He woke up in the glaring whiteness of the room. Yellow pills in the corner, neatly packed in a plastic glass, rising as he rose up; the softness of the mattress changing forms, changing shapes, changing colours until it became sharper than the edges of his chewed nails. He curled, the hair on his back standing up, shivering to his core even when his touch wasn’t cold, the room too hot. The room curled before him too, coiling and turning and coiling again, until he felt bile rise up in his throat.
How much more?
He woke up again. He saw the yellow pills again. He saw them turn to red and then to green and then change shapes until they resembled the shape of his head. He was losing control. The head blasted.
When will he get better? Will he ever get better? Was he even sick?
So he escaped. It wasn’t hard. Everything seemed to open on its own, no camera recorded his presence when they checked Ward 3 for Patient DH617BG who had gone missing overnight. A Police Report was filed, an 11-year-old mentally unstable boy who was a danger to the society, who could do things others couldn’t. Their medicine never seemed to work on him, no restraints could control him. They were hardly surprised when no one could find him. He had always been too cold, too drawn inside, too unresponsive.
He found himself in golden-green when he realized he was awake. He didn’t care where the place was, the smell told him it was a forest.
Did he see it on Dursley’s computer?
What pulled him there?
Something resonated inside him and he found himself under the spots of the sun which was warm so differently from the artificial warmth of the lonely room.
When he touched the grass beneath him, it was as if he held the vibrance of his life in his hands. He laid there for hours, until the gold on his skin turned red and purple. Time had never passed by so quickly, not in a year since they put him in that Asylum. He blinked, for the first time in a while, he felt hungry. He closed his eyes again, until he could hear the fishes playing in a stream nearby. He never knew why he could listen and feel things so detached, why he could make people do things they didn’t want to, change materials into other materials; he never knew why he felt so different. He knew he wasn’t crazy, not like them.
On the shore of the river, deep into the forest, he saw something silver glistening in the night…and a figure, bent over a white animal, as if…feeding off of it. Startled, he took a step back quickly. It was too late, the figure heard him move, it reacted. It drew close. And closer still. Until it reached his face. Harry could see the face clearly now, the man in front of him could see him too. As they studied each other, the man wiping a gooey liquid off his face, smiling, Harry said nothing.
“What are you doing here, Potter?”
The question took him by surprise, he moved back. Something told him this was not a man he should have met. “How do you know my name?”
Still smiling, came the reply “I am Quirrell. You are something of a legend, and of course, we personally know each other.”
Harry moved – “Now, now, don’t run away, Potter, I am quite good at catching. Do you know what I caught? I know you saw me eat.” He stopped.
“No.”
“Oh, well. I see formal education has not given you much brain at Hogwarts. It was a unicorn.”
What, thought Harry, ah I was so worried he would be a serial killer but he’s turned out to be a lunatic.
“A what?”
The man, Quirrell, bent his head and his eyebrows furrowed. “Surely you have learnt about what Unicorns are at Hogwarts?”
“Er, where? I mean I do know what unicorns are, sir.”
A peculiar look crossed over the man’s face. Slowly, he tilted his head back straight again, his grin widened until it showed all his teeth. This was when Harry noticed his head looked…odd. As if disfigured, the shape was bumpy in the wrong places, and when he moved, he could almost make out a face.
“So, Mr. Harry Potter who has never heard of Hogwarts and Unicorns, have you finally noticed what you’re standing in front of?”
“Er, what, sir?”
Quirrell sighed deeply and turned until his back faced Harry. His head had another face.
Grey, almost non-existent, but breathing and barely alive, he saw a face.
“Should we tell him, master?”
Harry decided to run. No, this was so not something he should have messed with. But he didn’t manage to run far, his feet kept winding up on the same path that kept leading him to Quirrell who would only look bemused the many times he would show up. What was happening?
As if to answer his question, Quirrell finally rose and Harry stopped in his place.
“You can’t run away potter, from what you have done to me.”
His breath caught itself in his throat.
“What do you mean? What did I do?”
Quirrell pointed to his head, “This, what else? How do you think you ended up here, where my master found me half-dead? I let him my body as he lent me his power. But you reduced him to this state. It was you who destroyed his glory and threw him into an existence worse than death.”
“But how could I have done that? I haven’t even met you!”
“Your family is no better, Potter. Don’t you ever wonder where that scar came from?” He had. A flash of green light, an accident. That is the way Dursleys told him his parents died, the way he got his scar as memorabilia.
“No, you got it when your mother killed my master! And why do you think she did it, Potter? You, a measly child who doesn’t even know he is a wizard, why do you think she killed him?” He shivered at the man’s bellowing voice. Stammering, he could only shake his head. No. His mother? But what about his father?
“Because you would kill him!” Harry’s eyes widened. “That’s right, Potter, you would have killed him. Your mother became a murderer because of you, she died because my master was stronger. My master lived. Where is your mother now? Dead? With her husband?
Quirrell’s voice softened, his smile fell. “You know, aren’t you still alive?” Harry’s gut was wrenched. The tone of the voice he registered reminded him of hunger, the momentary flash before you devour something.
He continued, “Don’t you think I should lay your gravestone here, Potter? Your precious cousin won’t grieve, and you will only kill my master when you grow up.” Then he added thoughtfully, “We do need you to get to the Stone, but I’m sure we can make do without too.”
He raised a stick in his hand, “I should lay you to rest here. It was fairly nice meeting you. Mere luck and sheer familial obligation have kept you alive but not any longer. Goodbye, Potter.”
And Harry lost himself in a sea of green light that erupted from the end of a stick; no, he corrected himself, a wand. Magic? He scoffed, he died before the realization of him being a Wizard ever hit him. Dudley’s antics would have been more tolerable if he had known.
But it didn’t feel like death. For one, he wasn’t cold. For another, he could move his legs, and the air felt damp. He forced his eyes open.
The space was familiar. He caught the eye of a snake behind the glass, the glass he had removed last summer when he came to the Reptile House with Dudley. The snake winked at him again.
“You!” he screeched. His voice sounded his own.
“Yes, him, Harry.” He turned around to see a man with twinkling blue eyes and an insanely long grey beard, with a soft smile on his face, “As brave as you are young, I see.”
“Haven’t I seen you before? At…at the train station?”
“Ah, yes. The time they took you to the muggle hospital, yes,” the man scowled. A moment later, he smiled again. Harry was bewildered.
“Didn’t I die?” The man shook his head as he walked towards him, “Surprisingly, Harry, no. Not all things lead to death. Some prophecies cannot be erased, no matter how much one tries to.”
“What do you mean?” This day was really making him feel dumb, why did all these adults talk in cryptic ways.
“It is not a tale for now, Harry.” The man said in his calming voice, a hand patting his head,
“for now, you must wake up, I believe a young lady of my school has found you.”
“Your school…is it called Hogwarts?”
The man’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, yes it is, and you must come.”
Written by Shambhavi
Dyal Singh Evening College
University of Delhi
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