Harry, for all purposes, was mute.

From the Dursley’s point of view, all that Harry could produce from his mouth was a strange hissing noise, and that was the only noise that they had ever heard Harry. Even when they had first found Harry on their door step, he wasn’t crying but rather hissing.

It was an incredibly annoying noise to them so Vernon Dursley, Harry’s uncle, decided to try and beat the habit out of his nephew. Every time Harry would try to speak and hiss instead, Vernon would tell Harry he was a freak, and beat the poor child with his belt until Harry was bloody and unconscious. Later, Vernon would beat Harry again for getting blood everywhere. By this time though, Harry’s magic had healed the majority of his wounds.

By the time Harry was in kindergarten, he’d nearly given up trying to communicate in any way to the humans who were around him.

The garden snakes, on the other hand, were always willing to keep Harry company. Though they had at first been rather cold towards Harry, (they thought he was going to kill them), they soon warmed up to him after they realized he could speak their language.

Though the teachers had suspected abuse was occurring at the Dursley household soon after they first saw Dudley and Harry together, they had no proof one way or another in which to back up their suspicions. Harry would shy away from any raised voices or any threatening movements, but he never showed any injuries other than a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead.

The teachers learned not to take this lack of injuries at face value, though. For some reason, Harry’s skin couldn’t ever be broken. It was the strangest thing that the teachers had ever seen.

One time, Harry was being dragged around the playground on his knees, yet after the teachers had broke it up, he didn’t have a scratch on him. In fact, the only thing that looked slightly different was Harry’s hair, which was even messier than before.

Though he never showed it, Harry did feel the pain of the skinned knees. He never liked it when other people could tell when he was in pain because he always equated their knowledge with more pain on his part.

Needless to say, kindergarten was the last time that Harry was allowed to go and play on the playground with the other kids during recess. It was far to obvious that he was getting tormented by the other kids for the recess monitors not to notice. Of course, for some reason he didn’t show that he was injured, there was no telling what else the bullies could do to him.

As Harry’s kindergarten year progressed, the teachers became more and more thankful that they had stopped letting him outside to be tortured by his fellow classmates. Harry had been struggling with even the simplest aspects of the English language.

His handwriting was illegible on a good day. Even for a kindergartener, it was terrible. It was almost as if he couldn’t remember what the letters were supposed to look like, even though the teachers had just covered them…Again.

Needless to say, Harry was in desperate need of tutoring when it came to English.

Yet, in math and science, Harry was able to do just fine.

While the other students were struggling with simple addition and subtraction, Harry was already doing simple algebra. The only thing that was slightly different about Harry’s algebra, when compared to the algebra that the middle school students were doing was that instead of using letters for variables, Harry used scribbles.

These scribbles only proved to be yet another baffling element of Harry Potter for the teachers. Whenever Harry was working on a problem, the scribbles looked exactly the same. There was never any variation.

That was, until the Dursleys caught wind of how much better Harry was doing in comparison to how Dudley was doing when it came to math.

Not long after the Dursleys discovery, Harry’s math grade suddenly started to fall. Eventually, Harry dropped so far behind his classmates that he had to be moved to a special education room.

For most families, having one of the children moved down to a special education room was something that was looked upon with fear and dismay. For the Dursleys though, this was a thing to be joyful about. Finally, they had proof that their nephew was far dumber than their son.

This drop was, of course caused by Vernon Dursley in order to, “keep Dudley from feeling like he was inferior to his brain dead cousin.”

To the faculty at the grade school, this rapid drop in test scores and comprehension only seemed to back up the Dursley’s story of how Harry’s parents were drug addicts and drunks who got themselves killed in a car accident.

It wasn’t hard for Harry to be considered brain damaged. He never spoke at school or made any sounds what so ever. He never made any friends, he never seemed to do any form of school work, and he never paid any attention. Most of the time the teachers would try to be teaching him something but he wouldn’t be even pretending to listen. He would be looking out of the window.

And so Harry’s grade school years crawled by, slowly but surely.

By third grade, Harry was no longer able to be in the same class room as all the other “normal” kids. His grades were to poor and his reading skills were still at the same level they were when he was in kindergarten.

His uncle had told him that “freaks like you are the only people to be put in classes like that.” While Harry didn’t understand the majority of that statement, he did understand “freaks like you” because he’d heard his uncle say it enough and he also understood “classes.” Unfortunately, Harry jumped to the wrong conclusion.

The day that Vernon had said that, Harry hadn’t brought something in for show-and-tell. Because participation was one of the few things the kids in the special education class were graded on, Harry was being allowed to bring something in the next day.

Harry, who had no real possessions other than the ratty old blanket he was found in and some of Dudley’s broken army men, decided to bring in a friend rather than a toy.

The next day, Harry came to school with one of the adders that lived in the park several blocks from Privet Drive.

Though the poor snake had to be brought to school in Harry’s lunchbox, Harry assured it that it wouldn’t be in there for long.

Thankfully just after Math class, the first class of the day, there was show and tell. Everyone who had forgotten to bring something the day before went over to the cupboard in the corner where they had all stored their assorted stuffed animals or action figures. Harry, on the other hand, went over to where all the lunchboxes were stored.

This was a weird occurrence because Harry never brought a lunch to school. The Dursleys refused to pack him one.

After waiting only fifteen minutes (in which there were three kids who got up in front of the room only to panic and sit back down), it was Harry’s turn.

He shakily walked to the front of the classroom and set the lunchbox on the table.

‘I hope this works,’ Harry thought. ‘I hope that Uncle Vernon was right and they are freaks like me. I hope they are. Maybe then I’ll have someone to talk to.’

Harry took a deep breath and opened the lunch box.

Nearly the entire room jumped back in shock. No student had ever brought a snake to school before; especially not a venomous one. If that hadn’t been shocking enough, when Harry started to “speak” everyone in the room was dumbfounded.

“This is my friend, Salutha. He is an adder,” Harry stated, thinking that the other students could understand him. “Don’t worry, he’s nice and won’t bite… Hopefully… No really he won’t bite.”

Harry slowly picked up the snake and began to try and pass it around like all the other students had done with their show-and-tell, but he soon realized that his fellow students didn’t understand what he had just said.

Obviously this was not what Vernon had meant.

After showing the class Salutha, Harry returned to his seat in the back of the class room and talked to Salutha for the rest of the day. The teachers were dumbfounded at Harry’s sudden “social” streak. Of course, they had to inform the Dursleys of Harry’s venomous choice of show-and-tell.

The beating that followed that phone call left Harry nearly unconscious for almost a week. The school was told that Harry had gotten sick from touching the snake. Salutha was hunted down and killed by Aunt Petunia within that week.

After the beatings and the death of his friend, Harry became even more withdrawn than he was previously. He hardly ever smiled or raised his eyes from the floor. One would almost think he was depressed.

After this incident, life at the Dursley’s was far more tense for the young child. Every movement was questioned and no sound was made by Harry.

By the time Harry was ten, he was not only one of the lowest ranked in the class, he also was one of the shortest. The teachers had long ago dropped the thought that Harry was being abused at home; for the most part they believed that he was just a shy, misguided, and bullied little boy.

The orphan son of two drunkards who was taken in willingly by his sainted aunt and uncle.

Outside of school though, Harry had taken to looking at old college math and chemistry textbooks and trying to understand them just by looking at the diagrams and example problems. It was tough to understand though because Harry still had the reading level of a preschooler. Harry persevered and soon had the complete periodic table memorized and understood math up to college calculus and statistics.

Never the less, he still had to hide his knowledge while at school for fear that his uncle would discover his actual intelligence.

Finally, after many years of sitting in the special education room being bored by remedial math and confused by remedial English, Harry was promoted to the middle school, which he would start in the fall.

Finally, he didn’t have to go to school with Dudley, who was going to Smeltings Private School. Harry was to go to the regular middle and high school in Surrey.

Leaving the grade school for the last time, Harry thought, ‘This will be a summer to remember.’

Truer words have never been spoken.