Harry was like a bag, one of those plastic convenience store ones that no one liked cos they ripped apart too easy and looked cheap.
It seemed like the whole world wanted him to be molded some kind of way, or another, and Harry could never manage to squish himself in quite right. Never really fitted exactly as he should, no matter how hard he tried. The kids at school hated him.
His family hated him.
His bones were too sharp.
His skin took on an eerie glow in the wrong light.
His eyes were too green.
But it wasn’t like he could help it.
His feelings were too big, his body too small. He felt too much. And he made bad things happen. Freakish things.
Like when Aunt Marge’s foul beast of a dog had bit Harry and died. Or how flowers would bloom, then wither as Harry would walk past. They would whisper, but never quiet enough, about how there wasn’t something quite right with the boy.
After a while, somewhere in the backs of Harry's eyelids, an altar of hate grew, and Harry worships as he was taught to. When he's nothing but a twisting, burning thing, he sacrifices himself in offering. A witch on a pyre to be cleansed in the eyes of the cruel divine.
The voice in his head, his wicked guardian angel, with a name promising flight from death itself, had a silver tongue forked into two stabbing needles, promising both hurt and forgiveness in every honeyed word.
He was punished in the light, so he found comfort in the dark. In his angel’s shifting shadows and bleeding eyes. In the warmth in his scar that kept the clammy English cold at bay in the dingy lonely nights. The world was less scary like this. And Harry loved him. Like he wasn’t allowed to love anything else. His cupboard was his church, the spiders his pulpit, his stolen trinkets were his offerings, and his bruises were his rosary. Every night he prayed.
