The sky was cloudy and it was a chilly morning in Little Whinging, Surrey. Young Harry did not know this of course. He was locked away in his cupboard, not seeing the light of day aside from the crack under the door. He was lucky he could make out shadows from the tiny room with how bad his eyesight was. Harry heard the sliding lock on his cupboard click open, signaling it was time to start doing chores. The first chore on his list since it was the first day of the week, and a school day, was breakfast. He was currently six years old, just turning that age over the summer. He only knew about his birthday from hearing his Aunt Petunia complaining and signing about it to Uncle Vernon over the summer. She was sighing and complaining only because they would have to enroll him in school to keep up appearances with the neighbors she so hated. They were just really nosy. This caused many arguments between Vernon and Petunia which resulted in Harry being punished for existing. The punishment was that Harry had been locked up for a week over the summer without daylight or anything aside from moldy bread, water and his bucket.
Today however, Harry was lucky enough to have stale bread to make a sandwich for his school lunch as he had to go there with Dudley later on today. He had been to the school for a week so far and this was the start of the second week. He still had to get up with Petunia around 5:30am though. Plenty of time to get breakfast started for her Duddykins. Petunia was annoyed that Harry wasn't big enough to do the breakfast all on his own as she had to get up at the crack of dawn, mostly to hand him the cooking utensils he couldn't reach. If he was tall enough she would happily still be asleep and just leave his door unlatched so he could do it all himself.
Petunia was feeling generous, but also because it was the first day of the school week and he was due for one anyway, so it was bath day for Harry. So before starting on breakfast, she ushered him into the bathroom and proceeded to scrub him nearly raw with all the filth he had had from the previous week. Harry struggled not to squirm out of her reach, knowing If he did he would be punished again like the last time. Like any time really. Last time he did squirm he was smacked so hard he nearly crashed into the side of the tub.
"Sit still, boy." Petunia said as she gripped said boy by the hair and sighed as it needed to be cut again. She had cut his hair a few weeks ago and it currently looked as if she hadn't even touched it. She knew it was probably some sort of freakishness considering who his parents were. She wouldn't tell Vernon about these minor instances of freakishness as it would set Vernon on edge. If it was more major she would not resist telling him and knew he would probably try to beat the freakishness out with his belt buckle and all. As it was whenever he did have a punishment it was dealt out over the weekend to give him time to heal before school.
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