Doors

Prologue

The night was sultry. Harry Potter lay awake in his cupboard under the stairs wishing he could open a window to quench the stifling summer air. He'd open the door but he'd been ordered by Aunt Petunia to keep it shut. He was a month away from his eleventh birthday and felt like an old man. He had been with the Dursleys for over a decade. What did he do to deserve ending up with such a screwed up family? His presence in their home seemed to be tolerated rather than enjoyed and the general feeling was that his aunt and uncle were doing him a great favour, a favour that he didn't deserve, in letting him stay. He was fed and watered, but only just. Most of the time he didn't have much of an appetite anyway is stomach always felt tense and full of something other than food so there seemed little point filling it any further. He felt he might burst otherwise. This was in vast contrast to his cousin Dudley, however, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to eat himself into sheer oblivion. Anything and everything Dudley could eat, he ate. Harry once witnessed the overweight little boy making myself a salt sandwich. Harry gagged at the site of it. Not only was Dudley greedy but absurdly spoilt. Anything he wanted he got. The whole house, let alone his two bedrooms, seemed to be packed to the rafters with his toys. Harry meanwhile had very little and what he did have he was made to feel as if he didn't deserve and should be grateful for small mercies. It was the summer holidays and he was supposed to be having fun. Dudley certainly was - normally by pinning Harry to the floor and sitting on his chest until he was unable to breathe. His weeble shaped cousin would play at being friends one minute then a raging psychopath the next. He was angelic though compared to his aunt and uncle whom Harry frequently fantasised about killing. At least once a month he'd think about it. He didn't enjoy it but his hurt was so deep the thoughts just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. He'd think up all different ways of doing it, poison, a whack to the head or maybe he'd get a gun and blow them away. No that wouldn't work, too messy.

It was no good - he couldn't bare another night like his. It was very humid and he really couldn't be bothered to think about murder. He rolled out of his tiny bed, opened the cupboard door and walked into the living room. Everyone else was in bed upstairs. He turned on the light. He wouldn't wake anyone if he kept it dimmed and remained as quiet as possible. The truth was Harry was always quiet. Dudley, however, had a volume that could turn up to eleven. Harry looked around at the walls that were packed full of Dudley's pictures and those of other beloved family members. There wasn't a single one of him in sight. The only photograph he knew of himself that existed was a Polaroid shot of he and Dudley in a supermarket when they were five. Dudley looked like a space hopper and Harry like a little rag doll whose stuffing had fallen out. Quite what he'd done to be treated like a piece of shit he wasn't entirely sure. Maybe he was just intrinsically bad, flawed. They did always refer to him as 'crazy' or 'weird'. Certainly Harry believed this for most of the time. Normal people couldn't, after all, have dreams that frequently came true, premonitions of the future or the ability to hear voices from thousands of miles away. There were other little things too, little things he couldn't quite put his finger on that he could do and see that no one else seemed to be able to do. Often they would look at him as if to say 'what the hell are you? Are you even from planet Earth?' Somehow he always seemed to be in a doorway when they did that. It was as if he wanted to leave the room but at the same time was compelled to stay in order to make them understand. They never did. If things ever got really bad he'd run into is cupboard and scream into his pillow. Once he made the terrible mistake of screaming a little too loudly and both his aunt and uncle burst in telling him he was shaming them and 'oh what would the neighbours think?' Like breathing, however, like a natural reflex action, Harry didn't seem to be able to stop screaming that day so Uncle Vernon tried to suffocate him instead with his enormous, plate like hands. Harry merely passed out.

Harry had had enough of thinking. He was thirsty. There was cold water in the fridge he remembered; he'd have a glass of that. Walking into the kitchen, his bare feet coming into contact with the cold tiled floor he opened the fridge door that was covered in Dudley's hideous drawings and poured a glass of the ice cold liquid. For a moment he pulled up a chair at the table and remained sitting there. It was much cooler in the kitchen. It was also kind of boring so he walked back into the living room and switched on the TV. No school tomorrow, it wouldn't matter if he stayed up a little later than usual. He kept the volume down just low enough for him to hear but not loud enough to wake the sleeping idiots above him. There wasn't much on as per usual then he suddenly found himself a film and settled down to watch that. It was one he'd wanted to see before but hadn't been allowed to. It was called Throw Momma From The Train. He chuckled as the lead character tried to think up a good start for the novel he was writing. This looked like fun. The character, Professor Larry Donner, was an English Language and Literature tutor at a community college. In one scene he had a class full of strange looking hopefuls one of which, to his great disappointment, came up with the same first line for a story he had written as Larry had done the previous day after spending hours deliberating over it. 'Class dismissed' he said in a dead pan voice. 'I have an enormous headache in my eye'. Harry slapped his knee and giggled it his hand. This was a rare moment of freedom. Normally he was forced to watch what his family wanted to see regardless of its content. His Aunt Petunia, in spite of her outwardly ladylike, proper appearance had a red raw sadistic streak. She'd start arguments for the sake of it and if Harry was ever (rarely) in a happy mood she'd make sure it didn't last. He never forgot the night (he can't have been more than 7 years old) when she forced him to watch an 18 rated horror film that gave him nightmares for weeks. She never explained her choices that night. This, of course, wasn't a side of her personality she revealed to anyone. Not even Uncle Vernon.

Harry continued to watch the film, trying to lose himself in the atmosphere of it. He was witnessing a squat little man called Owen (a student of Professor Donner's) sitting in a cinema watching Strangers On A Train. A film within a film: how brilliant. The two actors in the old Hitchcock thriller were discussing the fact that they both had a person close to them that they wanted to get rid of yet they couldn't as they'd each have an obvious motive. They, therefore, decided to swap murders. 'You kill my wife, I kill your father, criss cross, criss cross' one of them said. Harry watched Owen become enthralled by this idea. Owen decided to act on it based on the fact he wanted his mother dead and thought his teacher wanted his wife dead. If each swapped murders they'd eliminate the motives and establish an alibi. This film was not just hilarious but downright informative. Larry was in Owen's home now and Owen's overbearing mother didn't like it one bit. 'Who are you?' She squealed

'I'm Owen's friend'

'Owen hasn't got any friends'

'That's because he's lonely.'

'No he's not he's fat and he's stupid'.

If only Harry could swap murders with someone. But wait, that's why he came in here, to avoid thinking about that anymore. He switched over channels and watched a very boring documentary on penguins in the arctic for several minutes. At least it made him feel cooler than before. It was almost as if a fresh breeze was blowing through an open window even though they were all shut. He was shut in, like a prisoner. He turned back over to the comedy. Professor Larry Donner now was running frantically into his girlfriend's flat in an attempt to explain that Owen had, in fact, killed his wife. He had no alibi. He'd been up all night alone thinking of how to start his novel. He'd fry for sure. 'One little murder and I'm Jack The Ripper!' He yelled and stormed out of her door. Harry started to doze off but was awoken by the sound of a very loud trumpet blast. 'BBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR' it went. He quickly reached for the remote control to turn the volume down. Owen had tried to sound blast his mother to death. It didn't work. Harry finished his drink, watched the end of the film then went back into the kitchen, washed up his glass, turned out the lights and went back into his muggy cupboard. This time leaving the door slightly ajar.

Harry dreamed all sort of odd things that night - about the film mainly and how he poisoned his aunt and uncle. In his dream he'd somehow developed super human strength and managed to carry Uncle Vernon's lifeless body down the stairs from his bedroom only to accidentally decapitate him in the banisters of the stairs on the way down. The noise of his head bouncing down he steps to the hallway below echoed through the house. Harry woke up briefly then went back to sleep. There were more strange symbols in his dream, a train and a castle, they were fuzzy and unclear. Then someone was trying to kill him. It was Uncle Vernon. He was blowing a trumpet in Harry's ear. He woke with a scream "ARGH!" He wasn't quite sure where he was being no longer asleep but not fully awake. Uncle Vernon heard the yell and came running, flinging Harry's cupboard door open to reveal an angry, almost disgusted face. "I dreamed Louis Armstrong was trying to kill me!" Harry blurted out without thinking of the meaning of his sentence. Uncle Vernon huffed disapprovingly and slammed the door in Harry's face. The young, skinny boy rubbed his eyes. He was alive, he was awake. What was that about Louis Armstrong? What was he talking about? Harry lay there for a few minutes waiting for his head to join the land of the living.

Breakfast was served in silence. This was the usual pattern after Harry had been perceived to have had on his 'uncontrollable outbursts' revealing his 'deeply disturbed nature'. The Dursleys found it far easier to ignore reality and live in cloud cuckoo land than face it head on especially if it challenged their version of normal. Harry was particularly hungry that morning and for some reason had an appetite for the first time in his life. He ate a full breakfast without thinking then realised everyone else had stopped eating and was starring in astonishment at him. It was a warm day so after finishing breakfast Harry suggested he go for a stroll to the local park. Nobody seemed particularly interested so he got dressed and left. Sat in the swing he wondered what it might be like to have a real family, one that actually loved him. A tear couldn't help but escape down his cheek. He wiped it quickly away. He watched a young couple out strolling with their dog in the distance. He'd like to have girlfriend one day when he was older he supposed but couldn't imagine it. It was hard enough just making a friend. He had one or two at his muggle primary school but no one that really understood him. None of them could see what his family were really like. They only saw the façade. Not the reality.

That summer passed like any other. Dudley's birthday was a little more interesting than Harry had expected though. He'd been dragged out to the zoo and found that not only could he talk to snakes but he could make glass vanish. All summer he thought about how sorry he felt for that snake and how pleased he was when it managed to escape through the open door, slithering off to freedom outside. Dudley was spoiled ridiculously as usual but as Harry's own birthday was approaching the atmosphere grew more and more tense. The dreams grew more vivid, more murders, more castles, more odd visions and the old favourite: a blinding flash of green light and a pain in his forehead. He always put it down to an age memory of the car crash his parents died in. Then the letters started arriving, mysterious letters addressed to Harry. He didn't get to read or keep any of them but they did seem to prompt his Uncle Vernon to move him into Dudley's spare bedroom as if that would stop any more arriving. It didn't work, they came fast and furious through every nook and cranny in the house. Uncle Vernon always managed to destroy them all though. Someone was trying to reach him but who?

Harry had learned to pre-empt every one of the Dursleys' moves, to watch for nuances in their facial expressions and in order to predict their moods, to manipulate and to beguile. It was a survival technique. Without it he simply wouldn't survive. He was always one step ahead of the Dursleys or at least he tried to be because their controlling, suffocating behaviour forced him to be. That was why he attempted one morning to beat Uncle Vernon to it and meet the postman on the corner of the street at the crack of dawn and claim one of his mysterious letters for his own. That attempt failed also. The obese bastard from hell was guarding the door. Every failed attempt at escape Harry had to think even further ahead. Plan and plot. Lie if he had to. He had no choice. Anything he needed to do he would do in order to live some semblance of a life.

Finally Uncle Vernon seemed to flip and kept the family on the road for the rest of the summer in an attempt to avoid more letters. The night before Harry's birthday they ended up in a hut on a rock in the middle of the sea. Harry felt lonelier than ever out there and wondered how much longer his deranged uncle would keep this madness up. They would starve for sure. Perhaps someone would cart Uncle Vernon off to a lunatic asylum. But then he'd still be left with his aunt and cousin. Damn. Harry wondered what he had to look forward to. Tomorrow was his eleventh birthday. Surely they'd have to come home at some point? Dudley's moaning would become unbearable for them all. Harry couldn't sleep at all the first night there. Then, at the stroke of midnight, a huge bang woke the rest of the fugitives up. An icy cold, wet wind brew ferociously through the hut spraying painfully onto their faces like tiny pebbles as they awoke. The doorway was missing its door and within it stood a giant man who introduced himself as 'Hagrid keeper of the keys at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry'. For the next twenty minutes or so this huge stranger made surreal small talk, lit a fire, gave Harry a birthday cake and roasted sausages. Most alarmingly he also informed him of the truth of his parent's death: they were murdered by some guy called Voldemort. His parents were famous and magical and the Dursleys were the worst bunch of 'muggles' Hagrid had ever seen. Harry couldn't help but hear the repulsed tone in Hagrid's voice when he said the M word. Harry's head spun and The Dursleys looked as if they'd all had hot pokers from the fire shoved up their arses. Then came four words that changed Harry's world and view of himself forever. "Harry, you're a wizard."