Indifference Towards Difference || Harry Potter

3 | It Can Only Get Better

"I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are."
Jess C Scott

~~~

It can only get better from here, Harry thought, as he wiped his bloody nose on his shirt. He immediately snorted at his hopelessly optimistic thought. Things always went from bad to worse for Harry James Potter.

The day had started disastrously. He was exhausted from a lack of sleep and extensive number of chores and beatings, and had hence flipped the dial on the toaster the wrong way. His careless mistake had resulted in two slices of burnt bread. Harry had cringed as the smoke alarm had wailed relentlessly, and his uncle's face had gotten redder and redder with each passing second.

Harry had been almost concerned that his uncle would burst a blood vessel in his temple. Muggles didn't really take well to internal bleeding.

The trickle of concern evaporated however when the man had grabbed him by the front of his shirt and thrown him bodily at the wall, which he hit with painful accuracy, before landing on his face. He noticed his cousin slink away, with something like guilt on his face, but Harry was too busy getting beaten by a broken chair leg to think much about it.

He'd closed his eyes and locked himself in his cupboard as Uncle Vernon yelled about what a "goddamn fucking useless little freak" he was.

Indeed, the day had gotten a little better after that. Varnishing the shed was a rather tame chore, and one he was thankful for after the morning he'd had. His limbs complained as he stretched to fully cover the top of the shed, but he drove the pain into a familiar darkness and continued onwards. Dudley had remained oddly reticent as he quietly watched Harry's small winces and sporadic periods of him squeezing his eyes shut in discomfort. He wasn't sure what the Dementors had done to Dudley, but it was better than having dead worms thrown at him. Still, he didn't have much energy to linger on that thought.

Eventually, his cousin had retired to go and see his friends.

Dudley's absence meant only his Aunt Petunia had required lunch, and she'd waved Harry away as she stirred some chicken broth on the hob. His aunt was weird sometimes in this way, doing small errands herself when she easily could've extended Harry's suffering and saved herself the extra labour. But he'd never put much thought behind that either.

He most certainly wasn't going to start now.

Hedwig hadn't yet returned from the Burrow, where both Ron and Hermione were staying, and so he spent the rest of the day tending to his wounds as much as he could, and reading through his only book. He'd glanced at Sirius' mirror a few times; his black eye contrasted heavily with the sick pallor of his skin and the bright green of his eye. He looked dreadful— half starved with prominent cheekbones highlighting gaunt cheeks.

Harry stilled, silent with fear like a deer caught in the headlights as he heard his uncle's pounding footsteps. God forbid if the man was drunk... but a hiss of relief escaped his lips as the sound of the telly echoed through from the living room.

Thank Merlin's bloody balls. His mind echoed Ron's favourite epithet, and a small smile strained his lips.

He could almost hear the "bloody hell, Harry!" And Hermione reprimanding them both for their language, laughter fringing her words.

He dozed lightly with that thought, watching the warped reflection of the sunset from behind the flames of the Gryffindor hearth. Meditation had been something the book had encouraged, something that would "invoke a sense of calm" in him. And he'd never felt calmer watching the flames rise and flicker, shrouding him with a warmth that soaked into his bones. The book on his stomach felt like the light weight of the well worn Gryffindor afghan, and Harry lost himself in the familiar security of it all.