Unremarkable
I was cleaning my room last night and found a story written out in longhand on two different pieces of paper, one side each. I added in about two paragraphs to clarify the main plot, changed a few details, and fixed the structure. I have no idea just when I wrote this, but it was mixed in with the notes from my summer anatomy class.
I don't know just what prompted the mood behind it, but the story relies on just one easier decision made years before the story begins. If someone takes the time to ask you for a favor, in case their worst fears come to light, and then those fears were true... it's easier to care about someone that you took in intentionally with someone's full gratitude. It's easy to ignore a child left on your step without so much as a by-your-leave. (It's also easy to ignore a child lost in the midst of the war, when your Chosen One has lost his parents and is in need of guidance.)
Harry Dursley was a fully unremarkable child.
He stared wistfully at the loud games of Seamus, Dean, and Ron, the unbreakable triumvirate of the first-year Gryffindors, but he was never asked to join in. He and Neville were friends by default at first, and slowly they became friends in truth. In time, Hermione Granger joined their shy group, and the outcasts seemed happy enough together. The house nearly mandated teasing, as the entire school knew, but very few realized just how far that teasing could go. Nobody asked Harry.
Harry Dursley was placidly mediocre in charms, rather dim when it came to transfiguration, and solidly average in potions. He was brilliant at the drills in flying lessons, if too shy to expose that potential streak of talent to the ridicule of boys that surely would beat Harry's instinctive motions. He taught Neville and Hermione how to fly; Neville taught him herbology and Hermione taught them everything else. Harry showed rare streaks of talent in defense, and had a remarkable grasp of the dark arts for someone raised by Muggles, but Quirrel didn't care to call on the quiet boy that never even met the instructor's eyes. (Harry never realized that there was a philosopher's stone at Hogwarts, and Voldemort destroyed the mirror of Erised in a fit of pique when the stone was beyond his grasp. The stone was destroyed, Voldemort was forced to flee from Dumbledore, and Harry never had the chance to see himself standing with his parents. He knew that a serial murderer had killed his parents on Halloween when he was just a year old, and he had been raised by his aunt and uncle to keep him safe.)
He grew shyly fond of Hagrid in time, maybe because Harry finally shone in a subject. No one disputed that when it came to care of magical creatures, Harry Dursley was the best. Part of it was the reckless bravery that had made him a Gryffindor, perhaps, but a good part of it was the gentle, quiet nature that let him blend so effortlessly into Colin Creevey's incessant picture-taking. Even in pictures, Harry Dursley was quiet and polite and barely noticed amid the wild antics common to Gryffindor Tower. His quiet competence earned him no enemies despite his constant good marks in care of magical creatures, and his patient stubbornness won the admiration of Professor Vector. She was thrilled to have two Muggleborns topping her class. If she realized that a good portion of Harry's grade resulted from Hermione's enthusiastic lectures on the material that had been covered that day, or knew that he learned far more from Hermione than he ever did from the class itself, Vector didn't seem to care. The professor promised that whatever he wanted to do in his life, arithmancy would help him to think in an organized fashion, and she would be thrilled to write him a letter of reference.
Harry was scraping through potions with a passing mark when he quietly asked Professor Snape for help, fully expecting to be turned down in a manner guaranteed to leave scars on the ego. Snape had humored him instead, perhaps because in Dursley's entire career as a student the only bungled potion had resulted from Neville's mistake, but perhaps only because Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall could do nothing for the headaches that plagued the boy, or for the nightmares that woke his roommates at least twice a week.
A stronger formulation of dreamless sleep worked as a temporary measure, but the nightmares soon resumed. Snape delivered a very acerbic lecture on the foolishness of becoming reliant on chemical substances for basic human function, leaving Dursley staring at his Muggle trainers and quite confused to find a book in his hands. Snape said nothing else, beyond a curt dismissal, but Harry found himself with a beginner's level tome concerning occlumency just two days before the beginning of summer hols.
In his sixth year, Harry Dursley was quieter than ever, but he showed a subtle competence of concepts and practice (and an occasional mastery) that thrilled no one more than Neville and Hermione. It wasn't hard. Few noticed the quietest boy in Gryffindor. Herbology was still Neville's domain, Hermione was widely called the brightest witch of her age, and Harry was their rather pale shadow following behind a two-starred constellation, shadowed under messy dark fringe cropped too short to highlight a resemblance to James Potter. (Well-fitted glasses had the latest in Muggle technology to lessen glare, consequently changing the color of his eyes just enough to prevent comparisons to one Lily Evans. Lily was remembered smiling or in a temper, never as the quiet observer that drew less attention than Neville's beloved Trevor.) Harry's marks rose all throughout that year, leaving him near the top of the class despite a low start, but a Ravenclaw was head boy and Ron Weasley was prefect and quidditch captain.
Harry Dursley had silently ignored the occasional bully for seven years, and the slow consequences of rarely being noticed for six and a half, when Snape saw the signs. The boy (seventeen, now, and not a boy at all) was perpetually tired, his grades were slipping, and he was useless for a full day following every last gathering of the Death Eaters. Snape actually checked the boy's forearm, to be sure, but the skin there was as clean and unmarked as the rest of him. Minerva was similarly puzzled, but the matter seemed to resolve itself when Snape recommended several books on occlumency. The boy didn't seem to invite conversation, so the titles of the books were written as an addendum to Snape's remarks on a potions essay. (That particular essay had earned a Dreadful for an abysmal lack of cited sources, and had only avoided Troll for a few surprising hints of perception about the true reasons for classifying some potions as dark.)
Voldemort came to school that year in April, flanked by rows and rows of his Death Eaters. Snape was there, waiting, one last ace in Dumbledore's hand. There seemed to be no hope of winning, but there was the chance for one last gambit to counteract Voldemort's ultimatum. If the chosen one would not come out to him, then the school would be torn apart brick by brick, student by student.
Hermione cried quietly, Neville took a deep breath, and boring, scrawny Harry Dursley, with the disheveled mess of black hair and the dull green eyes (and the rare, shy smile that made him every inch Lily's child), walked out onto the lawn.
There were short letters for Hermione, Neville, Hagrid, and Professor Vector neatly lined across his bed. The battered second-hand broom that he had prized was left at Neville's trunk, the small brown owl that had doted on him was perched on Hermione's bedpost, and his schoolbooks were neatly marked as a donation for anyone that would need them. (All of them went to Ginny Weasley, who had been friends with Hermione and very friendly with both Neville and Harry.)
(When Voldemort saw the prophecy, during Harry's fifth year, the odd feeling of waiting for something had come to a head. Harry understood that there were ways of marking an equal that had nothing to do with physical contact. Harry's parents had died, and something about Lily Potter's death had been so amazing that the wizards didn't have words to tell Petunia what had happened... even if the wizard had been very diligent in explaining magical affairs to a Muggle. Even the most powerful wizard opposing Voldemort didn't know why one woman's sacrifice changed all of the rules. Harry was blood of her blood, and that had been enough. The prophecy was crystal clear to Harry, and to Voldemort, but the rest of the world would have to muddle through as best they could. Since that rather described Harry Dursley's first month or so at Hogwarts, when his aunt couldn't work out how to send on a letter, he never felt the need to tell Headmaster Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall. He quite nearly told Snape, but Harry had never been one to push his luck. Snape wasn't one to invite conversation.)
The only other possession of note was the framed photograph tucked in with his clothes, one that not one of his roommates had seen before. Even Hermione and Neville hadn't been privy to that secret (though Harry didn't know that Hermione had entertained a rather hopeless crush on Ronald Weasley, who had been dating Lavender Brown for ages, or that Neville's parents were permanent residents of St. Mungo's courtesy of Bellatrix Lestrange and friends). It was a Muggle photograph, with all of the people in it still as stone, with two sisters in the center. Each sister, flanked by a man, was holding a child. The thin, long-faced woman was holding a familiar child: Harry when he had been just a year old. Her large husband looked on tolerantly, though his gaze was directed at another burden. Petunia's sister, a redhead with laughing green eyes, was holding a heavyset blond child with discreet help from her dark-haired husband, who was similarly looking to his son in his sister-in-law's arms.
(Lily Potter knew that the war might take her child, and had made the special effort to reconcile with her sister. When the time came to hide, Petunia had reluctantly taken the boy-reluctantly because it meant leaving Lily in danger, when they finally exchanged letters and news and embraces again, and because the event she had feared came to pass. Lily died, and asked only that Petunia let Harry go to Hogwarts when it was time. Petunia had disliked the boy at first, blaming him for the loss of her sister, but Lily's letter to her (a beautiful piece of writing that could make her cry years and years later, when she softly told her nephew that his mother had been wonderful) said everything that needed be said.)
Perhaps Petunia should have noticed that Harry spent too much time with that letter, and not just because it was a memento of his mother. Professor Trelawney might have realized that the solemn student in the very first row had listened carefully to her many predictions, or perhaps that beginning in his sixth year he treated her with the respect normally reserved for Professors Snape, Vector, and Hagrid. Professor Vector only belatedly made sense of the project that her hardworking student had been laboring over, an old set of equations purported to tell the exact hour of one's death. McGonagall might have noticed the abrupt slip in grades of the last week, Snape might have seen the signs of hopeless resignation, Dumbledore might have realized that the Chosen One had been found after all-marked as Voldemort's equal when the Dark Wizard thought the child important enough to risk everything, even his goodwill gift to Severus Snape in attempting to leave the redheaded witch alive.
Hermione and Neville had noticed that something was wrong, but children can be excused for not understanding the curiously peaceful look in their friend's green eyes in those last few days. (When he smiled, Hermione would say later, Harry's eyes were the most marvelous shade of emerald that anyone could have imagined. Neville would say that very few people ever made Harry smile like that, and maybe that was the worst of everything.)
Harry Dursley had been a completely unremarkable child, not known for trouble or for perfection. Perhaps that was why everyone remembered him.
I don't know just what prompted the mood behind it, but the story relies on just one easier decision made years before the story begins. If someone takes the time to ask you for a favor, in case their worst fears come to light, and then those fears were true... it's easier to care about someone that you took in intentionally with someone's full gratitude. It's easy to ignore a child left on your step without so much as a by-your-leave. (It's also easy to ignore a child lost in the midst of the war, when your Chosen One has lost his parents and is in need of guidance.)
Harry Dursley was a fully unremarkable child.
He stared wistfully at the loud games of Seamus, Dean, and Ron, the unbreakable triumvirate of the first-year Gryffindors, but he was never asked to join in. He and Neville were friends by default at first, and slowly they became friends in truth. In time, Hermione Granger joined their shy group, and the outcasts seemed happy enough together. The house nearly mandated teasing, as the entire school knew, but very few realized just how far that teasing could go. Nobody asked Harry.
Harry Dursley was placidly mediocre in charms, rather dim when it came to transfiguration, and solidly average in potions. He was brilliant at the drills in flying lessons, if too shy to expose that potential streak of talent to the ridicule of boys that surely would beat Harry's instinctive motions. He taught Neville and Hermione how to fly; Neville taught him herbology and Hermione taught them everything else. Harry showed rare streaks of talent in defense, and had a remarkable grasp of the dark arts for someone raised by Muggles, but Quirrel didn't care to call on the quiet boy that never even met the instructor's eyes. (Harry never realized that there was a philosopher's stone at Hogwarts, and Voldemort destroyed the mirror of Erised in a fit of pique when the stone was beyond his grasp. The stone was destroyed, Voldemort was forced to flee from Dumbledore, and Harry never had the chance to see himself standing with his parents. He knew that a serial murderer had killed his parents on Halloween when he was just a year old, and he had been raised by his aunt and uncle to keep him safe.)
He grew shyly fond of Hagrid in time, maybe because Harry finally shone in a subject. No one disputed that when it came to care of magical creatures, Harry Dursley was the best. Part of it was the reckless bravery that had made him a Gryffindor, perhaps, but a good part of it was the gentle, quiet nature that let him blend so effortlessly into Colin Creevey's incessant picture-taking. Even in pictures, Harry Dursley was quiet and polite and barely noticed amid the wild antics common to Gryffindor Tower. His quiet competence earned him no enemies despite his constant good marks in care of magical creatures, and his patient stubbornness won the admiration of Professor Vector. She was thrilled to have two Muggleborns topping her class. If she realized that a good portion of Harry's grade resulted from Hermione's enthusiastic lectures on the material that had been covered that day, or knew that he learned far more from Hermione than he ever did from the class itself, Vector didn't seem to care. The professor promised that whatever he wanted to do in his life, arithmancy would help him to think in an organized fashion, and she would be thrilled to write him a letter of reference.
Harry was scraping through potions with a passing mark when he quietly asked Professor Snape for help, fully expecting to be turned down in a manner guaranteed to leave scars on the ego. Snape had humored him instead, perhaps because in Dursley's entire career as a student the only bungled potion had resulted from Neville's mistake, but perhaps only because Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall could do nothing for the headaches that plagued the boy, or for the nightmares that woke his roommates at least twice a week.
A stronger formulation of dreamless sleep worked as a temporary measure, but the nightmares soon resumed. Snape delivered a very acerbic lecture on the foolishness of becoming reliant on chemical substances for basic human function, leaving Dursley staring at his Muggle trainers and quite confused to find a book in his hands. Snape said nothing else, beyond a curt dismissal, but Harry found himself with a beginner's level tome concerning occlumency just two days before the beginning of summer hols.
In his sixth year, Harry Dursley was quieter than ever, but he showed a subtle competence of concepts and practice (and an occasional mastery) that thrilled no one more than Neville and Hermione. It wasn't hard. Few noticed the quietest boy in Gryffindor. Herbology was still Neville's domain, Hermione was widely called the brightest witch of her age, and Harry was their rather pale shadow following behind a two-starred constellation, shadowed under messy dark fringe cropped too short to highlight a resemblance to James Potter. (Well-fitted glasses had the latest in Muggle technology to lessen glare, consequently changing the color of his eyes just enough to prevent comparisons to one Lily Evans. Lily was remembered smiling or in a temper, never as the quiet observer that drew less attention than Neville's beloved Trevor.) Harry's marks rose all throughout that year, leaving him near the top of the class despite a low start, but a Ravenclaw was head boy and Ron Weasley was prefect and quidditch captain.
Harry Dursley had silently ignored the occasional bully for seven years, and the slow consequences of rarely being noticed for six and a half, when Snape saw the signs. The boy (seventeen, now, and not a boy at all) was perpetually tired, his grades were slipping, and he was useless for a full day following every last gathering of the Death Eaters. Snape actually checked the boy's forearm, to be sure, but the skin there was as clean and unmarked as the rest of him. Minerva was similarly puzzled, but the matter seemed to resolve itself when Snape recommended several books on occlumency. The boy didn't seem to invite conversation, so the titles of the books were written as an addendum to Snape's remarks on a potions essay. (That particular essay had earned a Dreadful for an abysmal lack of cited sources, and had only avoided Troll for a few surprising hints of perception about the true reasons for classifying some potions as dark.)
Voldemort came to school that year in April, flanked by rows and rows of his Death Eaters. Snape was there, waiting, one last ace in Dumbledore's hand. There seemed to be no hope of winning, but there was the chance for one last gambit to counteract Voldemort's ultimatum. If the chosen one would not come out to him, then the school would be torn apart brick by brick, student by student.
Hermione cried quietly, Neville took a deep breath, and boring, scrawny Harry Dursley, with the disheveled mess of black hair and the dull green eyes (and the rare, shy smile that made him every inch Lily's child), walked out onto the lawn.
There were short letters for Hermione, Neville, Hagrid, and Professor Vector neatly lined across his bed. The battered second-hand broom that he had prized was left at Neville's trunk, the small brown owl that had doted on him was perched on Hermione's bedpost, and his schoolbooks were neatly marked as a donation for anyone that would need them. (All of them went to Ginny Weasley, who had been friends with Hermione and very friendly with both Neville and Harry.)
(When Voldemort saw the prophecy, during Harry's fifth year, the odd feeling of waiting for something had come to a head. Harry understood that there were ways of marking an equal that had nothing to do with physical contact. Harry's parents had died, and something about Lily Potter's death had been so amazing that the wizards didn't have words to tell Petunia what had happened... even if the wizard had been very diligent in explaining magical affairs to a Muggle. Even the most powerful wizard opposing Voldemort didn't know why one woman's sacrifice changed all of the rules. Harry was blood of her blood, and that had been enough. The prophecy was crystal clear to Harry, and to Voldemort, but the rest of the world would have to muddle through as best they could. Since that rather described Harry Dursley's first month or so at Hogwarts, when his aunt couldn't work out how to send on a letter, he never felt the need to tell Headmaster Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall. He quite nearly told Snape, but Harry had never been one to push his luck. Snape wasn't one to invite conversation.)
The only other possession of note was the framed photograph tucked in with his clothes, one that not one of his roommates had seen before. Even Hermione and Neville hadn't been privy to that secret (though Harry didn't know that Hermione had entertained a rather hopeless crush on Ronald Weasley, who had been dating Lavender Brown for ages, or that Neville's parents were permanent residents of St. Mungo's courtesy of Bellatrix Lestrange and friends). It was a Muggle photograph, with all of the people in it still as stone, with two sisters in the center. Each sister, flanked by a man, was holding a child. The thin, long-faced woman was holding a familiar child: Harry when he had been just a year old. Her large husband looked on tolerantly, though his gaze was directed at another burden. Petunia's sister, a redhead with laughing green eyes, was holding a heavyset blond child with discreet help from her dark-haired husband, who was similarly looking to his son in his sister-in-law's arms.
(Lily Potter knew that the war might take her child, and had made the special effort to reconcile with her sister. When the time came to hide, Petunia had reluctantly taken the boy-reluctantly because it meant leaving Lily in danger, when they finally exchanged letters and news and embraces again, and because the event she had feared came to pass. Lily died, and asked only that Petunia let Harry go to Hogwarts when it was time. Petunia had disliked the boy at first, blaming him for the loss of her sister, but Lily's letter to her (a beautiful piece of writing that could make her cry years and years later, when she softly told her nephew that his mother had been wonderful) said everything that needed be said.)
Perhaps Petunia should have noticed that Harry spent too much time with that letter, and not just because it was a memento of his mother. Professor Trelawney might have realized that the solemn student in the very first row had listened carefully to her many predictions, or perhaps that beginning in his sixth year he treated her with the respect normally reserved for Professors Snape, Vector, and Hagrid. Professor Vector only belatedly made sense of the project that her hardworking student had been laboring over, an old set of equations purported to tell the exact hour of one's death. McGonagall might have noticed the abrupt slip in grades of the last week, Snape might have seen the signs of hopeless resignation, Dumbledore might have realized that the Chosen One had been found after all-marked as Voldemort's equal when the Dark Wizard thought the child important enough to risk everything, even his goodwill gift to Severus Snape in attempting to leave the redheaded witch alive.
Hermione and Neville had noticed that something was wrong, but children can be excused for not understanding the curiously peaceful look in their friend's green eyes in those last few days. (When he smiled, Hermione would say later, Harry's eyes were the most marvelous shade of emerald that anyone could have imagined. Neville would say that very few people ever made Harry smile like that, and maybe that was the worst of everything.)
Harry Dursley had been a completely unremarkable child, not known for trouble or for perfection. Perhaps that was why everyone remembered him.