H.P:the Difference Between Brothers?

Staring up at the dusty wood above his makeshift bed, Harry Potter ran his hand absentmindedly across the smooth scales of the snake coiled up against him, unable to sleep. The small ball of light that floated above him cast a yellow glow on his face, and blanketed the small space in shadows. After weeks of being locked in the cupboard, he had grown bored. The tally marks in his notebook helped keep track of the days. It had been thirty days, thirty-one once morning hit, since he'd been locked in. All he had done was sleep and read in an endless cycle for a month. Every few nights, he'd sneak out for food and a new selection of Dudley's untouched books. He'd finished all of them days ago.

Really, Harry should have known better than to talk to the snake at the zoo. He knew better than to do a lot of things, but he'd been taken on an outing with his aunt and uncle. Never before had he been allowed to go anywhere with them. It made him sloppy, and he'd broken one of his rules.

Living with the Dursleys came with rules. Not their rules, even though they had a lot of them, but his own. There were only two rules, but they kept the worst of how he was treated away. Don't ask questions, which was the most important rule, and don't get caught. Breaking either one of them led to being hit or locked in the boot cupboard he called a room.

Of course, Dudley didn't have those rules.

When they were both five and just starting primary, Dudley had once asked, "Why do I have to call Freak Harry at school?"

"Because we don't want people to think we're freaks. Besides, that's his name," Aunt Petunia had told him.

"Why is he a freak?" Dudley then asked.

"Because his parent's were freaks," she said.

Ironically, that was how Harry learned his name was not actually Boy or Freak. And the first time he'd ever learned anything about his parents.

At the time, Harry didn't really know what a freak was, then, he learned he was a magician. Or rather, discovered, because that was the only explanation for the unexplainable things that constantly happened around him. There were plenty of things that got him punished, like turning his teacher's hair blue, or making his hair grow very quickly the time that Aunt Petunia sheared it all of. There was the time he ended up on the school roof, his punishment for that had been one of his worst. He'd accidentally mended a plate he'd dropped without realizing his aunt was in the room once, and earned himself four days in the cupboard and no food for two days.

There were the times no one knew about too, like when Harry set his blankets on fire and exploded his light bulb.

He could also talk to snakes, which is what led to the incident at the zoo. Walking home from school when he was six, Harry stumbled upon a garden snake, and realized he could talk to it. Hiss became his first friend. Then came Morgan a few years later. Just a few days before the zoo, Corra had come to him as well.

It was only after finding Hiss that Harry realized all the odd things that he could do were magic. After that, he tried to see what other powers he might have. Quickly, he discovered it was only snakes that he could speak with. He learned that after harassing a bird, a dog, and a very embarrassing incident with one of Mrs. Figg's cats. In all the books he read, magicians, or wizards, or mages, or whatever they were called could do all sorts of things.

By the time he was eight, Harry could unlock his cupboard, which locked from the outside, and create a little floating ball of light. Warming things was the next thing he worked on, and it took until just a few months ago. He could warm things up, or cool them down without setting them on fire or covering them in ice. His latest project was trying to create water.

He did figure out that the more he learned, the less likely he was to accidentally use his powers where his aunt or uncle could catch him. Although, when Harry was really upset, things just happened anyway.

Which is what happened at the zoo. He'd been lagging behind, talking to different snakes out of ear and eye shot. The boa constrictor had been telling him a particularly funny story about an old man when it happened. Dudley and his awful friend Piers were harassing other reptiles across the room by tapping on the glass and screaming at them. Next thing Harry knew, he was being shoved to the ground by the bigger boys. It hurt, a lot, as Dudley was at least four times the size of Harry, and Piers was tall and strong despire being skinny. Harry was sure he sprained his wrist when he landed on it. As angry, pained tears welled up in his eyes, the glass vanished. Piers and Dudley fell into the habitat and the boa escaped. Then the glass was back, trapping the boys.

When they finally made it back to Number Four, Privet Drive after a tense and silent car ride, Harry recieved the worst beating he'd ever had. Uncle Vernon's fists pounded at him in the front hall, then he'd been tossed, barely conscious, into the cupboard to be forgotten about.One thing about his powers that he could never figure out, was that he healed unusually quickly. One time, Aunt Petunia hit him in the face with a cast iron frying pan hard enough that he completely blacked out. The next morning, he woke up fine. When they were seven, Dudley broke two of his fingers. Harry taped them up, expecting them to be that way for weeks. A day later, he was perfectly healed.