"1"
He crawled out from the cupboard and got to work cooking breakfast and lunches for the family. He already had Vernon's coffee prepared when his uncle descended the stairs.
Harry remained silent while Petunia fussed over Dudley. None of them talked about what happened, which was normal. Dudley sent him a smirk. The smirk that someone with power sends to someone without it.
What's it like?
Harry watched Petunia kiss Dudley and love him the way mothers do for their children. Harry didn't ask. Not asking questions was critical to surviving the Dursleys.
Harry met his cousin's eyes and felt displaced, not like he did yesterday where he moved to his cupboard, but like he was standing still and the floor had fallen away from him.
Night terrors of falling endlessly was all he could compare it to, or maybe the feeling of standing up to fast, or perhaps sleeping with a concussion.
Yesterday's movement hardly felt like he had moved at all, but this time he was going fast.
Harry felt loved by his mother and disgust mixed with superiority over his cousin.
Then he was back in his body.
None of the Dursleys seemed to notice. Harry felt overwhelmed by the impressions he had experienced and struggled to detangle them from this own.
He never felt loved by his own mother and, though he loathed his cousin, he had never felt superior to him. Those were Dudley's emotions.
Not mine, Dudley's.
It felt wrong. They weren't his, they didn't belong to him.
He breathed slowly and turned back to his tasks before he could make a mistake.
"Bring me the bacon, boy," Vernon sneered.
Harry loaded a plate and handed it to his Uncle. He met his uncle's eyes and felt… hungry. Well, that one might just be him.
He looked at Petunia, meeting her pinched, narrowed eyes with own. Distant sadness and jealousy; envy felt green in his mouth. Closer, there was anger, fear, and a deep loathing.
So deep it caused the sore spot on his head to throb.
When he finished consuming the scraps he had been allowed and done the dishes, he left for school. He would be late, as he always was. He would miss some class and it left the impression that he was a poor student. He wasn't.
Books were the only company he kept besides the spiders under his cupboard. He wished he was at school already.
He hated the daily walk to school and to make things worse it was hot out today. He preferred the muggier weather that the British typically enjoyed. Well he enjoyed it anyway.
He remembered yesterday when he focused on the cupboard. On being in the cupboard. At getting inside. He focused on the school building.
He wished he was there and shut his eyes tight.
And when he opened them, he was.
There was a loud noise that came with him and he looked at the school parking lot with awe. And he promptly vomited and fell to his knees in his own waste.
He sighed, the acrid smell getting to him and his throat burning uncomfortably. It would be a long day at school. He was certain of that.
But he practiced at school. With whatever it was he could now do. When he looked at people he felt… something. Which was good. Something was nice.
Even the disgust he felt in the eyes of a girl in his class when she looked at his tattered hand me downs, still covered in vomit, felt better then what he usually felt. It was nice.
For a few moments he felt like he wasn't himself. It was far better than the emptiness which usually clung to his insides. It was brighter than his numbness.
He smiled sheepishly at the girl and she scrunched her face at him.
Harry knew the Dursleys' minds well; he had several years of practice by now. He determined that this was what he was feeling. Their thoughts and impressions against his eyes. He could read them and feel them without even looking at them.
From the corner of his eye he could see them and see further through them. He knew what the students around him felt with a bare glance.
He felt proud. Why shouldn't he? This was his. Something the Dursleys couldn't take away. Couldn't remove even if they killed him.
And he would die before he stopped doing what he did.
It no longer felt like movement. Like he had fallen whenever he met their eye. It instead felt like the world moved around him, rather than he through it.
He saw the same girl who he often dived into inside the classroom. She met his eyes as he walked through the door, and he didn't feel the usual disgust and repulsion. Instead, he felt sadness.
He took his seat, quickly breaking the eye contact. He didn't need it to feel her.
Sadness, despair, loss perhaps?
He mentally shrugged as he attempted to decipher the girl. It could have been any one of those, or something else entirely.
He felt a desire to know and turned back to her. He caught the corner of her eyes and saw and heard rather than felt.
There was color, a lot of it, not all where he had expected color to be. Of course, he wasn't using his eyes, so where he expected color was kind of irrelevant.
He saw… a cat. It was skinny and grey and all bones. But it was well-groomedf and clearly loved. He saw a shoe box and a shovel. The colors shattered and he was brought back to the classroom he never left.
"Stop staring at me!" The girl hissed at him. He blinked in surprise and flushed in embarrassment as other students turned to look at him, some chuckling at his expense. The teacher turned from the chalkboard and raised an eyebrow.