A big man with a big umbrella stood in their threshold. His scraggly beard and worn coat out of place near the immaculate entrance, which was clean and pristine and new. (all thanks to Freak, of course)
"Harry Potter?"
Freak stepped forwards... but still didn't talk.
"Harry... well, yer a wizard, Harry."
Freak tilted his head inquiringly and kept quiet.
"Err... aren't you happy? Excited?"
And Freak made a noise for the first time in years, his relatives looked at him in slight shock, previously frozen in horror at the sight in their doorway, as a broken, rasping chuckle left his lips. It sounded more like the last dying breaths of an evil asthmatic snake. Dry and rasping and hissing and gasping for breath after only a few seconds of it.
Hagrid went still, almost statue like, before a look of shock came over his face.
"Is Harry... mute..?"
"U-u-u-uh w-we d-don't know..!"
The Dursleys cowered in the shadow of the giant man.
"Well.... err..." The man seemed to be looking for something to say. "I'm Hagrid, and I'm the gamekeeper at Hogwarts...err..?"
Freak went up to the man, shook his hand and walked outside. He didn't bother to grab anything, because his little cupboard under the stairs only had a thin blanket and some dead spiders.
"Don't you need to pack, Harry?"
Freak shook his head.
'Hagrid' looked confused, but walking with him all the same.
Freak was silent.
And inside, he was wondering why anyone would ever think he could be happy...
It's not like anyone had ever let him.
YOU ARE READING
Freak
RandomFor as long as he could remember, he had been Freak. But he didn't really mind... he liked being Freak, Freak was him. He was Freak. Being Freak meant he wasn't expected to be human, so he wasn't. But then he made a friend, and he wasn't really hum...
