Chapter Text
Minds are unpredictable. Minds are unique. Minds are dangerous.
Trying to pinpoint the origin of a specific trait or decision, big or small, is an exercise in managing your arrogance. You can never look closely enough; you can never step back sufficiently to get the whole picture. You just have a single frame, a deceptively one-dimensional snapshot of the results at one point in time. If you are fortunate, the image will show something pivotal.
One such helpful snapshot in Harry James Potter's life would be this: sometimes, between the ages of one and six, Harry James Potter had become improbably sure of his purpose in life.
He was going to have a baby.
Six-year-olds don't understand what having children entails. Six-year-old boys even less so. Six-year-old boys kept in cupboards, who barely get to speak a few words each day, are almost guaranteed to have a very fanciful grasp on the miracle of life.
Harry James Potter didn't know what having a baby meant, who could have them and why they might wish to do so. Harry James Potter just wanted one. Desperately.
It did not help young Harry James Potter that his quality of life, such as it was, had begun to improve post-Revelation tangibly. Before, it had been burdensome to stay in his cupboard for hours, pretending he did not exist. It was stressful. After a few hours, instinctual hysteria would overpower the fear of punishment. He would scream, just to check, make sure he did not pretend himself out of existence. The Dursleys didn't like that.
Now that young Harry James Potter had a goal to focus on, these incidents almost disappeared. Harry didn't want to go outside, talk to children or eat more. He wanted a baby, and fantasising about the perfect life he would have once he started his family—his family—could happen in the cupboard just as easily as anywhere else.
Instead of making him feel insane, Aunt Petunia singing lullabies to Dudley at night turned into lessons. Harry needs to learn, after all. He will sing to his family. Aunt Petunia has a beautiful singing voice, and she is his Aunt. Harry could learn. Harry should learn. Harry must learn.
School isn't good for many things—Harry is not stupid. He had known he was different from the other children from day one, even before he figured out his future. They were more intelligent than them in many ways and dumber in many more. Harry could barely speak; he wore rags that stood out among all the neat and pretty kids and didn't know a single topic they could connect on. Harry-of-before would have tried; he'd have eavesdropped and tried to fabricate and learn by mimicking the rest. Enlightened-Harry only learned valuable things.
Like singing.
Joining the choir is pretty straightforward. All the kids could participate, and the instructor was a church Lady called Annabeth. They practised twice a week and performed at the local church once every three months.
Harry didn't care about churches or performances, but he did pour everything he had into singing. It showed. The average child's biggest strength is talent, and the biggest enemy is the lack of willpower. Harry's biggest strength was his focus. His enemy? The Dursleys.
After the first three-month period, the time came for Harry to perform. The instructor contacted the Dursleys, who promptly refused, told the school Harry was not mentally capable of attending any extracurriculars and locked him in the cupboard for a week.
Harry barely even noticed. Church was weird, singing with other people was weird, and none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was that Harry learned the basics. He can do the rest himself.
Around year seven, his reading capabilities open up an invaluable resource and simultaneously introduce the first major roadblock. Harry is a boy, and only girls have babies. How men enter into it is unclear. They're picked, possibly. A girl has a baby and picks a boy to be the dad. It fits his observations of older girls' and boys' behaviour. Boys would show off and be loud, begging for attention, and girls would observe them and gossip about them.
After some intense brainstorming, He confirms they're trying to find the best dad for their future babies. That makes sense. Harry isn't sure why the dad is necessary at all, frankly. If they have a real purpose, it's too obscure for him to see. Uncle Vernon doesn't do much. Aunt Petunia makes all the decisions in No 4. Uncle Vernon is just—there.
It's the money, possibly. Harry doesn't quite understand what money is and how it comes about, but he knows working plays a big part. You work, and somebody gives you money. Harry wouldn't want to work once he is big. He would rather be at home with his family, sing and cook and—
Does that mean Harry wants to be the mother? He thinks about it for a few days. If he wants a family, and he does, more than anything, then there's only really one role worth having. What use is a dad, really? Mothers sing and kiss their children. Mothers pick them up after class and make their lunch pretty and exciting. Mothers straighten their clothes and rush to the school to talk to the nurse if they get hurt. What do dads do? Nothing important.
Plus, and this hurts to admit, his odds of getting picked by a girl—any girl—are low. He won't get anywhere if he has to wait for that to happen. If he wants his baby, he will need to get one himself. He'll have to have everything else beforehand so that he doesn't need anyone else. Simple.
Life grows clearer, somehow, and time speeds up. Where before, every hour would feel torturously slow, now weeks go by in a blink. Weeks blend into months, and before he knows it, a whole year has gone by, and Harry is eight.
Harry understands the humans around him less and less, but that is for the best. Harry and people never really mixed well, so a mutual pact of avoidance is a step in the right direction. Not that he thinks about it much. He is busy learning and trying to become the mother he wishes he had.
She would be pretty, he thinks. Soft. Smelling of freshly washed cotton and baked goods. He is skinny and knobby and smelly. Those problems he can't do much about right now.
She would sing actual songs and made-up ones at all times, filling the air with soothing serenity. Harry comes up with a thousand silly rhymes and sing-alongs that he practices in his head and on his way to school. He is pretty good, he thinks. Passers-by often listen to him and praise him. Sometimes, the younger children laugh and sing along. Those are his favourite times. He is too small for adults to let him hold their babies, but sometimes, a Mother will let him play with their tiny fingers gently if he's fortunate. Harry knows he is small, but the babies are small and beautiful and helpless and smell like happiness even when they cry.
She would be clever. She would always know all the answers and be patient about explaining things. Harry—well. He thinks he is a patient person, maybe. More patient than the average nine-year-old, certainly. But his knowledge could use work. After he became functionally mute, the school has already decided to transfer him to their unique needs class. He hadn't decided to stop speaking, but there was nothing for him to say. School isn't essential. School isn't going to give him a family. Being in a different class is a blessing, so maybe they were on to something.
The Dursleys think it's shameful, but they stop paying attention to his grades since he's in with the 'retards’, as Dudley is fond of saying. Harry is half-heartedly diagnosed with autism and more or less ignored. The special needs class only has one other girl, so they don't waste much time on them. This, as far as Harry is concerned, is as it should be. They don't bother him, he doesn't bother them, and everybody wins. Harry gets to learn at his own pace and spy on children and mothers in recess, the teachers talk at him with condescendingly soft tones, and Dudley has almost wholly forgotten he is real.
Harry thinks he has gotten rather good at pretending he doesn't exist.
When he turns nine, he realises he has made a couple of oversights. Number one is that Harry will, eventually, have to work. The Dursleys haven't outright killed him for now, but they won't give him money to stay at home with his children. Harry knows what depending on other people will get him, so he will need to earn it. Right now, he doesn't have much hope for getting a job, what with barely graduating from his classes, even as insultingly easy as they are.
The second oversight is his personality. Mothers are soft and gentle. Mothers laugh and talk. Mothers are warm. Harry is, realistically, none of those things. He laughed precisely three times that he can remember, and each one of those times featured a kind stranger on the street letting them play with their babies. He needs to—Something. He needs not to be himself, and that is a problem even trickier than the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon hasn't hit him in over three months. Aunt Petunia hasn't looked at him for almost a year. The Dursleys are happy with the status quo.
The ninth year is his most challenging yet. He doesn't do anything but try to learn how to act for the first third. He doesn't think he will have a problem being kind and warm to his babies; he hasn't had an issue with that. But he will need to look and act like a Mother. He won't be one of those parents that people stare at. What if his child is bullied because of how weird and freaky their mother is? No. Harry won't have it.
His acting skills grow hand in hand with his academic skills. Learning the material is not an issue; he knows all of it and more. That said, interacting with adults is straining, and he can only handle so much before shutting down.
Thankfully, the school doesn't expect—or doesn't care about—his skills. Once he starts acing tests, he gets recognised. It is a good story for them, probably. A barely literate freak is—nothing special. It's what they expect of him. But a clever freak is a different story. Like a dog learning how to count or something. His teachers praise him and give him more challenging tests, bringing in more adults with silly tests to waste everybody's time. A camera crew came at some point. It is all ridiculous.
The Dursleys hate it. Harry considers giving up on this project, but he doesn't know if it will be worth it. They can't escalate any further than they already have. They can only hit him so much until the point where it would bring even more attention. He already spends all his waking hours in the cupboard, and he's stopped caring about things like hunger and thirst a long time ago. They could possibly kill him, but now people will look for him. Now, people are invested in making their freak into a spectacle, and the Dursleys can only grin and bear it.
Harry tries his best at all the tests, for once. It is a strange transition, from all that sound and attention to the silence of the cupboard as soon as he crosses the entrance to No4. By then, he is so drained he appreciates the time to sit in the quiet and work on his songs and recipes. Lately, he's started incorporating clothes into his dreams. They would have to be made from the softest material and gentle colours. No whites or blacks, but pastel pinks and baby blues, violets, and yellows. Flowy and airy. Pretty. He doesn't know if boys should wear that stuff, but mothers are. His babies, of course, will have hundreds of adorable animal-themed onesies, tiny feet encased in booties, or those socks with sleeves sewed in for each toe once they are older. Their rooms will be filled with sunlight and cushions and toys—
The rather agreeable ninth year ends with a bang. Harry doesn't quite know what happened, but from what he overheard, a rather unscrupulous reporter followed Harry—who was, by then, something of a minor celebrity—home and saw his cupboard and the locks and the rest. He staked out the course covertly, whether out of altruism or ambition, until he had enough evidence to splash the story all over the tabloids.
Harry only realises when the door of his cupboard is broken down without warning, and a team of policemen is flashing at him with flashlights, noise from their strange walkie-talkies almost painfully loud in his ears.
He doesn't make a fuss, of course. He keeps his head down and does as he's told. Someone wraps him up in a blanket, which is nice. When they ask him questions, he stares, a bit too shaken that his comfortable routine has been ruined. Harry doesn't love his cupboard, the Dursleys, or No4, but they are a known entity. They don't bother him, and he doesn't bother them. In return, Harry doesn't do—whatever they are so afraid of, and they don't kill him. It's not pleasant, but it's comfortable.
The police van isn't comfortable. It is loud, and it smells of metal. Aunt Petunia screams and snarls like a mad person as the police drag her into a separate van. Uncle Vernon doesn't. They initially put Dudley into the truck with Harry but separate them after he falls into a rage and tries to strangle him. They talk at him some more after that, but the overwhelmed headache has grown far past the point of what Harry can reasonably deal with. He lets them speak and thinks about his babies. He will have at least five. Maybe more. Not too close together, he would like to have some time to indulge in their baby years, but maybe in pairs, so they're not lonely. Pretty names, too. Aunt Petunia has a nice name. She is a good Mother when he thinks about it. Her food looked good from what he could see, her clothes were pretty, and her singing would soothe a monster to sleep. Maybe he will name his babies after flowers—
The period before and after the trial is a mess, even by Harry's standards.
Initially, the police monopolised his time. First police, then a woman called Pamela, a social worker assigned to, possibly, protect him. Pamela doesn't look like the type of woman who could save him from an overly ambitious ladybug, but he can vaguely appreciate the thought. She doesn't even try to protect him from Margery Green, which is, if anything, a show of healthy self-preservation instincts on her part. She wouldn't stand a chance against the cold and competent prosecutor, who is thrilled that her star witness is as pathetic as Harry is, while endlessly annoyed that he can't speak much and refuses to bend past a certain point.
They decide on getting most of what they need from Harry beforehand, which means shrinks and doctors, endless questionnaires and uncomfortable interviews. They take pictures of his bruises, scars and marks, scan him up and down, and make assumptions that Harry doesn't care enough to weigh in on.
Somehow, the reporters become involved. He isn't sure if the first crew was allowed to talk to him, but they did. If he were the type to let himself be embarrassed, he would be dying with how weirdly morbid it all felt. Freak-show or not, this is a bit much.
Margery Green is angry enough to slay dragons afterwards, but she lets them publish their stories. After that, he has four policemen at the door at all times. Harry isn't sure, but he thinks that Margery Green is happy for the free publicity but realises that dealing with Harry is a double-edged sword. This way, she gets maximum sympathy on her side without Harry's weirdness putting her jury off.
He does need to testify, talking dog or not. They succeed in making the process a bizarre mix of humiliating and caring, and Harry weaves in and out of the real world and imagines different faces with his eyes and mouth. The Dursleys get sentenced to ten years in prison without the possibility of parole. Harry becomes the ward of the state.
Things calm down a little after that, but not as much as he'd like. He is placed in an institution of sorts. From what he can gather, it’s something like an orphanage for abused kids. It feels silly to think of himself as an abused child, but he doesn't care to argue terminology. By their arbitrary set of rules, he is an abused child. If they expect him to attach any meaning to the label, they can go to their graves dissatisfied.
It's challenging to get much done. The conditions are better than No4, he won't lie. He has a room, now—well, he lives in a room, now—and he has food and okay clothes, even if they're stereotypically boy-clothes and not what he'd have chosen for himself, and he smells nice. He hasn't realised how time-consuming living a 'normal' life is. Things were much simpler before. Cupboard—quick wash in the sink—school—cupboard. Now he needs to take daily showers, brush his hair, and talk to people at all hours.
Now that the police and reporters are gone, shrinks and doctors take their place. Harry's peculiarities used to be attributed to faulty genes. Now, they result from deliberate mistreatment, which is, apparently, much more fascinating to study. He knows the game by now, to know he should try and give them what they want. They expect him to be good at maths, physics, and chemistry and bad at everything else. Since Harry is fond of maths and physics and chemistry, that's a-okay. They aren't entirely wrong. He is, compared to them, very strange. His functional mutism isn't a facade. If he gets overwhelmed, which he does, often, he shuts down. He loses a lot of time during the day and can't feel hunger or cold, even now that he has plenty of food and warm clothes. He isn't like the other children and doesn't resent their conclusions.
If only they didn't want to help. Harry very empathically doesn't want help. He's fine, like this. He doesn't want to learn how to be a normal child who runs and plays and whatnot. Why would he waste time on that? He has more important things to do.
He doesn't know that he wouldn't pick the cupboard if he had to choose. The only thing that would maybe tip the scales is the money issue. Harry's go at being a freak-show exhibit is successful. He still attends a special school, but this one is, amusingly, for the gifted. He can't quite tell the difference. The teachers and the students behave more or less the same around him. They instruct him to learn specific material, but they assure him he will need to know this to get a job later on. That's fine, then; he can admit he was lost on his own. On the health-side of things, he doesn’t feel much better or worse. They don’t injure him more, but they don’t do much to fix the damage that’s already there. Harry is distantly worried about it all, but that’s the definition of a problem for another day.
Halfway through year ten, he meets Mary Carlyle, the first person to want to know what Harry wants. He is surprised enough that he answers honestly.
"I want a family."
Ms Carlyle smiles wide and insincere. "That is lovely, Harry dear. I wanted to know what you wanted to be? Which profession?"
Harry thinks about this. "I want a family." He won't lie. Not about this. Not that he needed to lie much thus far. "I will work to have enough money to have babies. Five. Named after flowers. Like my Aunt Petunia."
"Boys can't have babies, dear," she says and has the gall to be annoyed when Harry shuts down.
Boys can't—what?
After a few days of frantic researching, Harry concludes that Ms Carlyle is wrong, yes, but she probably didn't mean to hurt him. Boys can't have babies as easily as girls can, but that's fine. Harry will figure it out. If he hasn't let the Dursleys, the cupboard, and everything else stop him from wanting his babies, he sure won't let something as trivial as a couple of missing organs stop him. If they can make machines that can fly, they can make a machine that can grow a baby as good as a stomach. Harry is not stupid.
He considers, briefly, that it would be simpler to find a girl to help him and disregards it in the same breath. He wants his babies to be his. People are mean and selfish, and controlling. He can just tell that this nameless girl will want to have a say. What if she wants to be the mother? Is Harry supposed to be relegated to the father role? As if. As if he would allow that.
Harry doesn't know a lot about the process, but he will. He has time. Fifteen years at least until he can reasonably finish school and get a job that pays enough to start saving up for his baby-machine.