Mistake:

It was a mistake. Honest. Petunia never meant to kill her nephew. Ghost Harry. Begins graphic.

-/-start-/-

It was an early morning a few weeks into school break when Petunia and Vernon Dursley received a phone call that his sister, Marge, had been admitted to the hospital due to a heart attack. Their son, Dudley, had been sent two days prior for a summer camp with a few of his friends from school. Their nephew, Harry, had been tucked away in the boot cupboard under the stairs.

Hastily, Petunia shoves a cup of water in the cupboard with a bucket, hurrying upstairs before the eight year old had a chance to awaken. She hurriedly packed their bags, knowing they would be staying near the hospital for a day or two before returning. Vernon, gruff and impatient, calls that he would be waiting in the car, the boot already open to receive the bags.

With a hasty slam of the car doors, the two were speeding off down the road.

Inside the house, eight year old Harry woke to the sound of the front door slamming. His small cot was damp on one corner from an overturned glass of water. Harry thought this a shame; he had not been out in several days. For a moment, he ponders trying his tricks, but after he turned his teacher's hair blue, he thought it best not to anger his relatives.

Deciding to conserve his energy, Harry sleeps.

Outside a few hours later, a sputtering occurs, and the air conditioner faithfully cooling the home gives a few last clunks before turning off. In the unusual summer heat, the house becomes stifling and under the stairs more so.

Harry is thirsty. His mouth is dry like sandpaper, and his stomach long since had stopped growling. He was sticky with sweat and felt weak.

All he really wanted to do was sleep.

And sleep he did, for several days until his heart stopped beating.

Petunia enters the house five days after she leaves, intent on getting more clothes for herself and Vernon as they played to stay with Marge while she recovered. Opening the front door to the house, her nose is hit with the most pungent scent she had ever encountered, as well as a stifling heat.

Swallowing, she sees a reddish brown liquid seeping from beneath the cupboard door and onto the floor of her hall. Shutting the front door behind her, she drops the bags and moves over to the cupboard, frantically opening it only to give a wordless scream.

In front of her is the decomposing corpse of her nephew, covered in rats and insects.

She panics.

She had not meant for this to happen. She had honestly forgotten about the boy. She had never wanted the boy.

With shaking hands, she gathered supplies. She was a wife and a mother. She had a family. She was not going to do something foolish.

Meticulously, she covered herself, placing on her dish gloves and gathering garbage bags and bleach. She shoed off the rats, making note to call an exterminator later. She whimpered as she picked up the pieces of the body, cringing at the insects.

It was several hours later, once everything from the cupboard is in two double bag garbage bags and the cupboard doused in bleach that she takes a step back.

The smell is gone to chemicals, and it is still obnoxiously hot. Her hair is plastered to her sweaty forehead, and her cheeks streaked with dried tears. Her eyes go back to the garbage bags, and she wonders how to dispose of them before concluding the least suspicious thing to be putting them out for the garbage in the morning.

The next morning, Petunia does exactly that and drives back to her husband with shaking hands.

She never realizes that all of the child's blood seeping into the floors and confused the blood wards. She never notices the baby teeth left in the cracks of the wood in the cupboard, or the rats that took the bones of fingers and toes to the sewers. Never realized the implications of a magical child's bones.

Adult wizards and witches needed a purpose to stay beyond death, unfinished business. Magical children simply did not realize what had happened to them and did not know better than to move own, so many families cremated the bodies. For any physical trace was enough to bring a spirit back.

It is hours after that she leaves that her nephew appears in his cupboard, pulling his translucent hand through the door repeatedly in curiosity.

He would find later the ability to visit the places were a piece of him resides. He would find later that his relatives could not see him, no matter if he would turn on and off the water or television.

And, he would not know until years later why no one could see him. Not until the professors at Hogwarts come to see why no quill would address a letter for little Harry Potter.

-/-

Slightly odd. I just had this thought about fifteen minutes ago, and it kept nagging at me.

I may continue, but for right now it is complete. I just had this weird thought of a friendly ghost Harry that could go wherever his bones were, and no one realizing until later. I thought if it continued, it could be morbidly humorous.