Chapter Text
***
Harry Potter of 4 Private Drive was not an ordinary boy, he’d known that since he was two years old. It wasn’t because his unruly hair stuck up no matter what he did, or because his eyes were a little too green. It wasn’t even because his Aunt and Uncle had called him a freak for as long as he remembers–although that was a little closer.
It was because he was not loved.
While all the other children at school would talk about their birthday parties he would sit to the side playing with a bottle cap he’d picked up from the street.
While they excitedly discussed what they received for Christmas he’d look away, his mind haunted by his rumbling stomach and the tissue that was pushed through his cupboard door.
He’d watch as each one of his classmates would be picked up with hugs and kisses. Notice how none of them worried about calling their parents when they were sick at school.
There was so much love in the world: friendships, family, husbands and wives. And yet there was never enough for him.
He couldn’t even escape it when he came back to the house, as he was pushed through the door and told to start cooking dinner. His cousin's second bedroom, the mountain of broken toys, their trips out together.
Dudley was loved.
Aunt Petunia was loved.
Uncle Vernon was loved.
Even Mrs Figg at the end of the road had her son.
By the age of five he’d realised this, by the age of eight he’d accepted it. Now by the age of ten he was determined to ignore it.
A long time ago he’d tried to change it, to learn how to be loved. To work for the love that everyone else was freely given.
On Mother’s day when he was six years old he’d gotten up even earlier and made his Aunt a tray of food for breakfast. She’d been so angry that she’d shattered the teacup. He still had the scars from trying to pick up every piece to please her.
He’d cleaned his Uncle’s car until it gleamed, but had merely got a nod. Dudley had received extra ice-cream for pudding that day because ‘he had worked so hard in school’. What that really meant was that his teachers hadn’t had anything negative to say about him that day.
Because that was the thing, in their house bad things were rewarded. When Uncle Vernon hit him so hard with his belt –for somehow growing his hair overnight– that Harry’s back had ached for a week: Aunt Pertunia made him a special breakfast. When Dudley chased him through the streets for hours accompanied by his pack of friends, he’d been taken out to McDonalds. When Pertunia had forced him to slave away in her garden all summer, she’d won a special trophy that was displayed on a shelf in the living room; in direct sight of his cupboard.
So Harry decided he didn’t want to be loved if that is what it took. But he did… he really did.
At night he’d lay dreaming of green eyes and a barking laugh. Of laying curled up in someone's arms, safe, cared for. The love that stories were made of– unrelenting and unconditional.
Then he’d wake up.
When he turned ten at the end of a very hot July the dreams changed. No longer were they of some strange person coming to claim him and love him. They were of running away, of being free.
Then, on Halloween night, the dreams changed again. But they were different, vivid.
***
He was sat on the stairs polishing the skirting boards while Aunt Petunia excitedly cooed over Dudley’s halloween costume. “Oh my Dudders, my moo bear. You look so distinguished”.
With a smarmy smile he turns, allowing the flash of her camera to capture his smart army uniform, a plastic gun strapped to his side that Harry just knows will be smacked against him that evening.
He rolls his eyes, carefully concealed by the banistairs so that they won’t see. Dutifully going back to cleaning, but he can’t keep the laugh from his lips as Dudley’s friends arrive, as his cousin goes beet red. Shrugging off his mother who still fauns over him with sappy nicknames he runs out the house, eyes daring his friends to comment, fists held clenched at his side.
It was the little things.
Careful to not make a noise he tiptoes down the stairs and into the kitchen, ensuring his Aunt and Uncle remain in front of the TV where a golf tournament is being broadcast. Laying his cloth on the table he swipes one wrapped sweet and Dudley’s discarded sandwich, rushing back to the refuge of his cupboard.
Using a dim torch he finishes the sandwich, taking a worn book out from behind a dusty box. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, smiling, he turns to chapter ten and continues to read. As the clock on the mantlepiece strikes eleven he falls asleep, the book falling from his grasp, the torch flickering out.
Dream Aslan roars, warm breath tickling Harry’s face despite the dream, then something shimmers. Standing surrounded by blossom trees is a lean woman with fiery red hair and emerald green eyes. Eyes just like his.
“Hello Harry” she whispers, her words chiming like musical notes.
His skin tingles at it, breath catching. And even though he’s never even seen a picture of her he knows. Not by her eyes– although that confirms it. By her voice, her smile, the warmth of her presence.
By the way she rushes towards him and squeezes him tight, rubbing his back and whispering how sorry she is that all this happened to him.
It’s the same way that Tommy Jones’ Mum rushed over to him when he grazed his knee. Or the way Aunt Petunia laid on the sofa with Dudley when he was sick with a stomach bug. She wiped his brow and told him everything was going to be alright, because she was there and she’d look after him.
Harry has watched mother’s all his life, he would recognise one anywhere.
And the way she looks at him, the way she holds him close. He knows that she’s his.
It makes waking up in the morning all the more painful, he is almost glad that he's so busy doing chores all day to even think for one moment. And that night he curls up in threadbare blankets, stomach rumbling, and finds her again.
***
She visits his dreams every night, and is there waiting for him as soon as he drifts off. Sometimes they just watch the sunset in the castle towers, sometimes they sit on a blanket watching the centaurs run. Often she grabs his hand and asks him what adventures they will go on that night. They swim in the deepest oceans, climb the highest mountains.
The scenery often changes, sometimes golden autumn with cascading leaves that they run through together giggling. Sometimes inky night where they lay down and she tells him the constellations.
Lily, that’s her name. He hadn’t known before.
His father never joins them, her face always turns sad when he asks. She takes his hand and they sit together, “James” she says. “That’s your father’s name, you were named after him, you know, Harry James Potter.”
Her words are always fleeting, a mere whisper, but over many nights he learns what’s important.
That he’s loved, that they both love him so much and watch him throughout the day. “We both wanted to come to you” she whispers under the blanket fort they made together, “but they would only allow one,it was already breaking the rules for just me to be here”.
She never says who this mysterious person is, when he asks she looks at him strangely.
“A shadow, an angry shadow” she confesses when he probes her more, the waves of the sea rushing up to wash over their legs on the beach where they sit. “They saw how you were treated and it made them angry, they care about you for some reason”.
“And that frightens you?” he asks, watching the shadows that flicker across her face. Worry, fear.
She frowns, “it did, but my darling I would do anything to keep you safe. Now we have an ally, a powerful one. For now I can be grateful, but be wary.”
***
It’s a day in December when everything changes again. The fifteenth of December to be exact. He’s sitting in class, the table in front scattered with glitter and paints. They’re decorating baubles for their families. Dudley has already given up and is smearing glue everywhere, but Harry hasn’t.
His is a deep red, green glitter swirling around it, sparkling like her eyes. Gem’s stuck on to make different constellations, his teacher Mrs Derby has already complimented him on it. “I'm sure your Aunt and Uncle will love it”. He simply nodded, his teachers have always remained oblivious.
The air shimmers in front of him and he looks up.
Sat in the chair in front of him is his mother, smiling, looking at the bauble in his hands.
He leaps up, paper and glitter cascading from his lap onto the floor. Around him his classmates snigger, his teacher shushing them and rushing over to help him clean up. She chastises him, clicking her fingers in front of his eyes to get his attention. And that’s when Harry realises, she isn’t there, she’s just part of his imagination.
That night she isn’t in his dreams no matter how hard he looks, scouring their whole kingdom. But when he wakes there she is again, sat at the kitchen table, Petunia oblivious. As he makes breakfast for everyone she whispers things to him, comforting things while glaring daggers at her sister, muttering insults under her breath.
“Sour old toad” she grumbles making Harry snort with laughter and spill the orange juice. He gets a slap to the back of his head from Vernon for it, Petunia’s face souring even more. “Focus freak” she warns, pointing her fork at him threateningly.
But the insults slide off him, because he isn’t alone anymore. And when Lily murmurs that Pertunia used to call her a freak he puffs out his chest, wearing it like a badge of honour.
***
Slowly this becomes the new normal, no longer is his mother in his dreams but in his time awake instead. Not all the time, but anytime he needs her there she is, patient and smiling, encouraging. When he comes back from the Christmas Holidays she grins when he gets top marks on his test. She claps excitedly when he scores a goal against Dudley in PE. That night he’s locked in his cupboard as soon as he gets home from school, but he doesn’t mind one bit. It was worth it.
Because that’s when it starts happening, the next strange thing.
He doesn’t see her but he knows it must be Lily. That night his cupboard door starts to unlock, the door swinging open. Hesitant yet hungry he sneaks out, looking around desperately. When there’s no sign of anyone else awake he pads into the kitchen, helping himself to a little food that will not be noticed missing.
For good measure he takes a couple of batteries for his torch and a book on plants from the dusty bookshelf.
The next night it happens again. Then again. Then again.
On the seventh night he becomes even more daring, sneaking upstairs to Dudley’s second bedroom and taking a few of his toys. An old ipod with a cracked screen that’s a few editions old and a few of the unused books that sit on the back bookcase.
Strange things keep happening too. Even as his mother disappears from his life he still feels her presence, hears her voice on the wind. When he comes first in the maths test beating Dudley his uncle punches him so hard his skin becomes mottled with purple and his ribs crack under the pressure. The next morning his bruises are faded and his ribs miraculously healed.
Aunt Pertunia still keeps him off school for a few days, not knowing that he’s already healed. Lily spends the entire day scowling at her, anger bubbling up from inside and causing the plants in her garden to wilt.
That she would allow her son to be so horribly harmed by her husband and not even bother taking him to a hospital.
Unbeknownst to this, Harry spends the three days reading every book he can, absorbing the information of the world. Perhaps with his mother to help him he can stop acting like an idiot. Get a scholarship to some far away school and never return. But that was a far off dream, he would have to be an adult if he wanted to make those choices.