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“The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment.”
— Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone , Chapter 3
Do you remember
How long it felt
To be alive
As a child?
You were only ten.
A story for the boy under the stairs,
And every child who had to feel the echo of the too-quiet.
June 23rd
“There’s no such thing as magic!”
First, the slam of the wood against the doorframe, cracking against the walls, vibrating throughout; snow-like melt of plaster falling from the ceiling. Then, the clang and click of the lock settling into place.
It was darkness, his eyes adjusting. Stillness as he heard the footsteps stomping away. The whale of a man was likely going to flop down onto his couch.
Harry was on his back, having fallen onto his narrow, fold-up bed when his uncle shoved him in there. The space between the side of the mattress and the door of the cupboard left just enough room for his legs to wedge between. His scrawny knees rested against the wood, his forearms holding him up; otherwise, his neck would have had to bend against the wall uncomfortably to fully lie down.
With a bit of contortion, he managed to toe off his worn pumps. He didn’t want to dirty his thin blanket, even if it was hardly clean to begin with. Once they were off, he fully climbed on, letting out a big sigh.
It wasn’t fair.
He hadn’t meant to do… whatever he’d done this time. Things just happened around him. Like… well, like magic. Why was he always blamed for these things? Maybe it had been Dudley’s fault—he was the one who fell in, that big oaf.
Why was it always him who got punished, anyway?
The light from the cracks allowed him to see the dust floating in the air. He pondered opening the bulb, but that would have required standing up, and he couldn’t really be bothered. Shedding the flannel he had thrown over his shirt, he stretched his arm over his head, trying to reach the shelf behind him with lazy effort. He managed to grasp his sheep plushie.
She had been sitting right where he had left her, in her own little spot.
In the dim light, he barely saw her small, little face; her glossy eye dangling down, her scruffy brown-stained fur… but he did feel the softness of her body.
As he held her, the footsteps and voices from the family outside his four walls were ignored.
It was all fine, really. Yes, his Uncle Vernon had looked particularly red in the face this time, but… it was alright.
With his tiny, rough palm, he petted her head, settling her onto his chest. She peered down at him, and he bit his lower lip, digging gently into the skin.
Was she disappointed, too?
Her light weight was heavy over his heart.
When fully lying down, he could almost touch the other wall. By his feet, the inverted staircase started, climbing up to form the ceiling.
There were twelve inverted steps in total.
The last one, he had just started to be able to touch when standing on his bed and rising to the tip of his toes.
Maybe next year, he would be able to touch it without stretching.
He imagined it with hope and terror.
It was a small cruelty: the bigger he got, the better he was able to face the world outside. But the bigger he got, the smaller his cupboard became.
At least, his plushie always stayed the same.
He kissed her scruffy little forehead, pretending he couldn’t smell dinner from outside his four walls.
Pretending the world wasn’t moving perfectly well without him.
June 24th - 6 days left
Summer days made the mornings quieter.
Everyone got to sleep in for a bit, so Harry woke up to a silent house.
He imagined the soft clouds and the pale blue of an early sky—right as he sat up. He pretended this was a beautiful day, smiling at his sheep.
“‘Morning,” he mumbled, glancing down at her. She’d managed to almost fall, squeezed between the wall and the mattress. “You poor thing.”
He giggled and rescued her.
Twisting around, he faced the three shelves on the wall above his pillow. He gently sat her on her little spot, making sure she was lying down comfortably next to the soldiers.
“There,” he whispered.
The silence echoed as he stared at her passive face.
Each breath he took filled the space.
Even his heart—the heavy thumps in his chest, rhythmic, always the same—somehow started to break out of his chest, settling on the surface of his mind.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Harry resisted bothering his plush again. He gave her another small smile and blinked rapidly and rose to his feet.
Click.
And now there was light, the bulb shone its bright yellow onto every surface of the small space.
It created shadows, too.
“How should I dress today, hm?” he said, a whisper he prayed was loud enough that she’d hear, but not loud enough to be a bother.
He took off the shirt from the day before—the jeans already discarded the previous night.
At the foot of the bed, there were his clothes. If he shifted too much during the night, some would fall off and under, but that just meant Harry had to fetch them, shoving his arm into the small space to pick them up and put them back in place.
He had a nifty, useless little system.
On the right were his cleanest clothes, and on the left were his dirtiest. Every time he wore something, he moved it to the side a notch.
If his aunt allowed him to put his clothes in one of the cycles, he got to have a new, fresh pile on the right.
If she forgot, or just didn’t want to, he got to have a mess on the left.
The oversized shirt he’d worn last night was gently laid on the bed, then folded the way his aunt had taught him, before he put it in the middle, closer to the left than the right.
And he grabbed a new one—just as worn, filled with holes and stains—and a pair of jeans to go with it.
His underwear was another business entirely.
Harry didn’t ask what his plush thought; he already felt her heavy gaze. He knew what he looked like, drowning in dirty clothes, messy and disgusting.
His chubby finger pushed his glasses up, and he set his jaw—standing alone, on a bed, in a cupboard...
“It’s fine,” he told her, avoiding her eyes—even the dangly one—and flopping back down.
Looking down at the mattress, at the ugly flowery pattern, he traced it repeatedly.
The little jumps for petals.
The swoop and swirl of the vines.
And back.
Finally, he felt the ceiling shift, subtle and quiet.
That was his aunt.
His lungs filled with too much air, his skin buzzing, eyes wide as he stared at the closed door.
Aunt Petunia always came to wake him up, so he could make breakfast and start on the chores.
Her slippers glided along the floorboard. He heard the friction of it, the creaks; he heard it pass right in front of his cupboard.
Right past it.
Eyes flicking back down, his teeth ground together as he traced the pattern again.
The little jumps for petals.
The swoop and swirl of the vines.
And back. And back. And back.
He pressed hard, the tip of his finger red and bent.
The little jumps for petals, up and down, and up and down.
The swoop and swirl of the vines, twisting, tighter, tighter.
And back. And back. And back.
How dare she? What had he done? Why wouldn’t she let him out? He didn’t do anything. He’d apologize. He’d clean out the storage bin in the back garden. He’d do anything.
Why?
In the kitchen, he heard the faint click-click-click of her turning the burner on. Putting the kettle on. Making tea.
Had she just forgotten? He could do that. He could make breakfast—better than she could, really.
He raised his arm, pale skin all yellow under the light bulb, reaching for the door across from him.
Stretching his arm further, fist curled tight.
Her slippers moved as she puttered in the kitchen, sliding along the floor.
Knock, knock.
“Aunt Petunia?”
It was his heart he heard above all else. The broken rhythm that never changed. The thumps. The beat. The pounding that made his body shake.
Lungs filled with too much air. The sliding stopped for a moment.
Eyes fixed on the door. Tall, cracked, locked. Looming and thick and thin, and no handle on this side.
She continued to make breakfast.
His arm fell.
The stomping of his uncle. The jumping of his cousin.
Plaster fell in the still air of the cupboard.
The smell of toast, butter, sirop, eggs, and cheese; his stomach, aching, deepening, opening up, wide and empty.
A shaking, rough palm reached for his plushie, but faltered. He shouldn’t bother her.
He shouldn’t. This was fine. They had done this before. She’d let him out later.
Harry moved, shifted, blinked, brought his legs up.
His bladder pressed against his abdomen, but he could hold it for a few more hours.
With a breath, he twisted, pulled the muscles of his cheek up, showing teeth.
“Are we ready for the battlefield, soldiers?” he whispered to his platoon, sitting on the shelf, in their own little spot.
June 25th - 5 days left
Summer days made the mornings quieter.
He tried not to breathe too loudly.
His eyes were all dry—pulling around the bones, heavy—as he stared at the inverted staircase. His lower back had slowly seeped with a dull ache.
There were twelve of them.
The hours were dark, but the cracks showed a new day.
His sheep was on his chest. She hadn’t moved all night.
He hadn’t moved all night.
It smelled, faintly, vividly, like pee. The wet cloth had been shoved under the bed.
Twelve. He had counted. Not eleven. Or ten.
“‘Morning,” he whispered as he heard the subtle shift from above.
He had dreamed, for the few seconds his brain had succumbed, that he had died. It hadn’t really looked like anything—it was just a dull, bone-deep terror he had woken up with. Like he was already decomposing, a zombie, like in Dudley’s comics.
If there had been an apocalypse, Dudley had said Harry would be dead in minutes. They’d throw him out of the house, not bother to share resources.
What if they had just left him here? Never opened the door? The zombies wouldn’t eat his brain. He’d just die alone. The world would descend into chaos, and Harry would still be right here.
He looked down at the plush on his chest.
“Promise to eat m’brain?” he voiced in the quiet of the morning.
There was the screech of boiling water, and the sliding of feet along floors.
“M’joking,” he mumbled, and looked back up with a smile.
Twelve steps. Going from his feet to right above his head.
“You wouldn’t do that. Too nice, too soft, too—”
A little paw had hit him right in the face, moved by a small hand, making him giggle. Maybe not so soft.
“Sorry,” he whispered, holding her closer. “Sorry.”
And he held her tight, grasping her little body against his chest, legs curling up as he turned to the side, shielding her from the door.
“Sorry.”
The dead feeling came back. It didn’t really hurt—it was just dead. The stuff inside his chest had all melted like hot, burning caramel, and that didn’t hurt. If a burn was hot enough, it didn’t hurt.
He knew.
The door blew against his back, caressing with a crooked finger his vertebrae. He didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to open the yellow bulb. He didn’t want to see.
But he could see it.
Skin upon bones, tracing deep, knobbly knees, hollow stomach, monstrous back, dead face.
He preferred the dark.
“S’okay, baby,” he murmured, and kissed her on her scrubby, soft little forehead.
June 26th - 4 days left
His legs slid and pushed against the mattress, feet all tingly, as he pressed a hand against his belly. The movement was rhythmic but jerky, whimpers escaping his clenched teeth.
The hurt wrapped tight around his body, flooding every corner of the cupboard.
He couldn’t reach for his sheep, still on her shelf.
Looking down at him, did she even care?
Did anyone?
Harry turned his head, pressed tight against the flowery mattress. The tip of his nose, his cheek, his forehead… they got smushed hard and compressed enough to leave only space for his mouth; just enough to breathe and let out a small cry.
Tears stained down, falling to hammer against his temple, one drop at a time.
“P-please, please,” he wailed, muffled.
His pathetic fist tumbled onto the bed, a heavy limb clenching with small muscles, trying to hit.
Outside, he heard the telly playing one of Dudley’s cartoons.
His legs pushed, the sheet twisting around his ankles, and pushed until his feet kicked the wall, the inverted stairs.
“I’M SORRY, OKAY?” he shouted, but it was a blubbering mess of snot and hot tears, and his throat was all tight and he curled further, pushing onto his knobbly knees. “I didn’t—please,” Harry whined, voice breaking into a sob.
His hands curled into his hair, fingers like claws digging and tugging, every sensation white-hot and sharp, but thin like the edge of a knife—not enough.
He couldn’t hear his voice, even though it echoed deep into his chest. He cried and rocked, pushing with his toes, and pressing his face down.
The slide of feet along the floor—right past his door.
His breath caught, and his fingers loosened.
Nobody was coming.
Nobody had heard him.
His hand wrapped over his mouth, and he went to the edge of his bed, to the corner farthest from the rest of the world, crawling.
Among the dirty, left-pile clothes, he wedged himself into the corner, under an inverted step.
His palm was wet, his gasps filled with humid air. His teeth dug in when he felt another sob coming, silencing it, before he could finally breathe again.
Why was he so horrible?
He closed his eyes and saw the sun and a park.
He was a monster, in a cupboard.
And he heard a laugh bubble from the clouds.
He was dead. They had left him.
Maybe he could fly.
“M’really sorry,” he whispered, a voice cracking against a wall, creaking.
His stomach growled menacingly, and he brought his knees closer once more. His thumb slid along his lips, and he parted them to bite down, nibble, before they wrapped around it.
His breathing slowed, and the cupboard stayed dark.
June 27th - 3 days left
He had wanted to get up; he had been thinking about it.
The light from the hallway crept inside, a sliver of thin exposed air—all dust and plaster.
Harry coughed, his tongue sticking to his mouth, dry and raw. If his eyes were open, it was a blurry place he saw, all heavy and weary, and curling across his sight.
“Hm,” he hummed, feeling the vibration over his chest.
He felt a shift under his mattress, or maybe heard a creak. He hadn’t slept, and he saw the monster that was sleeping under him.
It had thin eyes, and skinned-tight bones, and long crawling limbs. It breathed steadily, right under him.
He had wanted to get his sheep; he had been thinking about it.
“‘Lo,” he tried, croaking, and coughed again. “Hello.”
Was the house empty? Or maybe it was the middle of the night still. Or maybe there was nothing at all out there.
“Yes,” he whispered, and finally managed to push up. His head lolled as the place swayed for a moment, and he had to blink.
No glasses. Right.
He patted around, palms slapping along the flowers. “Oh,” he breathed. They were wedged against the side, almost slipped under. “No, no,” he gasped.
His skin pulled at his eyelids, and he nodded his head, feeling the creak of his neck. He blinked again, and stared at the frames, half pulled under, half gone, half stolen, half dead.
He looked away, and everything was still bleary. “Right.” Fingers approached the edge and managed to pluck the glasses.
There had been tape around the rim to keep them from falling apart, even though they were already falling apart. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been tape.
“Can you see?” he breathed out, exhaled, and put the glasses on. Heavy, over his nose and ears. “Stealing is bad.”
It was still dark around him. He wanted to get up, open the light.
“I know,” he whispered, adjusting. Yes, he needed to get up, and open the light. And stretch, and get his plushie. And change clothes… yes, they felt itchy. “Hm.”
The monster might have needed glasses too. He wouldn’t get them. He was stuck down there. “I don’t care, you know,” he said, and coughed, frowning.
It was the apocalypse out there, maybe. They were all hiding, including the monster. “Eat my brain,” he sighed, and chuckled, maybe, or maybe just breathed out funny.
His plushie, right.
Harry twisted around and saw her on her shelf. She looked the same, with her dangling eye. His smile fell, face smoothing out. “I know.”
He picked her up, and she was all heavy against his palm. “Oh,” he gasped, and held her close. She was so soft.
He wanted to open the light, and change clothes. He pressed her against his chest. “Will you do it?” he asked, a light voice flowing out, shoving his nose against her back.
He wasn’t sure he could. His underwear was sticky and itchy. He felt tired, but hadn’t slept. “Come on, baby, open the light, huh?” His fingers dug into her soft body, and she was shaking.
And then, she was gone, hitting the wall with a thump. “Hm.” He blinked slowly, sinking down again. Had the monster caught her?
“I know,” Harry whispered, lying on the mattress.
June 28th - 2 days left
His nails dug into the soft body, his thigh red as he managed to scratch it. Deserved, all of everything.
She was suffering down there. Had she gotten eaten? Bad, bad, bad.
“What did I do?” he gasped, looking up. He’d tried to count, but he always lost the numbers along the way. Were there twelve steps?
Twelve steps, climbing up, and up, and up.
They were all dead out there, in the mushy, muffled world. It was four walls, twelves steps, and they stretched out to make up his whole world, right under the stairs.
He let go of his leg and heard steps coming from below. “Sorry, sorry,” he breathed, and she was being devoured.
Harry was a monster, treating his only friend like this. No wonder they had left him here. That’s what you did with monsters: you locked them away.
He couldn’t let her die like that, all alone in the dark. Despite himself, his head shifted toward the door, the space between it and the bed.
He dipped over the edge, letting his body slip, so he could look. “I’m coming,” he promised.
He looked the monster in the eye. A blur of darkness, with claws, and a sticky breath. “Baby?” he called. Where was she?
His back was against the door and he twisted his body, hitting the side a few times, to finally collapse in the space under.
“Baby?”
Dust gathered in his eyes, his heart pounding like a lost melody on the other side of his body.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The ground was hard, much harder than the mattress. “It’s okay,” he whispered, and crawled further under. He felt the whispered breath against his limbs, his neck.
He breathed steadily, all naked skin and bones.
“Harry,” he heard somewhere on the other side of his mind, and finally found her by the end of the bed.
Barely alive, and it was all his fault. “I’m here, I’m here.” He clutched her, curling around her, protecting her from being killed.
Like a soldier in his own little spot.
She didn’t deserve to be killed.
His arm was brought to his mouth, and his teeth sank into the skin. Bone and flesh. The monster began to eat him instead.
Metallic, melting caramel of pain, oozing down his mind. She was okay, in his arms.
“There,” Harry mumbled, and breathed one inhale and exhale at a time.
He felt a tickle at his feet, and brought it closer. He was here, he knew. And Harry couldn’t really see.
Shivering, he wanted to come out, to go back up.
He thought about it really hard.
June 29th - 1 day left
His mum was beautiful.
She hummed and held him, bringing him out from under, laying him on the pillow. She smelled like a nice field, and a laughing cloud.
She changed his clothes, picking the ones all the way to the right. And then, she took him to the park.
The sun was bright, but cold. His lips wrapped around his thumb, and her hand was heavy over his chest.
Over his heart.
She told him the story of a little boy, locked in a cupboard. He was a good little boy, a beautiful little boy, smart and strong.
And he was saved, and taken to the park to meet the sunshine.
Because that was what you did with little boys.
He blinked and saw the cupboard, the string of light.
But then, he closed his eyes, and saw his mum again.
June 30th
His skin was all hot, half-dead, half-alive.
Summer days were deadly quiet, and he was ready.
A body convulsed, heaving, an empty stomach emptying.
His baby was clutched in his hand, watching with a dangling eye as he vomited.
He had woken up with a dull, bone-deep terror… the dead feeling pulsing behind his eyes. His monster would eat his brain, he knew. It had already started. It just needed to finish up.
The sheep curled against his chest, and he knew he would miss her, if nothing else.
A bubbling laugh came from his chest, blubbering with tears and sick-up. A body decomposing on a bed, all skin and bones, and a monstrous face.
Maybe she would get to leave, even if it killed him. She deserved sunshine.
The pounding of his heart clanged, and clicked, and he gasped, shrinking away from the flooding light.
“Ugh, you’ll take a shower, right away,” he heard somewhere on the other side of his mind.
His eyes vaguely tried to focus on the figure by the door. At the hole collapsing his wall.
It clawed at his sight, hit with white-hot and sharp pain, and the fading darkness clung and curled against him.
The monster pulled him under, and Petunia’s face disappeared as a body hit the mattress.
Thump.
“Harry, what the hell?” Draco asks, his knuckles white as he clutches his mug of tea.
Harry blinks at him, a frown etching onto his forehead. “What?” he huffs, a small smile creeping onto his face, along with a distinct heat over his ears.
This always seems to happen; his light words get distorted into horror. People just don’t get it.
Draco looks sad, or disgusted, and that’s all wrong. It feels like it’s slipping into Harry’s chest, crawling between the cracks of his memories.
“A week?” Draco says, like a soft held breath.
Harry shrugs, taking a sip of his tea.
He sees that boy, alone, in that cupboard.
But then blinks, meeting Draco’s eyes.
“It’s fine,” Harry says. “It was just a week.”