Professor Potter

Chapter 52

Chapter 52 

"Harry! Harry Potter! Wake up!" called the familiar, if annoying, voice followed by pounding on the door. 

Harry's eyes opened and his blurry, unassisted vision only showed the indistinct outlines of the small space that was his room, illuminated by the faint glow coming from his right side. He fumbled for his glasses, finding them on the rough wooden shelf behind his head. The feel of the heavy plastic frames joined by several wrappings of white bandage tape was at once familiar yet alarmingly wrong. Once his vision focused through the scratched lenses he could see where he was. 

It was his room, the cupboard under the staircase at 4 Privet Drive. He reached out and touched the walls and the now unlatched door. They all felt real and solid. How could this be happening? Had it all been a dream? Some fantasy he had crafted in desperation to be out of the Dursley household? He didn't have much time to ponder this as the banging on the door repeated and Aunt Petunia railed at him, 

"Get up, you lazy thing, you. You need to finish with the breakfast." 

Harry threw off the one thin blanket and pushed open the cupboard door, crawling out of the small space and getting to his feet. He was feeling heartbroken and desperate. How could all of that have been a dream? How could he have gone through so much of a life, over seventeen years, in just the space of a few hours? 

As he slouched his way into the kitchen he found his aunt, his Uncle Vernon and his dreadful cousin Dudley all there staring at him. 

"What's your problem, boy? Wipe that sullen look off your face and get to work. I'm already behind my time and you have your chores to attend to," Uncle Vernon said with his usual disdain. 

As Harry walked over to the range to see what Aunt Petunia had started, and nearly ruined, he saw the overlarge gray dyed cast offs of Dudley's that were to serve as Harry's school uniform starting tomorrow. His sense of despair had heightened. There would be no escape to the hallowed halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry each September. There would be no reprieve during the summer months by fleeing to the Burrow. There would be no Ron or Hermione or Ginny. How could he have dreamed all of that? Had he started to lose his mind? Was the abuse of the last ten years finally taking its toll? 

After rescuing breakfast and serving it, without thanks of course, Harry ignored the comments, then demands, that he return and get to work. He walked numbly out the door and began wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood. He barely recognized that he was passing the house of Mrs. Figg, who it seemed was nothing more than an eccentric cat breeder and not the undercover squib and member of the secret Order of the Phoenix. His depression didn't worsen at this point since it had no where lower to go. 

His wanderings finally brought him to the small playground where once he spotted what he thought was a large black dog which turned out to be his godfather, Sirius Black. No, wait, that was part of the dream, too. There was no dog, no Sirius, no connection back to his, he supposed, rather ordinary mother and father, dead nearly ten years. As he mulled over the lost fantasy of his extraordinary life as a powerful wizard his thoughts were interrupted by the all too familiar, and hated, sneer of his cousin. 

"Hey, Pottie. You better get home right now. Mum and Dad are really mad at you for walking out without doing your chores." 

Harry looked up at the fat round face, with the little pig-like eyes and nose and he brightened just a touch and only briefly, at the thought of his overstuffed cousin running around the battered old house on that island in the sea with a curly little pig tail sticking out of his pants. He also saw that Dudley had taken the time to gather up his gang of like minded thugs. Harry laughed a bit, but bitterly, at the idea that his cousin, who was probably twice his size, still needed the backing of four more near Neanderthals.