Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ArcThe Boy Possessed by a Snake
The Dursleys, with Vernon Dursley the director of Grunnings, were the kind of ordinary British family who lived for being normal. Unfortunately for them, strange things kept happening around them, so the neighbors thought they were a little odd.
Even so, they managed to keep up friendly relationships in the neighborhood, thanks entirely to Vernon's social standing as the head of the household, and to Petunia's effort to keep socializing with the other housewives as a properly ordinary homemaker.
But all their effort was useless. Their abusive treatment of their nephew, Harry Potter, and all the strange incidents that happened around Harry, like a snake escaping from the zoo, or Harry somehow moving from the playground to the roof without anyone noticing, made the other families think that house was a little off.
And the boy responsible for dragging down the Dursley family's reputation, Harry Potter.
(...This is unfair.)
He was always thinking that, bitter and unhappy. But he could not say it out loud, and he lived through day after day of frustration. It was because of the way Vernon and Petunia looked at him, like they were looking at filth.
Harry himself did have a part of him that found the strange things around him interesting. When the snake got out and his cousin, who always hit him, got so scared he went weak at the knees, it felt satisfying.
But when the punishment was being locked in the cupboard under the stairs, and when even trying to distract himself with studying meant putting up with Dudley's stupid interference, that great feeling vanished in an instant, and he was filled with misery.
(Uncle Vernon tells me to be normal, but then what am I supposed to do?)
When the snake got out, and when he ran from Dudley, it was true that Harry wanted that to happen.
But it was not like simply wanting it could possibly make it happen.
Harry felt an obligation to be grateful that Vernon and Petunia had raised him. So he thought it was normal that his clothes were Dudley's hand me downs, that he got no allowance, and that he helped with chores. Compared to other kids his age, Harry was skinny because he was not given much to eat.
Even so, kids are sensitive to adults and to the mood around them. No matter how hard he tried to ignore it, Harry knew that Vernon and Petunia did not love him. For Harry, that was the most painful thing.
The couple told him his real parents had died in a car crash. Whether that was true or a lie, to Harry, his parents were Vernon and Petunia.
But he could not say that out loud. To Vernon and Petunia, Harry was nothing more than a relative's child they had taken in out of obligation.
That day was the birthday of the Dursleys' only son, Dudley.
To celebrate Dudley, his cousin, Harry made the potage soup and cooked the scrambled eggs properly. He was used to chores being part of his job, but losing study time was what really bothered him. Starting this new term, Harry was going to a public school that did not cost money. To take control of his future and get out of this environment, he needed good grades.
But mainly because of Dudley, Harry's study time kept getting cut. The more Harry studied for his future, the wider the gap grew between him and Dudley, who was nothing but a kid his age. Dudley was a little bully who cared more about playing with his friends than studying. Harry studying seemed to annoy him.
Maybe Harry should have played more too, just to match Dudley. But when Dudley's games turned into violence against people he did not like, Harry stopped wanting to get along with him. If Harry told him to stop, Dudley simply switched his target from other kids to Harry. So Harry and Dudley became enemies who could not stand each other, and both of them thought making up was impossible.
And then, a turning point was about to come to Harry's life.
For the first time in his life, a letter arrived addressed to Harry.
When a letter arrived for Harry, Petunia and Vernon's panic was striking. Vernon's panic, especially, was incredible. He went so far as to abandon his important company just to keep Harry from seeing the letters, and in the end he even locked Harry in a shabby hut out in the middle of nowhere.
(Crazy.)
Harry thought that, but he did not even know whether he meant Vernon, or the letters that kept multiplying.
(Maybe I really am not normal?)
With no blanket, taking the cold wind through the cracks while the storm raged outside, Harry forgot that it was his birthday.
Even Harry got a birthday present.
The door of the old hut, which looked like it might collapse at any moment, was kicked in with a roar, and a giant man came in. He was clearly taller than anyone Harry had ever seen, and he was so broad that Dudley and Vernon could not even compare.
(Not normal.)
Harry stared at the man with a look that was somewhere between excitement and resignation. The man's eyes, like black obsidian, shone with an innocent, childlike light, completely different from Harry's own dark, clouded green eyes.
And yet, Harry liked him at first sight. He did not understand why, and as Harry stood there confused, the man told him something shocking.
"Harry. You're a wizard. And you're not just any wizard, either. You're the child of James and Lily, the finest, most brilliant wizards there ever were!!"
Vernon's efforts to drive the giant off, even pulling out a gun, were useless. When Harry heard that shocking truth, his insides turned to a tangled mess.
Vernon and Petunia had been lying to him all this time.
And they had spent years insulting his parents, who had stood up against a criminal!!
(I won't forgive them...!!)
In that moment, Harry was sure that Vernon and Petunia had never loved him. The gratitude he had felt, however small, for being raised by them was overwritten by rage at being deceived, and it burst out as Harry blew part of the hut apart.
When Harry saw the look in their eyes, he regretted what he had done. There was nothing in Vernon and Petunia's eyes but fear of him.
(Ah, it's over...)
If there was such a thing as something truly irreversible, it was this moment, right now. Every time he looked back on it later, Harry kept regretting that he had gone too far. He probably should have apologized to the three of them. But Harry had no room in his heart for that then. The giant, Hagrid, calmed Harry with gentle words, then waved his umbrella around in a rough way that was obviously magic and put the wrecked hut back the way it had been. Then they left the hut like they were running away.
The resignation Harry felt toward Vernon and Petunia at that moment never faded, not even after he gained his first friend in Hagrid.
"...I'm sorry, Harry. You've had it rough. If I'd noticed sooner...I never imagined the Dursleys were doing that to you."
Riding a flying motorbike, Hagrid tried to comfort him.
Happy that Hagrid cared about him even after seeing the hut in pieces, Harry told him it was fine and clung to Hagrid's back.
"Hey, Hagrid. Do you think I can really control my magic?"
"You can. What you did back there is something every young wizard does. Don't you worry about it, Harry."
Hagrid ruffled his hair so hard it felt like his brain was getting shaken, and Harry was able to calm down a little.
(That was bad...)
If he did the same thing again at the school for wizards, Harry would never make friends. He wanted to control the power that was his magic, somehow.
"You sure can! Once you've got an Ollivander wand, you'll be a proper wizard. Ollivander's shop has the best wands in Britain, you know."
And then Harry was given a wand at the shop of an old man named Garrick Ollivander. The old man's sales talk was incredibly smooth. When he told Harry that the wand Harry bought was the brother wand to the wand held by the greatest Dark wizard of the century, Harry felt a hope stir in him that maybe he could become a special wizard.
(I can't go back to the Muggle world anymore.)
Then he had no choice but to become a great and admirable wizard, like his parents. Seeing the looks of expectation people in the wizarding world gave him for the first time, Harry started to believe that even more strongly.
There was no way he could have beaten a Dark wizard as a baby, not in any normal world. If it happened at all, then his parents must have worked unbelievably hard and driven the evil wizard away.
He would become a wizard his true parents would not be ashamed of, even though he had never met them. Harry decided that, and went to the next shop with Hagrid.
"Come to think of it, today's your birthday, Harry."
"Yeah, it is, Hagrid."
Harry blinked, confused. He did not understand why Hagrid cared about something so unimportant.
"I want to give you a present, Harry...Me, I'd keep some cool magical creature, but is there any animal you want?"
"Aren't pets banned by the school rules?"
Harry looked down at his acceptance letter. There was nothing listed that made him think, I want that.
Even if he had an owl, he had no one to write to. And if he let it fly around Privet Drive, he knew Petunia would resent him for it.
"As long as it doesn't bother anyone, the heads of house and the caretaker won't make a fuss. Ask for anything you want, yeah?"
"Then...a snake, please. A small one, and one that looks like it'll live a long time."
Harry remembered the zoo, and how it had felt like he could hear the snake's voice. He had never taken care of an animal before, but if he could talk to it, maybe he could do it well. More than anything, he could not stand the thought of living until Hogwarts with no one to talk to. Harry did not have the luxury of wondering if it had all been his imagination.
"Oh, you like snakes, Harry? Snakes are great. They're reptiles like dragons and salamanders, and snakes in the wizarding world live a long time! I'll find you a good one!"
"One that's small and looks gentle, please, Hagrid!"
While he waited for Hagrid to get him a snake, Harry killed time at Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.
There he met a kid his age, blond, with the air of someone who was obviously a rich boy. Unlike Harry, who looked shabby in Dudley's castoffs, he clearly had never had to worry about clothes. Harry did not like the way the kid seemed to look down on him at every turn, but when Harry told him that his parents were dead, that Harry lived with a Muggle family, and that those Muggles were the reason he dressed so poorly, the boy got indignant.
"See? Muggles really are no good! If you get into Slytherin at Hogwarts, I'll back you up."
The boy seemed to come from an old wizarding family, and he looked down hard on people who could not use magic. With a shared topic between them, the distance between them shrank just a little.
Harry was uneasy about spilling all the resentment he had been storing up toward Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley to a kid he had just met, but right now he wanted someone to talk to.
Loneliness rots the heart.
To distract themselves from it, people sometimes want someone they can confess it to.
"...But you can't get into Slytherin unless you're pureblood, right?"
The boy made a point of bragging about his family and about his parents' house. Slytherin, the house that supposedly produced the strongest and greatest wizards of all four houses, had even produced Merlin, a wizard Harry knew from the legends of King Arthur.
And Draco said only pureblood wizards, born from wizard parents, could enter it.
"If you know your place, Slytherin will welcome you. I could even be your backer. By the way, what's your name? Otherwise I might forget. I'm a pureblood, of course, from the best family, and I'm busy because my parents make me do lessons and all sorts of things."
(Draco might not be just a jerk.)
Harry's dislike and discomfort toward Draco eased a little. Draco was the one who had talked to him first, which meant Draco had more social confidence than timid Harry did.
"I'm Harry Potter. See you at Hogwarts, Draco. Hopefully we'll meet in Slytherin."
Harry did not believe everything Draco said, but the idea that Slytherin produced great wizards stuck hard in his mind.
Without noticing Draco freeze in shock, Harry left Madam Malkin's and introduced himself to the foreign Kusushi snake Hagrid had brought him.
"Hello, Mr. Snake. I'm, um, Harry Potter. If you're okay with it, would you be friends with me?"
Harry stared into the Kusushi snake's eyes and spoke to it. Somehow, he felt like it was getting through.
After a short pause, the Kusushi snake answered him.
"...Huh. Even though you're human, you can speak my language?
Fine. I'll let you keep me. You'd better give me a good name."
"Huh? Why? Can't all wizards talk to snakes?"
Harry said that and looked over at Hagrid. Hagrid's face looked complicated, like he was staring at something else, something that was not Harry, with a kind of nostalgia.
"Harry, you can speak Parseltongue...?"
"W what do you mean?"
"Is that bad?"
Harry asked, anxious, but Hagrid laughed it off.
"No, no, nothing to worry about! Only top class wizards can use Parseltongue, like Dumbledore, and someone Dumbledore knows, like Crouch. There aren't many. Being able to talk to a snake is all good, if you're keeping one. I'd want it myself if I could."
Then Hagrid added, "But..."
"The...well, the most famous Parseltongue speaker in Britain...
He was the worst Dark wizard, so it's got kind of a bad reputation."
"Then...Voldemort? The same as me?"
"Don't say that name!"
"Sorry, Hagrid."
"No, I'm sorry I yelled. But you shouldn't show off that you can speak Parseltongue. These days, people get the wrong idea about it too easily..."
Harry named the Kusushi snake Asclepius, and decided to keep him.
Hagrid's attitude, without actually saying it, made it clear that a lot of Dark wizards were Parseltongue speakers.
(Then I...the house I should go to...)
Right then, Harry knew exactly which house he belonged in.