The Devil's In The Details

Chapter One

Harry hadn't exactly known what to expect when he came back to the Dursleys for the summer holiday after how the Weasleys had fantastically saved him from his relatives last summer. At the time, it had been absolutely brilliant. The looks on their faces? Spectacular. Dudders with a tongue fatter than he was? Fantastic. Being able to leave and not face the wrath of Vernon? Amazing. The thing about his relatives is that they aren't ones to forgive and forget or to live and let live. No. They can hold onto grudges until they die.

Harry was quickly reminded of this as soon as he stepped off the train. It ran over him like a glass of cold water down his neck. God! He never should have come back to Number Four Privet Drive. He knew he should have jumped onto a random muggle train and gallivanted off to France or something. The Dursleys had sat at home, festering all school year. Remembering and picking apart everything the freaks did to their home. And to their poor sweet little Dudders. The mess in Aunt Petunia's immaculate home! It will never be the same again. It was cleaned up as though the Weasleys were never even in Little Whinging, but don't try telling Petunia that. Not now that her home has been infected with even more freakishness than from her freak of a nephew.

Harry REALLY should have train-hopped his way to some small village of seventy-three people in the countryside of Spain somewhere. The weather was probably more manageable there. They were in the middle of a heat-wave. Harry was certain he had only stopped sweating because he's too dehydrated to have any water to spare. His only consolation was that Petunia didn't have him in the garden today, after spending the entirety of yesterday out weeding, pruning, getting sunburnt to hell, and miraculously, somehow, getting heat-stroke.

He wasn't outside slowly dying, but he was inside his own personal sauna. A beautiful dark little hole in the wall. He was sure even the spiders had moved on to the cooler parts of the cupboard. Not like Harry could, though. No, he was much too big to shift around much anymore. Although, he never thought he would be thankful for his smaller than average frame until now. He had no idea how much he would come to appreciate his stunted growth until now. If he had been Ron's size, hell, even Hermione's, he was sure he would have given himself a truly fantastic concussion by now on the bottoms of the stairs above his head.

He was slowly getting used to it again. When he was younger, he never even had to think about where he was. His body just remembered. But since he is a bit bigger than the last time, granted, not by much, he had to readjust. There was no need to make himself any worse. His first night back in his room, he had managed to give himself quite the bruise on his elbow from flailing in his sleep. It was a quick and sudden reminder of why he shouldn't move much in his sleep. He just didn't have the wiggle room for it.

Harry had been home for less than a fortnight and was sorely regretting his existence. Was he being slightly melodramatic? Yes. But Harry felt he was entitled to a little melodramatics. After the fiasco that was last year's grand departure, Harry had been re-gifted his old room. He hadn't quite been expecting that. Maybe a return of the bars to his window? But he hadn't been expecting to be relocated to the cupboard under the stairs. He had been hoping, in the deepest parts of his heart, that the Weasleys may have managed to terrify his relatives into leaving him alone, but alas, when does something Harry wants ever turn out like he thinks it should? The cosmos just hadn't been aligned right when he was conceived, he supposed. No. His relatives had taken how the Weasleys acted as a sign that what they had started with Harry had worked to some degree or another. So, they continued to the next phase of getting the freakishness out of their nephew.

Vernon had managed to get a hold of Harry's wand and snapped it into little itty-bitty pieces. They dumped Harry's trunk up in the attic and left Hedwig in the great-wide-world. Harry had been returned to his cupboard and his chores, and his separate meals, or lack thereof. The lock that kept Dudley out of the cupboards and fridge now kept Harry out as well. He couldn't even sneak into the kitchen during the night like he did when he was younger. With Dudley's diet, the scraps Harry managed to get were small slices of grapefruit or bits of salad. Or sometimes, if he was lucky, he might manage to get a dinner roll. Harry might even manage a chunk of butter in the bun if Petunia's not looking. Not that a piece of fat is particularly appetizing, but Harry will take what he can get.