Ch. 1

Fire. Death. Ashes. These are the sights that greeted Sirius Black when he arrived on the scene of a most despicable act of betrayal, the handiwork of the miserable rat Peter Pettigrew. Sirius knew, even in his darkest moment, he could not yet succumb to the revenge that was his deepest desire. James had left specific instructions with Sirius to make sure, in case Voldemort arrived and the still-new father could not, that Harry would get the trunk his father left him. Sirius wasn't sure why the trunk was so vital, only that he would do as James asked and paint the necessary runes on the infant. While runes were never the man's strongest subject at Hogwarts, he at least knew enough to figure from the elaborate construct that it would link Harry and the trunk and would never allow the object to appear around Muggles or anyone from the Ministry of Magic (how exactly it would distinguish people of the ministry was likely buried in the particularly arcane cluster of runes he couldn't decipher). It appeared that perhaps it would allow Harry to access the trunk at a certain date, but not before then. Black knew that this work, particularly the jumble of runes on the actual object itself, were beyond the ability of most to decipher and could only be the work of the brilliant Lilly Potter. Finally breaking from his musings, Black heard a familiar voice and knew that the approaching behemoth of a man would make sure Harry was safe, likely under the direct protection of the most powerful wizard on earth, Albus Dumbledore. With his final inhibition lowered, knowing Harry would be safe under Dumbledore's protection, far safer even than in his ancestral home at Grimauld Place, Sirius Black set out to exact his revenge on a certain worthless rodent.

The following day, after observing the Muggles that Albus called the Dursleys, Minerva McGonagall couldn't understand his insistence on leaving the vanquisher of Voldemort with these… People! The absolute worst sort of Muggles, likely filled with some preposterous notion that wizardry violated some 'normalcy' and that all magic users were freaks. She couldn't stand anyone, wizard or not, who discriminated based solely on some trait which was beyond their control: the pureblood bigots discriminating based simply on the number of wizards in a person's lineage, the Muggles who believed that the gift of wizardry made a person abnormal, or the people that viewed a person with tremendous intellect as pretentious and annoying. She herself had suffered from prejudices, the misconception that a woman surely couldn't hold a mastery of transfiguration, couldn't teach at the most prestigious academy of magic in England. The stern woman was determined that the young child to be brought here today would not suffer these insufferable people by himself, but always have someone to turn to, if for no other reason than in honor of her favorite students and the sacrifice they made to eradicate Voldemort once and for all. Even though she had stayed loyal to the headmaster through some of his eccentricities and schemes, she couldn't help but feel that this decision was grossly misjudged.

Later in the evening, when Albus arrived with the completely unnecessary flair of extinguishing the lights on the street (as though he couldn't have simply worn muggle clothing to blend in), she immediately began to question the sanity of his decision.

The woman spat out "Albus Dumbledore, in all of my years on this earth, I have never felt more ashamed to be complicit in something, if only by not stopping this and taking in the wee bairn myself! Never have I seen two people more obsessed with seeming normal than these, and from what Lily had told me all those years ago, her sister despises magic! In fact, I formally vow that if I find out that the lad is injured, physically or emotionally, because of your decision to leave Harry Potter with Vernon and Petunia Dursley, I will break from your leadership as leader of the light! So mote it be! The sole reason that I haven't yet taken him from you is in honor of our long friendship and the hope that it perhaps truly is for his good to be with his relatives. Right now, however, I cannot stand to be in your presence. Good day, Headmaster Dumbledore." She was as good as her word and brusquely stormed off, apparating away as she went. She left behind a man with fresh doubts that he made the right choice leaving the child with these Muggles. Quickly, however, he dispelled these doubts, assuring himself of the central truth that almost all humans were inherently good and that familial bonds were even closer than bonds of friendship, meaning the child would be perfectly safe with his relatives and behind the blood wards he had erected. Still though, the fact that one of his closest subordinates would so tempestuously swear a formal oath about the child's care gave him pause as to what exactly she had seen…

Around 9 Years Later

'Constant work, unending labor, painful beating. Can there anything else in my future?' thought a young resident of Number 4 Privet Drive as he crawled into his cramped cupboard under the stairs. Today was apparently his 10th birthday, July 31, 1990, a fact that he only knew because of the extra beatings his uncle had given him. His birthday present this year had been a loaf of molded bread and, of course, the extra beatings- 14 lashes on his malnourished body with his uncle's favorite belt. It was, to date, the third worst abuse he had ever suffered, rivaled only by the time he had somehow ended up on top of his school roof (around 30 lashes to the back and legs, he passed out at 21 but counted several more as he disinfected them with some of his aunt's bleach) and the time he had had accidentally crippled his Aunt Marge's dog. Harry shuddered at even the memory of that, his aunt beating him with her heavy bag on the head while his uncle started punching him in the back: kidney, spine, lung, a constant cycle of pain. He passed out again to his uncle's yells of 'Freak! How dare you use your freakish abilities! How dare you hurt your sweet aunt's little dog! I've had it! I'll beat the freakishness out of you!' The lad still just couldn't understand what he had done! He saw the dog charging at him and was so afraid he didn't think, just willed it away from him. He didn't mean to hurt anything!

The only solace that he had from his daily abuse was learning. Not school necessarily, since he had to fail any classes he shared with his cousin Dudley so that he wouldn't appear to be showing him up as his uncle had often accused him (with a few lashings to emphasize his meaning). In those classes where they were separate, however, he blossomed into a towering intellect, easily completing all of his coursework and reading ahead to at least a secondary school level, approaching collegiate level. No one wanted to talk to the 'freakish nerd', especially since doing so would incur the wrath of Dudley and his cronies, so Harry studied all day. Studied, perhaps, is too mild. He rapaciously devoured any books he could, even smuggling some back to the prison he called a home to read in his cupboard with a penlight he had smuggled in years ago. He particularly loved the classics, maths and science, particularly chemistry and physics. Reading the classics had an element of escapism for the boy, a chance to travel to new worlds out of the cupboard, where heroes fought over maidens fair and fathers cared for and protected their progeny. Reading each one was a bittersweet experience, however, since they constantly reminded Harry of what he could have had, had it not been for his irresponsible parents abandoning him to his aunt and uncle in an act of pure stupidity! How often had he raged, had he cursed their names for being irresponsible and dying in a car wreck, leaving him to wretched Dursleys!

Tonight, he was too tired and pained to even begin to contemplate reading, so cried himself off too a fitful slumber, filled with odd dreams of high-pitched laughter and sickly green keep light.

Exactly 188.293 kilometers away from the misery of the Dursley household, in Ipswich, England, a young girl named Hermione Jean Granger lay on her plush bed crying. Once again, the bullies of her school had picked on their most hated 'buck toothed hag'. The young girl was extremely intelligent, a mental colossus in her own right. As she would later find out, she had either the first or second highest IQ for her age group out of the entirety of England, two points above or below a certain Harry James Potter depending on the times checked, though this was not to be known for several more months. Understandably, she hated school but adored learning, since her school had become inextricably tied to the bullying she had faced nearly every day since she started school. Young Hermione longed for the simple days she could still remember, when she would lock herself in her room and indulge her mind for hours on end. At first simple picture books, she eventually moved to full chapter books and now read almost on a collegiate level in her personal interests of arts and history, with an incongruous interest in physics and biology.

The only salves to the wounds of the bullies' words were her books, her piano, and her demanding yet caring parents. And how she did love her piano; having taken piano lessons for 5 years, she would sit for hours pouring her emotions into the instrument, letting it absorb the confusion and anger she felt that nobody would befriend her. It was perhaps her greatest emotional outlet. The bright girl had tried to talk with her parents about her problem but, like herself, they were sometimes inexperienced and clumsy at expressing their emotions and understanding other's feelings. They were always willing to listen to her but couldn't seem to explain the troubles she faced, instead just offering to talk to her teachers or principal and get them to reprimand the bullies. At first it had seemed like the best option, of course teachers could always fix the problems! Oh how wrong the girl was.

After being told, her teacher had pulled her worst tormentors, Corena and Envidia, Spanish transfer students, aside and punished them with lunch detention for two weeks. Hermione, blithely believing this would rectify her troubles, had gone back the following day ready for a whole new experience. Indeed, it was new in that their retribution took the girls' conduct from mere bullying to torment. Where before they had merely teased her for having a rats nest of hair, they now took handfuls and tried to pull it out. Where before they had just called her ugly and buck toothed, they had now taken to garishly smearing makeup on her during their changing time for gym class, mockingly saying 'Well Ms. Beaver mouth, I suppose it's some improvement on the hideous thing you call a face'. When teachers weren't looking, they pulled her ears, knowing it caused her an intense pain no one could ever explain. These two weeks of personal hell culminated in the final day of detentions, where they tripped her as she was going into the restroom, kicking her till she cried while informing her in no uncertain terms that if she ever told anyone what she did, their payback would increase tenfold. Since then, she had never told anyone the full measure of her troubles, even her parents, to whom she only told some of her more minor trials when she simply couldn't hold them all in any longer.

That very day, she had been driven to tears when she had simply tried to help someone with an assignment but was met the now customary glare of hostility that spoke of her classmate's loathing of her perceived arrogance more concisely than her beloved books ever could.

As each lay sobbing into their bedding, soft quilt and tattered rag, they never could have foretold the fate that would unfurl itself over the next few months.