Muggle World

01: The Delinquent

Harry Potter leaned his head back.

His neck rested in an arc as he draped himself over the ratty, waiting-room chair, making his Adam’s apple more noticeable than usual. The top of his scalp pressed against the whitewashed wall, and his eyes stared-up blankly at the pale ceiling.

The sensation of the chair’s wooden frame pushing up against his neck was very unpleasant. But then again, so was spending 6 1/2 hours in a car with his uncle, falling asleep, and being woken-up to a very sinister, purple face.

Still feeling sleepy, jaded, and quite a bit lazy, Harry tried not to think of the splitting headache his forehead was being subjected to.

Eh... What else could he expect? The window of his uncle’s car wasn’t exactly a pillow, and it wasn’t like he could just FLY to Hogwarts Academy.

That had been a recurring problem in his life – he couldn’t fly. He couldn’t even imagine he could fly – not anymore, at least. Kind of like how he used to think the scar on his forehead looked like a lightening bolt.

...Sensing that his thoughts were beginning to drift, Harry eyed the solid green door to his left, just barely shifting his head. When Uncle Vernon came back, he’d bark his brains out at him for being “an intolerable space cadet, you stupid boy!” Harry’s conscience pondered between reverie and a peeved uncle, for a moment. He then decided he didn’t care, and busied himself with gazing back up at the ceiling...

***

--If Harry could fly – with wings, a parachute, a witch’s broom, or something, anything but a plane, his problems would become a speck. Once, a long time ago, he didn’t think much about flying at all.

“Aun’ Petunia,” Harry asked, aged five and a half. He was watching his tall, horsy aunt relentlessly scrub the bathroom tile. “What happened to my parents?”

Petunia Dursley looked-up, acutely annoyed. “Are you talking?” She sneered.

Harry Potter nodded quickly. He was very shy in those days, and it was unusual for him to speak much more than ten syllables a day.

“They died in a car accident.”

“I know...but what made them get killed?”

“I just said – a car accident!”

“Bu’, um, um...what made them in the car accident? A tree? A truck?” Trucks had fascinated Harry – ones like the toys Dudley had, and he didn’t.

Aunt Petunia had glared at him icily. “Drunk-driving. Now get out – I’ve got work to do!”

Harry was then overcome with the most mysterious surge of need in his short life – to fly. Up, up, and away, right? Anywhere, any height. But he didn’t have wings, and everything around him was dead solid and very real.

He knew what “drunk” meant at five and a half.

Harry raced out of the bathroom as fast as he could.

Some hours later, that very day, Uncle Vernon came stomping out into middle of the garden where Harry stood. His uncle grouched at him heatedly for running around and flapping his arms like a maniac...in front of the neighbors, no less! He had to either have his dinner right then, or watch it thrown down the disposal...

***

Behind the door, Harry overheard the low hum of voices. The booming tone of his uncle sounded distinctly irritated – which was to be expected in any matter concerning Harry. The other voice was much more calm...serene...nice. Maybe.

A nonchalant, stern woman -– hair in a tight bun, bespectacled with thin, square-framed glasses – briskly entered the room. She opened the headmaster’s lime green door without knocking and stayed within the office confines for a few minutes. Harry heard the murmur of her voice and she walked out.

***

Harry remembered a man with shaggy, long, black hair coming to the Dursleys house once or twice a year up until he was about six. Wordlessly, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon shoved Harry to him through the front door. They never invited him in. Yet, they trusted the strange man to get along alone with Harry for an entire day, perhaps disappointed that he always came back in one piece. Mostly, the outings would consist of walking: through a park, downtown – almost anywhere.

Shy and small, little Harry had been absolutely terrified of him. The shaggy-haired man would talk to him in a mostly friendly way, but all Harry could say were answers like, “fine,” “good,” or “yes.”

Perhaps feeling a little awkward to press for more in-depth answers from a child, the man would always end-up buying Harry ice cream, or something from a street-vendor. Harry would secretly enjoy the treat but continued his silence, even though the visits had gone on as long as he could remember. It wasn’t until a visit when he was five and a half that Harry fully realized the man was far kinder than his aunt and uncle.

He wasn’t sure how it came-up, but Harry had begun to relate the entire “flying” ordeal to the man. It had been hard to explain, mostly due to his limited experience in the art of conversation. But the man had listened attentively to his words. Encouraged, Harry eventually become very vivid about his story.

“...And then – I dunno – I just went out in the backyard, and looked up.”

“At the sky?”

“No, well, yeah – I was looking for birds. To see how they did it, and I started flapping my arms, like they do. And I know I don’t have any wings, but, I, um, wanted to see if I could do it...that sound stupid?”

“I don’t think so...people have been trying to fly for a while, I guess. No one’s really got the hang of doing it alone, yet.” The man’s smile was almost hidden by his long, elbow-length hair. It was a little hard to tell where his hair ended, and his equally disheveled black outfit began. “Why did you want to fly, all of a sudden?”

“Dunno. When my aunt told me how my parents died, I got scared. I dunno... I think I wanted to run away.”

“Or fly?”

“Yeah... Yeah.” Harry looked down.

The man gave an odd grin, taking the boy a bit by surprise. “You know, Harry, you’re a funny mix of your mum and your dad. Especially your dad.”

Of all the things Harry had expected to hear, this was the most surprising, and the most wonderful.

After that, Harry pleasantly discovered that the visits had become far more frequent. The two got along famously, it seemed, and it felt great having a sort of fun-dad/big brother to talk to. It also helped that the man had absolutely no qualms about a small child accompanying him on a motorcycle – as long, of course, as Harry wore the helmet and swore to hold on tight.

One day, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon told him the man couldn’t come anymore. Harry was crushed – desperate. He wanted to know why, how, when, why, why, why, why...?

“BECAUSE! Now, get back upstairs, and finish cleaning the tub – use the GOOD disinfectant, boy, and I don’t want to see a single ring!”

Since the visits had only grown friendly over a short time (and had been very scant in the first place) Harry often wondered if had just imagined it.

His aunt and uncle certainly didn’t talk about the man – anyone with a motorcycle and a peculiar haircut was a menace to society, obviously. And Dudley probably wouldn’t have known, even if he had felt inclined to tell. Dudykins had been too young, like Harry, to fully remember, anyway.

Yet, sometimes – and only sometimes – if Harry closed his eyes and ears just right (and for a certain amount of time) he could feel the roar of the motorcycle engine under him...the wind rushing by... Almost like flying...almost...

***

A man walked by with particularly greasy hair and a bony, hooked nose. His eyes were black as pits, and as he passed, he stopped. He gave Harry an absolutely livid look.

Figuring it was disapproval over his slouching position, Harry glared back. He silently half-dared the man to try and reprimand him. But the greasy-haired chap didn’t move, a furious facial expression glued on his sallow face. He finally turned away, gave a couple good raps at the lime green door, and trooped right in.

Harry screwed up his face. That man...what was his problem? He didn’t like Harry, or something?

In another moment, the furious-looking man was out through the door again, leaving it slightly ajar. He didn’t look back at Harry as he strode off, staring ahead venomously as he exited the waiting room.

The partially opened door was closed, but not before Harry Potter could hear a rather whispery, old voice mumble, “...Professor Severus Snape...chemistry teacher...best we hav--”

And the green door was shut.

***

It had been about three years since Harry started to attend Stonewall High. He had looked forward to coming, or, more appropriately, doing without his pig-of-a-cousin Dudley for almost an entire year. His first lesson at the esteemed school had been simple -– swirlies by Dudley and his gang were far more pleasant compared to being hung on a flagpole, upside-down, in the rain, for three hours straight.

After conquering his pneumonia in a mere two weeks within the confines of a very dreary sick ward, Harry was reintroduced into the student-body. He felt more like a toad being reintroduced into a fish tank overrun by sharks and electric eels on the National Geographic channel.

Honey-sweet girls with hair braided, pinned, fastened, fixed, and throttled with pink and baby blue hair things continuously came up to him in the halls all day. They asked if he was a new student. A bit grudgingly, but in an attempt to be friendly, Potter explained – in painful, but strangely amusing detail – the causes of his prior illness.

The questions grew monotonous throughout the day, and it was only at dinner that he realized a very familiar many girls all swarming about the same table. All were smiling smiles of poisoned honey, all wore radiantly colored hair doodads, and all were giggling furiously about the two-week old story of a bony 11-year-old being hoisted-up on the school flagpole. Tables nearby – most full of enormous twelve-year-olds – had started to snicker, too.

Harry’s face had blushed hot and red with embarrassment, forcing him to keep his head down just above his plate for the rest of the meal. He felt a lump in his throat as he forced his bubbling anger down into his stomach.

The school year marched-on, and all continued to go down hill. Schoolwork was constantly forgotten or lost, bullying progressed from wedgies to full-blown muggings, and, with all the bundled-up fury he possessed, Harry mutilated his wooden desk-top with curse words and vehement descriptions the final week before summer holiday. Discovered, he spent the last day of school in the office of his oddly toad-shaped headmistress.

Another year followed, and Harry grew more and more aggressive. Little satisfaction was to be had in pulling a pencil sharpener out of a wall or twisting the handle off a urinal – he still sat alone at lunch.

It happened that his expulsion from Stonewall High took place at 3:22pm on a sunny afternoon – cloudless at 76˚F, with a 23% chance of rain.

Skipping class as he had become accustomed to, Harry was caught – as the final bell of the day rang, and a throng of students gushed into the halls – depositing red spray paint on the outside wall of Professor Lestrange’s classroom. The oozing red letters spelled a rather unsavory phrase, and the bug-eyed looks of his fellow peers as they came rushing forward in every direction gave Harry a nasty sinking feeling. Otherwise, truth be told, he didn’t feel that bad about the graffiti at all.

Professor Bellatrix Lestrange had snapped at him a week before when she had caught Harry gazing mutely out the window. She had cracked her ruler down on his desk, apparently having already called on him a couple of times.

“Does widdle Potter want to sha-ore why his head was in ‘da clouds...?” Lestrange’s mock-baby voice only increased the guffaws and giggles of the other students. Her expression behind her proud, heavy-lidded face had been toxic as she merrily assigned him detention.

All the same, venting his frustration had brought consequence. And again, with a week left until summer, Harry was sent to the headmistress’s office, only to end-up hours later in the back of Uncle Vernon’s car.

For the Dursleys, however, the straw that broke the camel’s back – and sent Harry hurtling towards Hogwarts Institution for Juvenile Delinquents – was shortly after his birthday that very summer.

***

"You musn't blame yourself for the way the boy's turned out, Vernon. If there's something rotten on the inside, there's nothing anyone can do about it."

Aunt Marge Dursley – breeder of pit bulls, guzzler of fine brandy, and sister of Uncle Vernon – had come to visit that summer. She had come to wish her sweet, bloated nephew, Dudley, a happy birthday.

Harry hated calling her ‘aunt’, and felt moody and horrible the first night she was there. As usual, Marge was needling into him with all the ammo she had. Ripper lapped up some-such concoction in the corner.

Well into the story of a nine-year-old Harry’s encounter with her favorite bulldog, Aunt Marge’s cheeks were colored with the Dursleys’ good brandy. She laughed tipsily, responding to the irritation that showed on Harry’s face. Aunt Marge proceeded to call him a runt, and launched into a long-winded breeding comparison of Harry’s mother and father – neither of whom he had ever known – to a bitch and a mongrel.

And that was it: Harry finally flew. Flew out of his seat toward the long, sharp bread knife resting on the counter – flew into a blind rage.