Chapter Text
Harry Potter was small for his age, his eleventh birthday may be fast approaching, but he looked more like an eight-year-old. He was too skinny, too short, and too quiet. He found that most people avoided him, people like him made them uncomfortable, people who were different. He was a freak, worth little more than what he could do to help around the house. He didn’t need a room like Dudley, he didn’t need meals like the family, all he needed was his cupboard and his string.
Running his finger along the set of knots tired ever couple of centimetres on his string, Harry let his mind calm preparing for a busy day of cooking and chores, a day just like every other day in his life.
“Wake up boy, it’s time for breakfast, full English,” his aunt yells banging her hand against the door to his cupboard the distinct click of the latching being opened tells Harry it’s time to start his day.
While his aunt, uncle, and cousin eat their full English Harry makes his way to the front door to collect the mail and hand it off to his uncle.
“A letter, Harrys got a letter!” his cousin exclaims drawing Harry attention towards his loud whiny voice.
“Who would be stupid enough to write you a letter?” Uncle Vernon scoffs the rasp of paper filling the air as his uncle tears it open. Silence overtakes the room a conversation taking place around Harry that he cannot track, but the air is thick with connotations of every word going unsaid. A decision is clearly made as Harry hears his uncle move from the kitchen table to the living room his chair making a loud screech as the legs are roughly pushed away from the table. Harry can hear his uncle moving towards the fireplace and tossing his letter into the acrid scent of lighter fluid being sprayed fills and the air the burn of sulphur hits Harry’s nose as a match is struck and a whoosh of flames burns the first letter that Harry has ever received.
Burning the letter seems like an overreaction to Harry, it’s not like he could have read it anyway, clearly his uncle could tell what it said so it wasn’t in braille. Harry knew better than to ask what it had said, that was a quick way for him to be punished. Questions were not allowed, ever. Freakishness was another way to be punished, accidents could not happen, no use of his cane, no covering his eyes, he had to be normal, like everyone else. No one should know about his freakishness.
The letter didn’t stop there, every day that week more letters came, more letters he couldn’t read, but he felt the repercussions of them. No meals for almost a week, only a bottle of water and a slice of white bread to keep him alive. Extra chores to keep him busy and out of the way. Finally, things came to a head on Sunday, Uncle Vernon had been so sure there would be no post on Sundays, but he had been wrong. Hundreds of letters shot through the fireplace raining down on the living room. Uncle Vernon was ranting, Aunt Petunia was trying to calm his down, and Dudley was screaming as if the letters were attacking him. Harry couldn’t help but smile at the chaos around him. He could feel the brush of the paper against his skin, he could hear the scratch as the letters glided past each other and landed all over the room covering the carpet, the coffee table, even landing in his own head.
He stifles a chuckle at the crunch of the paper under Vernon’s feet as he crushes them in his now frantic attempts to gather them all together; to hide the abnormality they represented in their lives. Because they were a normal family, who lived normal lives, in a normal neighbourhood, and these letters and Harry represented everything that wasn’t normal.
Harry listened as the sounds of packing rush around the house. Suitcases crashing down the stairs, frantic yelling from Aunt Petunia to hurry up and pack faster. Harry had finished packing well before the rest of his family his backpack slung over his shoulder and sitting on the cool box brimming with food for their ‘vacation’. Harry hadn’t heard the name of the place they were going, not that he would have known where it was anyway. He’d never left Whinging before and despite the reason for their trip Harry couldn’t help but be excited, his Birthday is tomorrow, and it will be the first time he’s celebrated it somewhere that wasn’t this house.
Their trip to an isolated shack in the middle of what Harry assumed is the ocean from the sharp scent of salt in the air took far longer and a lot more effort than Harry had expected. He’d had to row a tiny boat out to the shack taking direction from his uncle on where he was going, his relatives bulk making the task a challenge for a grown man let alone his tiny frame. Harry couldn’t help but become lost in all the new sounds around him to distract from the hard work, birds were squawking above them their loud calls echoing off what Harry guessed were cliffs. The waves created a rhythmic crashing of water, one Harry could imagine becoming completely lost in for hours. Each dip of the oars into the water made a splash and Harry quickly learned that he could tell how deep he’d pushed the oars from the resistance on them and the amount of noise they made while leaving the water.
Exiting the small raft once they’d reached their destination Harry made sure to leave the raft last so he could take his time finding his way to their destination. He made sure to listen carefully to the direction his Uncle lumbered. He could tell they were ascending some stairs from the loud huffs of breath and grunts that Vernon was letting out as he moved farther and father away. Taking a moment to run his string through his fingers Harry counted the knots he’d tied in it as the bumps ran through his forefinger and thumb. Twenty knots along the thirty-centimetre length of string, some were placed next to each other, others were spaced out to create gaps that Harry could roll between his fingers.
He'd started playing with the string when he’d started at school, they’d taught him braille and he’d loved the tactile feeling of the little bumps that made up his alphabet. The ridges moving under his fingers had been soothing so he’d tried the same with a length of string from his craft class, slipping a length in his pocket and later creating the knots in his cupboard late at night, falling asleep with the string between his fingers.
“Boy, get up here and make dinner,” yelled his uncle short of breath from somewhere above him.
Bracing himself for the journey up whatever was a head of him Harry stands catching his balance from the lightly swaying boat and feels for wood of the dock his uncle had tied the boat to with his hand guiding himself cautiously out and onto land. Everything his fingers touch is coated with a sheen of light dampness, probably from the constant spray of water from the ocean around them. Moving forward slowly Harry feels the stone under his feet, it’s slightly slippery worn smooth by the constant kiss of waves. Shuffling slightly Harry feels what is the beginning of stairs and starts moving as quickly up them as he can without slipping on the slick steps or missing any of the uneven ones. Harry is just grateful his uncle carried up the cooler, because there was no way he could have made it up these winding stairs carry something that heavy and feel for his next step.
Harry waited for his watch to beep out the hour - it had to be soon. Harry felt like he’d been lying there forever waiting for midnight. As usual his aunt and uncle had gone to bed right at 10 o’clock leaving Harry and Dudley on the main floor of the shack - Dudley sound asleep on the couch snoring loudly and Harry on the floor in a sleeping bag from their ill-fated and unused camping gear they’d bought years earlier. Harry always lay awake waiting for his birthday, his one tradition for himself waiting for midnight to ring in July 31st
In the thick layer of dust on the floor in front of his sleeping bag, Harry attempts to doodle a cake with eleven candles on it. It’s hard because there are no edges to follow like there is when he draws on paper at home. He usually has scrap paper he can use to build his cake and feel for the edges, but here he does his best. Sure what he’s made is a far cry from a cake with candles and more likely a blob with stick poking out of it, but it’s his and that’s what matters. Finally, his watch beeps 12 times ringing in the stroke of midnight and Harry blows the dust away from him to celebrate surviving another year.
Right as Harry is moving to settle into his sleeping bag the front door of the shack violently bangs causing the whole building to rumble with the force of it. On the third hit a loud crashing echoes across the room and a cloud of dust hits Harry irritating his eyes and causing him to cough.
“S’rry ‘bout that,” a deep voice says another loud thud following and another small plume of dust.
“Who are you? I warn you I’m armed!” Uncle Vernon yells from his sport behind and to Harry left. Dudley is whimpering and scrambling over to his parents leaving Harry alone in the middle of the room with this stranger across from him.
“Ah Harry! The las’ time I saw you, you were a wee babe,” Harry let his eyes settle where he hears the deep rumbling voice coming from.
“You know me?” Harry asks hesitantly.
“Oh,” the man let’s out while shifting slightly so his voice is directed towards Harry, “why course I do, I brought you to your new home after yer parents passed.”
Harry could feel his eyebrows pull together, this man was responsible for leaving him with the Dursleys? He’d have to be careful, he clearly never checked into them or checked in on Harry, he hoped that if he had, he would have taken him away from them, somewhere safe.
“What’s your name sir?” Harry asks politely.
“Oh my, how rude o’ me, I’m Rubius Hagrid Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts,” the man says moving around the room and falling back on to the couch eliciting a groan the piece of furniture. This man must be huge, bigger than Uncle Vernon from the way his steps sent shocks through the rotting floorboards and how hard he fell onto the couch.
“Hogwarts?” Harry asks ignoring the whimpering family in the corner of the room.
“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I ‘ave you’r letter right here, gave Professor Dumbledore a right shock when you didn’ reply, so he sent me,” Hagrid says the sounds of shuffling fabric and crinkle of paper filling the space around them.
“Ah, ‘ere it is,” he finally says, “Ya gonna take it lad?”
“I’m sorry sir, but you need to put it into my hand, I can’t see,” Harry tells him reaching his right hand out towards Hagrid voice palm up ready to receive the letter he’s sure he won’t be able to read.
“Wha do you mean you can’t see?” Hagrid asks confusion clear in his voice.
“I’m blind, does the letter happen to be in braille so I can read it?” Harry asks circling his finger over the wax seal of the envelope taking in the coat of arms he can feel in the impression creating a mental image of what it could be, but features are small and hard to discern. But he can make out the general shape in his mind.
“Blind,” Hagrid mumbles failing to answer Harry’s question.
Slipping his finger under the wax Harry pops the letter open feeling the thick paper used to write whatever this letter is. To his disappointment, but not his surprise, the letter is not in braille, so Harry lets his hands drop to his sides still holding the paper.
“He’s not going to that school, it ruined my sister, it made her a freak,” Aunt Petunia exclaims working her way out from behind Uncle Vernon her voice moving closer to Harry and Hagrid.
“Tha’s not up to you, his parents wanted him to go, so he goes,” Hagrid tells her moving from is place on the couch towards his aunt.
“My parents?” Harry asks hesitantly,
“She went there, and it got her and her freak husband killed,” Aunt Petunia nearly screams.
“Killed? I thought they died in a car accident?” Harry asks confused, he’d always been told his parents were drunks killed in a car accident that had caused him to lose his sight and left an oddly shaped scar on his forehead.
“Car accident? You told him James and Lily Potter died in a car accident?” the man yells clearly upset.
“Better than murdered because they were too stupid to mind their own business,” Aunt Petunia spits out.
Hagrid seems to be shocked and engaged at this news which quickly shuts up his aunt and uncle. Hagrid then goes on a long-winded rant about how Harrys parents had been talented Magicals who’d loved him dearly and lost their lives in saving him.
“I’ve heard enough, grab your things Harry, we’ve lots to do,” Hagrid tells him.
Harrys not sure what he should do, he’s never been anywhere with a stranger like this before, but this could also be his chance to get free from his aunt and uncle. Not to mention hey have just talked about magic! Harry had so many questions and almost nothing to lose by following this man. Resigning himself to stepping into the unknown Harry grabs what little if his in the cabin and follows Hagrid’s heavy footsteps out into the storm.