Shade

First Meeting

I.

The first time, Harry’s sure it’s just coincidence. Or luck — luck that’s finally rubbed off on his terribly unlucky self.

Harry dozes while running on auto-pilot, weeding and clipping what needs to be weeded and clipped at this not-evening-not-nighttime hour when cats stalk through twilight and crickets chirp happily.

Secretly, he thinks Aunt Petunia only sends him out at this time because she’s too lazy to do the gardening in the morning with the wet dew when she could be sleeping into the warm afternoons (not, as she usually says to the neighbours, to ‘discipline’ him).

It isn't hard to think so. She purses her lips thin whenever he helps with dish washing or laundry folding, while she smiles warmly at Dudley at every hour, even when he breaks the best china set or has thrown his really expensive teddy out the second-floor window.

He’s happy, though, since Aunt Petunia at least calls him “Harry,” instead of “Boy,” like Uncle Vernon, even though she only calls him that when she wants some help with chores.

Sometimes, he wonders to himself if his Aunt and Uncle and cousin —relativesbloodfamily— even love him, and if not, why? Why is he here when no one wants him to be?

Losing himself to his thoughts and the garden’s sweet-smelling plants and the musty air of now-drizzling June rain, Harry, being seven (almost eight!) years old and still in need ten or eleven hours of sleep (so so drowsy) thinks he should let his eyes rest for a moment — just one! — before his nodding off bed-head suddenly falls into an equally bed-headed bush.

And of course it has to be the rose bush that he's half-started trimming.

Yelping with eyes luckily protected by round glasses, Harry narrowly dodges the dropped clipper and instantly pulls away; sadly, his stupid hair has made an acquaintance with Aunt Petunia's prized pastel-yellow rose bush — not that he or Aunt Petunia would want them to be close in the first place — and now there’s a thousand needles and thorns and evil pokey things in his face.

Harry hisses painfully and grapples with the stems before flinching back his palms, curling bloodied fingers around soft blades of grass and dirt underneath the plants. His face is probably just as cut and maimed, though he can't be sure, his eyes being shut and all. Suddenly he wonders, absurd and optimistic given the circumstances, if he’ll have “battle scars” just like King Arthur or Hercules in those fairy tales Ms Meyers has been reading to them before recess last week.

Futilely, he tries to free himself again (and again and again) before Aunt Petunia comes to check like she usually does minutes (or hours) after the street lamps flicker on. But his hands hurt and it’s painful and burning and they’re so sticky and wet and he can’t help thinking this watery stuff is bloodwhich was in him and is not supposed to come out!

Burning tears are barely restrained — Harry refuses to cry; he’s had worsethan this! — and he decides he hates roses, hates this whitish, buttery-pale yellow and will never ever wear that awful colour again in his life. He’ll be happy if he’ll never see the stupid stuff again.

Still struggling and not knowing what to do, Harry wonders if he should get the clippers and clip off the stalks — but no, he can’t, because then he’ll be cutting Aunt Petunia’s oh-so-pretty flowers and she’ll glare at him or scream at him more if he does that to her precious pricey plant that’s an awful colour and he’ll be locked in the cupboard again and won’t be allowed food for a couple of days and will be sent for time-outs and detentions for missing school again—

It feels like hours pass as he thinks and sobs without waterworks and cries without sound; he’s learned crying loudly leads to Very Bad consequences, unlike Dudley’s ice cream and crisps — and when he thinks he can’t take this anymore, and there’s this weird feeling in him that usually happens when some funny business is inevitable — suddenly he’s free with one last half-hearted tug, just as Aunt Petunia’s shrill voice cries for him to get inside as the rainfall suddenly comes down in showering bullets.

Harry blinks, looking at his hands, which are miraculously not painful and not burning and cleaned off, as if a Mr Clean eraser wiped them gone like grime in the bathtub. He runs his fingers through his scalp for thorns and is astounded by the silky feel and untangles — there’s almost no jumbles or knots, even less than when he has time to brush his bushy curls to something less gravity-defying — and he looks up right then, catching a pair of piercing green and a black silhouette jump the fence and stalk into the raining night.

Again, he blinks, wondering what—

"Boy! Get in bed, NOW!”

With unbridled speed, Harry swipes the clippers, stows them into the garden shed, and stumbles inside.