Sad Things, Made Bright
By Rey

Chapter 1: Go Getaway

5th December 1988

1.

The boy who had used to be Freak, who had to accustom himself to the name of Harry James Potter these two years, as he was enrolled in the local primary school alongside his cousin Dudley, fretted silently with his answers for the last exam of the semester. If his grades were above his cousin's, he was guaranteed to be punished severely at the place he was forced to call home, by people he was forced to call relatives. – He had long resigned himself to getting no hint of affection from them, and yet at times he still longed for some, and this cold beginning-of-December day was no different. Other children tried their best during the exam period to win something from their parents… Nobody tried their worst instead, like he did, and there was even no acknowledgement for his 'achievement' at the end of it.

He nibbled at the head of his pencil, as his eyes restlessly roamed the classroom, noting all the bent heads, shifting gazes, silent, tense air, and the sounds of scribbling pencils and shuffling papers. Dudley was thankfully not placed in the same classroom with him this time; but then, it also provided him with a new problem: How to gauge how low his mark should be, if he couldn't see how panicked Dudley was when looking at the exam items? Was a sixty percent mark low enough for the Dursleys? Should he lower it further to fifty or even forty? But he could fail the year if it's too low!

He gritted his teeth and glared at his answer sheet. He longed to do his best, to be praised to have done his best, to be acknowledged for being a decent student and a good child. All were unattainable, and yet he still hoped, and he was mad at himself for it.

And then, as it had happened several times already in his short miserable life, the anger and frustration and desperate longing transformed into an intense desire to rebel. It bubbled up from deep in his guts, up his chest, seeping into his blood and spreading to all over his being. – Even if he was to be locked in his cupboard for the rest of the winter holiday with one meal every three days, even if he was to be spanked severely or even belted or caned, he was going to do his best and passed this year with flying colours.

2.

Neville huddled in a corner of his prized greenhouse, farthest from the entrance. He was taking refuge there, while Great-uncle Algernon was visiting with his grandmother, the stern creepy old man's elder sister. The man wasn't so different from his other family members, constantly demanding feats of magic from him and being disappointed with the lack of even a spark of it. The thing that differentiated Uncle Algie from the rest was: They only talked about it at length, often comparing Neville unfavourably with his oblivious, nearly insensate ex-Auror parents, but he acted on it, in a year to year basis no less.

Neville shuddered, wishing that the packed earth beneath his quaking shoes would open up and swallow him whole, before Uncle algie could design yet another stunt to flush his magic out for this year's attempt. He'd had to pass through a greenhouse patch full of hungry venomous tentacula last year! He'd been quite fortunate that he liked plants and knew their weaknesses, so he'd come out alive if with numerous poisoned scratches.

He dreaded what his great-uncle would come up with for this year, if it had been that deadly last year, when he'd been seven years old. In fact, he was now contemplating a getaway into the woods, maybe living as a hermit and keeping greenhouses for sustenance and income. His family wouldn't miss him much, if at all, since he was practically a Squib anyway according to them – even to his grandmother.

They always said, "Better dead than a Squib."

Well, he'd say, even if just to himself, "Better a Squib than dead."

3.

The planet Earth, seen through the long-ranged viewer from beside its single moon, looked just as scarily quaint, just as shockingly diverse, just as rich in natural resources as Jango had remembered it to be, in his few forays thus far onto its surface with and without his companions. It was a comforting constance that he cherished every time he needed it, like now. He had long trained himself to speak a smattering of the two most used languages here, even, so that he could at least minimally function in many of its myriad communities, when he needed a more thorough break from everything that was going on in his life.

He deserved a long holiday, he told himself. He had just escaped slavery which had run for three years, which had been preceded by betrayal and smear campaign all rolled in one, which had seen the annihilation of his comrades – his troops, his companions, his friends, his family. Besides, it took more than a galactic standard month to reach this back-of-beyond place, with the most minimum of necessary stops to replenish water and air supplies, also to prevent clostrophobia from setting in. With those points in mind, he could at least stay for a galactic standard year or two here, couldn't he?

He shifted restlessly, sliding forward on the pilot's chair of his spaceship, which had been his adoptive father's years ago before the man had been betrayed to his death on the battlefield. Before him, as it rotated in its orbit, Earth glimmered in shades of blue to naked eye on the viewport of the cockpit, while slightly above him the viewscreen of his long-ranged viewer showed islands and continents steadily pass by. In that planet, he knew nobody and nobody knew him. In that planet, currently in a peaceful state, he needn't constantly defend himself physically and verbally and mentally, and he might even accumulate some wealth, if not acquaintances, without his past – both the good and the bad – weighing him down.

In that planet, he could be a nobody.

Perfect.