Alastair's Cupboard

Chapter 1

"It felt most strange to stand here in the silence and know that he was about to leave the house for the last time... It gave him an odd, empty feeling to remember those times; it was like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost."

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It was not easy being Harry Potter, even now that he was twenty-four years old.

The number looked odd to him, as if it belonged to someone else: someone much older than he was, someone he should have respected as a role model instead of staring at in the mirror. In the layer of himself that rested deepest in his soul, it seemed that his life had paused at age seventeen. Most of the time, he didn't feel a day older. For one thing, he was in training to become an Auror, which meant that he remained a schoolboy of sorts. He still loaded his pockets with cauldron cakes and Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, complained about needing to fill twelve inches of parchment when he had only written five, and craved more free time to spend with Ron and Hermione.

But then there were other times that he remembered things - not simply with his head, but also with his heart. In these moments he was filled with a quiet sadness for the little boy he had once known so well.

He had a still photograph of his childhood cupboard on Privet Drive, which he had taken several months after the Battle of Hogwarts. He hadn't told Ron or Hermione about it, or even Ginny for that matter. He wondered if Hermione would recognize some of the Muggle children's books by their blurred outlines in the corner of the picture. Sometimes he held the photograph in his hand and gazed at it for what could be either minutes or hours, but felt like eternity.

****

It was winter. Underneath the threadbare spaceship blanket, Harry had rolled himself into the fabric so tightly that only his neck was free to move. He couldn't really see the stars and planets on the print anymore – it had all faded to a homogeneous gray – but he could still imagine rocketing past them as he tried to drift off to sleep.

On the wall next to him was the circuit breaker for the entire house, which whirred incessantly and clicked at random times. It gave him the cover of background noise that he needed to talk to himself without the Dursleys listening.

There were shelves behind him, too, and Harry regarded their contents as landmarks for his own personal possessions. His khaki trousers lay underneath the dishwasher soap, his gray sweater on top of the screwdriver, his navy shirt held down by the broken TV remote, his underwear and socks tucked behind the box of cleaning rags. He kept his favorite paperbacks under his mattress, flat against the two storage crates. He also had a couple of three-legged model horses, which he had rescued from Dudley's rubbish bin and propped up on the highest shelf. Sometimes he would ask his friend, Alastair, to ride the horses into battle; she wouldn't mind that the horses were injured, of course, because she had plenty of legs to spare.

That night, Harry couldn't sleep. He squinted in the flickering light of the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling, but he still couldn't make out any words from his copy of James and the Giant Peach. When the lightbulb failed, he was left in total darkness; Uncle Vernon had slammed the little shutters in the door shut before locking him in. He reached overhead for Alastair's silken abode and smiled as her spindly legs pattered down his fingers into his palm.

"G'night, Alastair," Harry whispered. "Why are you still awake? I hope you had enough to eat today. I'll try to leave the door open in the morning. That way some bugs might make it inside. I know there haven't been many flies lately."

At that moment, sawdust cascaded from the ceiling and Alastair scuttled away into the darkness.

Harry sat up with a start just as the door flew open. A dark silhouette was standing in the hallway with a torch in hand, towering over Harry's bed.