his shoulder as they watch the car drive away. There’s ice in his veins again, numbing over every emotion he feels. He will not cry. (“Boys don’t cry!” Vernon would sneer, the belt buckle connects with Harry’s back again, and again, and again, and again–)
“Come along, Hadrian. There is much to discuss.” Father Michael guides him inside, his knobby fingers still uncomfortably digging into a bruise left by Vernon on his collarbone.
The home—church? Building?— It's unsettlingly quiet. At the Dursleys’, all he could rely on was sound. He could not see from the inside of his cupboard, or from the back of his head, while he freshened the garden and washed the dishes. He relied on footsteps and what followed. Each thundering step of Vernon’s would follow with a huff and a grunt, of which Dudley had taken after, but sounded less like a dying pig and more like a struggle to breathe. Petunia’s steps were always sharp, even when she wasn’t wearing her high heels, and she was always adjusting, fiddling with her jewelry, smoothing out her clothes.
But the home went quiet the moment Harry and Father Michael passed by. Every room they passed, even as they got further into the building and deep into where Harry assumed the nuns slept, went absolutely quiet the moment Father Michael’s light, confident steps got within hearing range. Children quietly playing in rooms would cease all movement and sound, and nuns would quiet themselves and duck their heads.
Finally, they approach the last door in the twisting corridors. The door was made of a dark, coarse oak, and it stretched all the way to the eight-foot high ceiling. The doorknob was made of a grainy-worn-looking, dark iron, as was the lock underneath it. Father Michael took a key out of his pocket that was the size of his palm and perhaps older than Harry himself, and pushed the door open.
Inside, the room was dimly lit, grey light spilling in as a mockery of sunlight. The desk and cabinets were all made of the same oak as the door was, and the office chair was a dark, velvet red. Father Michael rounded the side and sat in the intimidating chair, leaving Harry standing stiffly on the other side.
Father Michael did not look at him, nor speak to him. Instead, he opened the manila folder with Harry’s name on it and sifted through the papers.
Father Michael looks up towards him, finally, and holds eye contact for a moment. Harry squirms slightly. “Are you a troublemaker, Mr. Potter?” He asks softly.
“No– No, sir.” Harry is still gripping onto his book bag with every ounce of strength he has.
“Then there shouldn’t be much trouble,” Father Michael hums noncommittally. He unlocks a drawer in his desk, shuffles around a bit, and puts Harry’s life away into the files with the rest of the children’s.
“The rules of this house are as any House of God’s are. We pray every morning, every night, and before every meal. If we sin, we repent and accept our punishment. We do not use vulgar language, we do not start petty squabbles with our peers, and we pay utmost respect to our elders.” Father Michael raises a bushy eyebrow, “Does this sound difficult to you, Mr. Potter?”
“No, sir,”