1/10/2024 0 Comments Postie plus pajamas![]() He feels very red-faced, and he must be messy because her lips go thin. She pauses in the hallway, straightens up, and gives him a once-over as she wipes her hands on her pink polka-dotted apron. But he's already changed today, because it's long past breakfast time. She's very particular about what Dudley and Harry wear. She lays out clothes for him every morning. ![]() "Okay." He doesn't really understand why she's telling him that. He's panting, but he enjoys being active, and he knows his aunt likes being listened to carefully, so he does his best to chase after her. Harry jogs after her on legs far too short, from the kitchen, to the living room, to the dining room and back again. It's unusual only in the fact that Aunt Petunia isn't normally as scatterbrained as this. She's very stressed by this visit, Harry thinks. "I've laid out a change of clothes on your bed for you, Harry," she's saying, voice clipped as she hurries about. Not really.Īt maybe four years old, Harry collapses in the hallway.Īunt Petunia has an important visitor coming and needs to dig out a vase for some flowers she's bought from the supermarket, to sit on the coffee table while the grownups have tea. from someone, somewhere.Īfterwards, when he dreams, it is of skudding clouds and pale trains. Some days, the sadness sweeps over him in such a tidal wave that all he can do is cry, cling to his blanket, and wish for a hug. Definitely more than it should, for a little boy. He's no older than three, and his blanket, red and green wool - soft, scratchy, and very warm - is all he wants when he feels sad. Worthless, useless, ruined because of him.Īt the age of 16, Harry decides that's a pretty apt metaphor for his life. He doesn't know why he recalls parts of that memory so clearly, and others not at all - he can't be sure it even happened, and he didn't just dream it up - but. Looking back, Harry's filled with a pervasive sense of loss. The thought is tragic, somehow, even though it was dead long before he scooped it up. The leaf is brown and crumbled to nothing. His aunt dropping a pan lid in the kitchen, maybe? Uncle Vernon cursing at the television? Dudley throwing a toy across the room? He can't be sure what the distraction is, but by the time he turns back again, that barely-there voice has disappeared, and as he unfurls his fingers to look down. See?Ī sharp sound startles him, and he closes his fist tight. Their colour brightens, turning the fresh green of spring buds. He doesn't know why, but he strokes his small, blunt-nailed fingers over the crumbling edges, and he imagines the edges growing thicker and neater so that they are once again beautifully frilled. The leaf if only small, dropped perhaps from the rose bush in the front garden, and it sits perfectly within his palm. In the memory, he's sat on the ground - a rug? floorboards? he can't tell, it's too blurry - and in his hands is a leaf, something dry and withered, brought in on a shoe and found by Harry before Aunt Petunia has the chance to vacuum it up or sweep it into the bin. Whoever it is, it's too quiet to be his Uncle Vernon, who's never had much volume control and is much quicker to get angry than he is to being sad. A man's voice? It's too quiet to hear, but he reckons it's sad. His earliest memory is mostly made up of vague shapes. The feeling that everything he sees and experiences is wrong. In the rare moments when he sits down to think about it, Harry realises that it goes back as far as he can remember. ![]() ← Previous Work Part 2 of lost & found Next Work →, ← Previous Work Part 3 of walking through windows Next Work → Stats: Published: Updated: Words: 38799 Chapters: 2/3 Comments: 11 Kudos: 31 Bookmarks: 9 Hits: 252
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