“The Petersens will be here soon so you get in there, boy,” Uncle Vernon said, roughly shoving Harry into the cupboard under the stairs. Harry stumbled into his cupboard, falling onto his camp bed in the cramped space. He turned bright but resigned green eyes onto his uncle, twisting around on the bed.

“I don’t want to hear a peep from you, boy, you hear me? The Petersens are a wealthy potential client who don’t know that you exist, and I want to keep it that way! If I hear so much as a sound from in here…” Uncle Vernon trailed off threateningly, then slammed the door shut, slid the bolt home, and closed the small grate.

Harry heard his uncle’s heavy footfalls march away and pulled his knees into the chest, trying to ignore the darkness pressing on his eyes. He felt around above his head for the small chain he knew was there and gave it a tug when he located it, filling the tiny space with the harsh light from the bare bulb. He sighed quietly in relief as the darkness was banished back to the shadows in the corners. He did not like the dark. He knew that it was silly and childish, but he did not like it. Dudley liked to tell him stories about the monsters that live under the stairs and wait for the cover of darkness to come out and eat the bad little boys. He knew that it was not true, but he could not help but wish that he could sleep upstairs where he would be closer to the Dursleys. Even if they probably would not rescue him, he thought that if any monsters did exist, they would most likely eat Dudley before him; there was quite a bit more meat on his cousin.

He sighed again and listened as the Petersen’s arrived to simpering introductions and pleasantries. He had to suppress a snort when he heard Mrs. Petersen (he assumed) compliment Dudley on his outfit. Eventually he grew bored of straining to hear them in the parlor and he pulled out his battered army men and began playing with them.

Harry had begun a couple of years ago to systematically rescue (when no one was looking)  Dudley’s broken toys from the garbage and squirrel them away in his cupboard. Many of them were broken beyond repair, but some of them were still usable if a bit misshapen, and some of them simply needed a little fixing. Harry’s big find had been when he discovered the mostly-intact workman’s tool kit in the garbage; the little tools from the small chest had allowed him to tinker with some of the electronic or mechanical gadgets Dudley threw out. He had not been able to fix that many, but his biggest success so far had been fixing the little battery-operated digital alarm clock that now sat in a corner of his cupboard. He knew the batteries would not last forever, but he enjoyed the sense of stability and connection to the outside world during the long hours when he was locked in his cupboard.

Sometime after the Dursleys had led the Petersens into the dining room, Harry started noticing that his light was growing dim. He thought at first that maybe his eyes were just growing tired and rubbed at them, but after several minutes he realized that the light bulb was dying. He stopped playing and stared up at it, horrified that it might go out. Who knew when the Dursleys would give him another one? He shivered at the thought of long hours locked up in the dark, and started whispering a quiet plea, almost a prayer.

“Please don’t go out, please don’t go out, please don’t go out,” he chanted under his breath, staring determinedly at the fading light, trying to will it to stay on, to brighten, to revive…

And suddenly, just as the bulb looked like it might flicker out, it brightened and filled the small space with a light that was warmer and more cheerful than Harry thought the bulb had been before it started dying. Forgetting himself in his relief, Harry clapped his hands and exclaimed, “Yes!”

The conversation in the dining room suddenly stopped, and he slapped a hand over his mouth, horrified at his outburst. The light bulb flickered out completely, but he was too afraid of his uncle’s reaction to be scared of the dark at the moment. Oh no, I’m done for, he thought, looking in the direction of the cupboard door warily.

“Hm, sounds like someone got excited about something outside, must have been one of the neighbors, taking a walk…” Uncle Vernon trailed off, trying to explain away the noise. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, what was I saying? Ah yes!”

Harry quietly brew out the breath he had not realized he had been holding. But his relief only lasted a moment as he considered what Uncle Vernon would do once the Petersen’s left.

Harry eventually slipped into an uneasy sleep, but was awoken later that night by the light shining into his eyes when Uncle Vernon opened his cupboard door and dragged him out. He received a couple of cuffs to the head that made him stagger a bit, then Uncle Vernon gripped his shoulders and shook him as he angrily yelled, “What were you doing?! I told you not to make a sound! Could have ruined the whole night! No food for a week!” Then he was shoved back into his cupboard and the door locked.

Harry rubbed at the side of his head where he could feel a bruise forming, but he looked gratefully at the small bars of light filtering through the open grate. No food for a week was a harsh punishment, but at least school was not out for a few more days; he would likely be able to get lunch, and possibly even a snack.

xxXxx

A couple of weeks later, Harry overheard Uncle Vernon telling his Aunt Petunia that he had invited another potential client over for dinner. Apparently, Mr. Petersen and Mr. Brown were golfing buddies, and Mr. Petersen had told Mr. Brown (who was also the owner of a small company) all about Grunnings and had referred him to Uncle Vernon. Naively, Harry thought that perhaps since the last dinner had gone so well, his own mistake might have been forgotten.

Harry realized how wrong he was when Uncle Vernon came home late Friday afternoon. Harry was just finishing dusting in the foyer, and saw that his uncle was holding a small bag from a pet supply store. He thought idly that perhaps Dudley had convinced them to give a dog another go as he tried to shrink back into the shadows, hoping to go unnoticed.

Uncle Vernon, however, seemed to have other ideas. He looked straight at Harry and gave him a feral grin as he pulled out what looked like a dog collar with an odd box on it from inside the bag.

“Come over here,” he ordered, still grinning.

Unsure what Uncle Vernon had in mind, but still uneasy, Harry slowly walked over, ready to bolt if necessary. He stopped just out of his uncle’s reach, but Vernon took a surprisingly swift step towards him and grabbed him by the back of his neck, dragging him closer.

“Hold still,” Uncle Vernon commanded, and the frightened Harry complied. He stiffly stood his ground until his uncle held the black collar up to his throat and began reaching around to fasten the strap. Startled at the realization of what was happening, Harry tried to jerk away, but his uncle was too strong.

“I said hold still, or this will be much worse for you,” his uncle warned, practically snarling. Harry obeyed, and felt Uncle Vernon press the box of the collar up against his throat, with two little metal stubs going on either side of his voice box. Then his uncle moved around to behind Harry’s back and began fastening the collar, and Harry closed his eyes in humiliation as he saw Dudley peering out from the family room with a wicked grin on his face.

Once Vernon finished fiddling with the clasp, adjusting it so that there was no room for the collar to slide around, he gripped Harry's shoulder and spun him around to face him, causing Harry to open his eyes again in surprise. He saw his uncle beckon Dudley over so that the two leered at him with matching ugly smirks.

"Watch this, Dudders," Vernon said excitedly. He pulled a small remote out of his bag and flicked a red switch, and Harry heard a small beep come from the little box at his throat.

“What’s--” Harry began to say, his nerves and mounting tension finally growing to be too much for him, but he gasped and jumped violently when a jolt went through him, briefly shocking his whole body. He reached up and touched the box, eyes widening in understanding.

Dudley was now guffawing heartily, and Vernon’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “I wouldn’t try speaking, if I were you,” he warned. “It’s bound to be unpleasant. I originally thought I might be able to find a muzzle to keep you quiet, but then I found this at the pet store. It’s supposed to train dogs not to bark. Seems fitting, doesn’t it?” Vernon gave a small chuckle, then pointed to the cupboard door. “In,” he ordered. “And I know you won’t be making a peep.”

Harry climbed in resignedly, hearing the lock click and the grate close behind him, plunging him into darkness. He just sat for a few moments, stunned at the turn of events, but eventually came out of his stupor. He explored the collar with his fingers, and realized that he probably could work out how to undo the fastener himself if he needed to, but he knew the punishment would only be worse if he defied his uncle that way. He supposed Uncle Vernon had just found a new, rather creative, method of punishment, but his punishments always ended eventually. With this small reassurance, he felt around under his bed until he located the small torch that he had stolen and stowed under there. Flicking it on, he shone its beam over his collection of odds and ends, eventually lighting on a small electronic toy that Dudley had broken just a few days before. He grabbed it and began tinkering with it by torchlight, absorbing himself in the task in order to forget the uncomfortable collar around his neck.

It was not until Uncle Vernon was leading the Browns into the parlor for after-dinner drinks and Aunt Petunia was ushering Dudley up the stairs for bed that Harry finally made some obvious headway on the toy. Unfortunately, his clue that he had done so was that it began repeatedly giving off a loud, tinny-sounding fanfare. Startled, he dropped the toy, and then frantically began scrambling about in the narrow space between his bed and the floor, trying to locate it and stop the noise. He finally found it and then, after a moment of fruitless scrabbling at wires, was forced to smash it against the ground to silence it. He held his breath once it was quiet, silently pleading for no one to have noticed, though he knew it was pointless.

“Dudley must have left the TV on earlier, little tyke,” Uncle Vernon finally said after what seemed like an interminable wait. Harry began trembling once he heard activity resume outside his door, terrified of what his next punishment would be.

He could not fall asleep this time, and instead occupied himself trying to hide the evidence of his scavenged toys, knowing that the Dursleys would be furious when they found the source of the noise. After he had hidden everything though, he realized that his aunt and uncle would never believe that he did not have some toy, because what else could have caused that sound? So he nervously brought the broken electronic back out and left it openly on his bed, hoping that they would not search beyond the obvious and so he would only be called a thief of the one toy.

That night when the cupboard door opened, Uncle Vernon did see the toy, and he did take it from him and call him an ungrateful thief. And the collar was the left on and the cupboard door re-locked, after a hefty backhand. But three days later, after he had been forced to relieve himself in a corner several times (Aunt Petunia had only deigned to toss a couple of water bottles in at him, but had not let him out to use the toilet), Harry heard his aunt complaining of the stench coming from somewhere near the foyer.

Harry trembled as he waited for them to track the smell down to his cupboard, and did not struggle when he was tossed out into the backyard and told he could not be trusted inside the house. Shivering mildly in the cool night air, he walked to the shed but found the door locked, so he circled around behind it to the corner of the yard that was somewhat hidden behind the garage. There he discovered the old doghouse, a relic from a few years back when Dudley had demanded that he wanted a dog but bored of it within the month. Tired, he crawled inside and curled up, hoping that he might be let back inside in the morning, or at least have the dog collar taken off.

xxXxx

Harry woke the next morning to see Uncle Vernon standing by the entrance to the doghouse, peering in at him. He crawled out hopefully, attempting to look contrite, but his uncle only smiled coldly at him.

“I was trying to decide what to do with you,” Vernon began. “Your aunt and I have obviously decided you can’t be trusted in the house any longer, but we couldn’t come up with where else to put you. I thought of the shed, but I don’t want you near my power tools. This, however,” he pointed at the doghouse, “is the perfect solution.”

Harry’s heart began to thump, and he pointed at his throat, trying to plead with his eyes, but his uncle only shook his head at him. Vernon looked up at the tall, close-boarded wooden fence, then looked back at Harry. “Don’t leave the yard,” he ordered, then turned and walked back around the garage and the shed.

Harry was left outside for the rest of the week. He drank from the spigot by the house when no one was looking, and retrieved some scraps from the garbage each night after the Dursleys had gone to sleep. The collar was tight enough that it was uncomfortable to swallow around, but he eventually grew accustomed to the sensation. He found that the doghouse was surprisingly warm and cozy -- even too warm, on some nights -- and was grateful for once that the Dursleys only bought the best for Dudley. For the first couple of days, he relieved himself in the corner of the yard farthest from the doghouse, but when Dudley complained that it was gross, Aunt Petunia gave him a bucket and told him to dump it into the trash after he went.

The following Friday afternoon, Harry was about to sneak a drink from the spigot when he heard his uncle and aunt’s voices filtering through the kitchen window. He began quietly tiptoeing back away, but stopped and listened when he heard them referring to him.

“…with the boy during the cookout tomorrow? I don’t trust him in the house, Vernon, but we can’t leave him out there for anybody to see. What if we lock him in the shed?”

“The shed has my power tools! And besides, it’s got a window in front, faces right towards the patio.” There was a pause, then Vernon said, “I’ll come up with something, don’t worry, Pet.”

Harry slunk back to what he had begun thinking of as ‘his’ section of the yard, mulling over what he had heard. The cookout could either be good news or bad news, depending on what they decided to do with him. Maybe they would leave him with Mrs. Figg again? If they did that, they would surely have to take the collar off. It was starting to chafe at his neck a little, and being silent was becoming quite tiresome. Even though he did not usually have much of anyone to talk to during the summers anyways, he usually would at least talk to himself when he made up games, or hum (which he had discovered also caused a shock) while he did his chores.

As he sat thinking, he considered just taking the blasted collar off and running away. But he shivered thinking of the tales Dudley had told him about orphanages. Surely his aunt and uncle would not leave him like this for too much longer?

A couple of hours later, Uncle Vernon came around to his section of the yard with a measuring tape in his hands. Curious, Harry watched from where he sat in the shade as his uncle measured the distance from the corner where the garage met the fence to some point a bit beyond where the garage ended. He made no response when his uncle met his eyes and smirked at him, but a cold feeling settled into his stomach at what new torture Uncle Vernon’s twisted mind might have come up with.

Thirty minutes later, as the evening was growing cool, Vernon again appeared around the corner of the garage, this time carrying a bag from some hardware store. He pulled out a metal stake with a loop on one end and drilled it into the side of the garage by the fence, somewhere high above where Harry could reach. Then he pulled out a chain and a padlock and attached the chain to the loop in the stake, the lock giving off a faint click. When he began heading towards his nephew, Harry scrambled to his feet and started backing away, but Uncle Vernon grabbed him by his shirt collar and spun him around.

“Hold still,” he commanded him, then added, “You might have forgotten, but today is July 31st. Nine years old, I believe? So I brought you a birthday present.”

Harry could feel his uncle messing with the fastener of the black collar, and for a moment hoped that perhaps the collar was coming off. But then Harry heard the the click of what sounded like a slightly smaller lock. When his uncle let go, Harry spun around hurriedly. His hand trembling, he reached up to the back of his neck and his fingers brushed against a small padlock, fastened to his collar. He wouldn’t be able to take the collar off if he chose anymore.

Preoccupied with his collar, he did not notice what his uncle was doing until he felt something cold against his ankle. He looked down and saw that Uncle Vernon had just fastened one end of some sturdy-looking handcuffs around his right ankle and was currently checking the fit. Apparently satisfied that the cuffs would not be able to come off his foot, he grabbed up the free end of the chain from the ground, looped it through the open cuff, and clicked the mechanism closed. Dumbfounded, Harry stared at his ankle and the attached chain, refusing to process what had just happened.

By the time he looked up, tears of frustration welling in his eyes, Vernon had already turned around and was heading back around the corner of the garage. He followed him angrily, debating the merits of yelling after him, but was brought up short by the pulling of the chain just a bit beyond the garage. Looking back behind him, he saw that the chain was almost taut. Grabbing a hold of it, he yanked sharply, but the chain only clinked against the stake without budging an inch. Keeping a hold of the chain with one hand to prevent it from clotheslining him when he reached the end, he explored how much room he had, and found that he could only reach about a yard beyond the corner of the garage. Although he could see the small gap between the shed and the back fence, he knew that no one would be able to see him unless they came right up to the back corner of the shed. And even now he watched his uncle begin piling shovels and other lawn tools into the gap, blocking the path presumably to discourage any guests from wandering over.

At the end of his rope, quite literally, he groaned (and then winced at the painful shock) in frustration at his impossible predicament. Angry and feeling powerless, he kicked the side of the garage, but only received a sore toe for his efforts. Eventually, he went back to his doghouse, curled up, and went to sleep.

xxXxx

So the next day, Harry sat in his corner of the yard and listened to the kids playing and the adults talking. His mouth watered as he smelled the burgers Uncle Vernon was grilling, and he wished that he could at least reach the spigot to have some water, but it was all the way on the other side of the garage. Angry and restless, he began pacing the perimeter of where he was confined.

Suddenly, though, he was brought up short by an angry voice.

“Watch where you’re sssstepping,” it shot at him, clearly annoyed.

Looking around, Harry eventually spotted a small, dark green snake in the grass near his feet. Surprised, he forgot himself for a moment and said, “You can talk?” He clapped his hand over his mouth as soon as he had said it, but then relaxed when he realized he had felt no shock.

“You can talk?” the snake retorted back, clearly just as surprised as Harry.

Wary now, but heartened by the lack of response by his collar so far, Harry hesitantly answered, “All humans speak, I think, but I didn’t know that snakes could. How can you understand me?”

The snake made a strange noise that Harry thought might have been a snort. “Of course snakes speak. But it is not I who understands you, but rather you that understands me. You are speaking the language of the snakes, of course. Do humans have a language too?”

Harry thought for a moment about this revelation. How could he be speaking another language and not know it? “Yes, humans have many languages,” he answered the snake, but this time he listened carefully as he spoke and realized that it sounded as though he were hissing. “What’s your name?” he asked the snake, touching his throat curiously as he did so and wondering if perhaps the collar had broken or run out of battery. Experimentally, he tried humming, but winced and stopped immediately when he was shocked once again. But with his hands still on his neck, he realized that he had felt his throat vibrate when he hummed, but not when he had spoken to the snake. Perhaps that was the difference?

“Sihatha,” the snake answered him. “And yours, little one?”

“Harry,” he tried to say, but broke off when the collar shocked him again. Apparently, names did not really translate into snake-language.

“What is wrong, little one, why do you look as though pained?” Sihatha asked him, sounding concerned.

Harry smiled a bit at the snake. “I have this thing on my neck that keeps me from speaking the language of humans, so I guess I can’t say my name. But you can call me Hiss, I guess.”

“Hissss,” the snake repeated, then queried, “Why do you have this thing? I thought humans only put these circles on their animals. You are not an animal.”

Harry sighed. “My family doesn’t like me very much. But I think they’ll let me back inside, eventually. My uncle is just mad right now.”

Sihatha seemed to harumph slightly, then told him, “Well, I will come back and visit you until they do. If you need, I can bring you some nice toads, are you hungry?”

“Er… I think I’m ok for now, but I’ll let you know if I need any, thanks.”

With a final bobbing-nod, the snake slithered off into the grass and under the fence.