Harry Potter and the Misunderstanding

CHAPTER 9

It wasn't as if Harry had never been shouted at before. Aunt Petunia was hardly a gentle woman, and her fuse was almost as short as his uncle's. When he was younger, especially in his toddler years, it was a common occurrence for his aunt to scream at him. Usually there had been a light slap thrown in too. Mostly, though, she had loathed to touch Harry, preferring to banish him to his cupboard and out of her sight.

Meanwhile, Noddy's behaviour wasn't much different to how Dudley's had been. Dudley had always blamed Harry for everything. Why, Harry could never be sure, because it wasn't as if Dudley ever got scolded for anything anyway. It seemed that a large percentage of Harry's own punishments resulted from being falsely accused. Often, Dudley even went out of his way to get Harry in trouble. It had been that way as long as Harry could remember. In fact, his first conscious memory of his cousin was of Dudley screaming that Harry had stolen his toy truck. Harry had watched, bewildered, from across the parlour where he sat watching the telly, the item in question a good five metres away from him.

Compared to being pummelled by Dudley and his friends, and berated by Aunt Petunia, Snape's shouting should hardly had hurt at all. As it was, by the time Harry had picked up his toothbrush with trembling hands, rinsed it off, and finished getting ready for bed, he was feeling slightly calmer. Still, it was a long time before he could fall asleep that night. While Harry did not make a noise, plenty of tears leaked from the sides of his eyes, dampening the pillow on either side of his head, and when he did finally drift into slumber, it was a fitful one filled with snatches of nightmares that had him waking in a cold sweat every time.

He realised that Snape scared him. Uncle Vernon could be intimidating but mostly he was all bluster. Sometimes his rages were even a little funny, rather like a big walrus waving its flippers about. Snape wasn't funny at all. He was tall and menacing, and Harry hadn't known him long enough to be sure how his rages would end. There was just no telling what a man like that would do. And Harry couldn't understand, either, what he'd done to make Noddy hate him so. There was simply no reason for it. He had often made snide comments to Dudley in order to get his own back in some small way. It wasn't clear who'd said what first, although Harry was fairly certain that the chicken-or-egg ambiguity made no real difference: Dudley had lived to make his life miserable, regardless.

Noddy was a different story.
Harry had had so little to do with Noddy before the lunchtime incident, and he felt he'd never been anything but nice to the little creature in the extremely short time of knowing him.