Shade

Third Meeting

III.

His daily thoughts consist of herb collections, potted peonies, petunia flowers and hydrangea shrubs, and of how much dish soap is needed before the next bottle runs out; most of the time, he’ll check how much homework Dudley completes the night before that he’ll need to finish up by morning. Sometimes, he’ll be smiling over his third grade teacher’s sudden blue hair or about little shrunk sweaters and absently rubs a precious stone hidden underneath his shirt.

Today, he wonders about hair growth since he woke up, still dread-filled and instinctively running a hand over his head, knowing that the hairless—

But it’s not hairless.

He blinks repeatedly, speechless, ruffling his black hair and feeling curls, not short, not long, but brushing his neck and over his forehead in its typical untidy bushiness. A grin stretches across his cheeks and he’s so thrilled he forgets about Aunt Petunia until she sees him entering the kitchen with a bedhead full of hair.

She screeches and screams and it’s shrill and tinged with some emotion Harry can’t understand and it’s worse than any horse or bird cry he’s ever heard. He’s bopped twice over the head with her hot frying pan that just deposited the eggs on Uncle Vernon’s plate and he bites back a painful sob that’s just caught by a grinning Dudley before he’s ushered by the hotpainfulburning frying pan into his cupboard. Such freakishness must be punished, and he’s told he’ll be locked in for the rest of the day, no school and certainly no food.

As the door slams shut, Harry dives for his cot’s blanket, rummaging until he uncovers a half-filled plastic water bottle to twist open and pour over his blistering-hot, bump-forming head.

Harry releases a thankful sigh and sits down on the thin mattress, legs folding underneath him as he stares at his cupboard and zones out like he normally does to pass time during his punishments. There are only a handful of two-inch-tall green toy soldiers and a few broken crayons on the shelf, and they aren’t very fun to play with after so many years with them.

Underneath his mattress, peeking out half-way, there’s an old "The Jungle Book" picture story and a ripped up "D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths," but Harry’s practically memorized them already (and is still itching to be rid of before the Dursley’s find out his “borrowed” books that Dudley had placed in the trash). His sixth birthday had the Dursley’s giving him an ugly (but thicker) quilt, and Harry’s of course grateful for it… but… there really isn’t much to do in his cupboard with a whole day to pass.

So Harry sits there, his hand fondling his familiar droplet stone as seconds turning to minutes turning to hours perhaps, but the next time he snaps out of his daze and turns to wrap the blanket around him as his stomach growls something ferocious, his tugging meets resistance.

Harry blinks, rubs his eyes, and blinks again in shock.

There’s a black cat on his bed.

A cat.

A sleeping cat.

“How did you even get in here?” Harry wonders aloud.

The black cat lazily flutters its eyes open and Harry gasps.

Those eyes!

They were the same colour as his own and—

“You remember me.”

Just like that rainbow incident, the low, even tenor (it’s definitely a tenor) reverberated in and around him, and Harry whips his head around, eyes wide in amazement and wonder.

“Where are you?”

The cat seemed to sneeze, catching Harry’s attention, and Harry’s young mind suddenly makes a very improbable realization as he remembers black blurs from raining days and stares into brilliant green eyes.