Chapter 1

Prologue 1: Seven Years Old

September 1987

Harry Potter was an unusual boy. Even so for those unaware of his rather tumultuous first years, which are quite thoroughly and incorrectly documented in various texts. At just seven years old, he tumbled through life as a walking contradiction. Just look at him!

He was gangly, with wiry little stick-like limbs that dangled to and fro when he moved. His face was gaunt, his cheeks pale, and his waist dangerously small. He was a tiny little thing, for his age. This was not reflected in the clothes he wore. Shirts that hung off him as if he was an oversized, malformed coat hanger, riddled with the stains of a previous wearer. Pants so large—needing such a tight belt—that he looked as if he were simply wearing a large section of canvas. Thick-rimmed glasses that looked as if they might snap at any moment hung idly from his ears, fighting to remain on his emaciated face. These were the accommodations made for the little boy, Harry Potter. He would look terribly comical if he weren't so pitiful. This was, after all, the reality of his daily life.

Of course, there are many strange children in the world. Many strange adults, too, some of whom Harry Potter would meet someday. So why talk about this one for any appreciable amount of time? You see, Harry Potter is a wizard. Wands, robes, spells, the whole package! He can perform supernatural feats of creation, alteration, and destruction all at the flick of a wrist simply by exercising his force of will. Well, that might be a bit premature. He can't do any of those things right now. He's only seven years old! You can't go demanding such things of small children. All those lofty expectations might go to his poor seven year old brain and turn him all crazy and sociopathic. Presumably, one would not want such a thing for any person.

No, as of right now, Harry Potter is simply an unusual boy.

The odd clothing is what most people see. The contradictions deepen the closer you look, though none had deemed it quite necessary to look at young Mr. Potter too well. After all, it's not as if he were a wizard or anything. Harry Potter was just an odd little boy who went to primary school like most little boys in Britain. Rather, these contradictions were rooted in perception and reality, and the differences between them. The general consensus among those who taught him at this perfectly normal British educational facility was that he was a scoundrel, a ruffian. Here was a boy who simply could not stay out of trouble. In fact, these educators kept a certain piece of yellowed folded card stock that contained documents and writings and all sorts of other bits and scraps detailing just how much trouble the boy managed to get himself in. As it happens, his cousin also managed to have such a dossier as well. It detailed how this particularly oversized boy was a kind—if dense—child who was forced to deal with his cousin's poor behavior.

Curiously, these reports are much like the accounts of Harry's first years: quite thoroughly and incorrectly documented.

You see, the portly boy was born from the womb of one of his two guardians, whereas the small wiry boy was not. This fact was apparently quite influential on those guardians. Emerging from one person's womb or another is considered very important to many people for reasons difficult to explain and even more difficult to counteract. Interestingly enough, the young Mr. Potter's later attempts to extract himself from a world that revolved around whose womb one came out of landed him right in the middle of another which valued such things in equally high regard.

How unfortunate!

There's nothing so remarkable about one uterus or another. They all look much the same as far as their inhabitants are concerned. And yet little Harry Potter is little Harry Potter for that exact reason, just as big Dudley Dursley is big Dudley Dursley. You know, because of different uteruses. It's no wonder everyone raised in such a world doesn't go absolutely barmy!

So, because of uteruses and whatnot, Mr. Potter (as he is designated in his yellowed folded card stock full of papers) is referred to as brash, disruptive, obnoxious, aggressive, and all sorts of other words that belong in a psychiatrist's office or a dictionary. This is the work of one Vernon Dursley, who believes very strongly in the power of proper womb origination. Every so often, when he is called upon to voice his concerns about the schooling of his children (a noble idea to be sure!), he ensures that those dictionary words are used often. He spins quite fascinating tales of tiny Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Menaced. The educators believe him, of course. After all, Harry had been adopted voluntarily after his parents, who were related to the guardian with the womb, had been killed in a tragic car accident. What on earth would it serve huffy, puffy Mr. Dursley to slander Harry's name after doing him such a kind favor and taking him in?

Clearly they underestimated Vernon's belief in the importance of uteruses.

So Harry Potter's image was already made before he even had a chance to make one for himself. This too would become a recurring theme in his life, to his eternal chagrin. When teachers saw bruises on his body, their big mammal brains produced convincing images of Harry Potter chasing and harassing other students with a water pistol or sand or some other nonsense and getting popped one good in return. The idea that his cousin and his band of hooligans stamped, sealed, and delivered each welt with a personal touch was not widely believed. Dudley was such a well-behaved boy! And when Harry walked in always looking more haggard than the previous day, their big mammal brains conjured visions of an impudent boy who refused to eat his vegetables like his parents told him to. He was, after all, an unruly child. The source of this information was of no great concern, nor was his reliance on the power of the womb to make life decisions. The problem with big mammal brains is that they tend to draw easy conclusions to make room for more important things, like daydreaming about a young secretary or remembering that funny joke your brother told you last week. Those big mammal brains don't like to consider that easy conclusions need any examination.

Yes, all of this was recorded in those papers in the great big yellowed folded card stock, marked D. Dursley and H. Potter respectively. Someone would be reading these papers in their entirety very soon. This person would make that folded card stock and the documents within important. Very incredibly important indeed, but to only two people. One of them is the reader of the documents and the other is our young, scarred hero. Well, the bolt on the face is the obvious one, but as the following events occur, another scar would be added on his left ring finger as he makes a mistake cutting the sausage for the Dursleys' breakfast. There would be many more scars to come. Maybe that wouldn't be so if less people were so concerned about wombs.

Who can say! Who indeed!

A little girl played outside her house, dancing in sunbeams and the cool streams of a water sprinkler without care for her summer dress. Her short brunette hair fluttered and her brown eyes gleamed as she continued to bounce and hop and squeal, as children often do. Like little Harry Potter, she was seven years old. Unlike little Harry Potter, she was rather unremarkable in appearance, neither pretty nor ugly. Her one outstanding feature was that her face showed constant contentedness, as if her world was always in order, whether it was or not. Curiously, this girl also had the potential to use what the big-brained mammals call magic, but that fact would not be relevant to the event that was about to occur. She stopped her fervent summertime activities when she saw other children enjoying themselves across the street with a large ball made of rubber and polyurethane. She carefully checked the street for oncoming traffic and then leapt across in bounding strides.

The children across the way called for Megan to play with them. The girl was shy, but her family had just moved here and she wanted to make new friends. She spoke bravely and replied with the following:

"Yes, thanks! But I have to ask my parents first, they'll worry so much if I don't let them know where I am."

She turned to sprint towards her house, excited to make new friends. Her mommy had told her to do so, after all! This time, in her haste, she forgot to check the street. What a fatal mistake that can be! She vaulted into the road and came face to face with a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit.

Divergence.

She screamed. The car came to a sudden, violent stop. The driver's neck snapped backward against the seat and several muscles cried out in pain. When the driver jerked his head forward to see what had happened, he saw a little girl curled in front of his car, bawling. She was untouched. The driver, a male, was on an important business trip, and for a brief moment saw nothing but the fact that this girl had delayed him. He yelled at her.

"Watch where you're going, you little shit! Go home and sit inside if you're too stupid not to jump in front of cars!"

The girl had looked at him with fearful eyes and ran to her house sobbing before he'd finished the first sentence. With that, the man sped away. The whole incident lasted less than two seconds. He would think back on it a few minutes later and decide he'd overreacted. He was a bit sorry that he'd frightened the poor girl. That's okay though. After this he'll only be mentioned once more anyway. He is, after all, a person of little importance, just an accountant at a small firm in London. The girl is of some significance, but the divergence was not for her, as she would have lived anyhow. As the man drove further into town, he was involved in another traffic incident, with a young woman. This was Martha Croxley.

Martha Croxley hated cars. Something about them turned her hand-eye coordination to mush and addled her brain like a good night's drink. Those big metal wheeled things weaving around other big metal wheeled things made her skin crawl for no discernable reason. She shuddered every time she entered one of the blasted things, but she had to use them. At least, that's what she said to herself. Martha Croxley most certainly could have used a bicycle to travel between her house and her job, but was not of the mind to ride an hour over and an hour back each day under her own power. Like most big-brained mammals, she liked other things to do work so that she did not have to do it. It was a way of life.

She was not a very clever woman, but honest—some might say blunt—and intelligent. She had gone to university for several years before becoming a teacher just this year. Her eyes were a husky, dark brown that made her look as if she could stare down even heads of state, but her cheeks were warm and inviting and her chin was that of a working class woman, stiff and bowed. Her airy red hair ran down past her shoulder blades in little waves with frizz and tangles marring it the whole way down. Her physical form was mundane, stolid but not overweight. But that's enough of that.

As she maneuvered her metal construct toward her destination, her big mammal brain began to waver in its processing abilities again, as it tended to do behind the wheel of a car. She didn't even see the light glowing red as the blood that just now began flowing from Harry Potter's tiny little ring finger as the knife dug into both it and the sausage. She continued on, but so did the man in the 1984 Volkswagen Beetle. Problematically, their courses were perpendicular. The man was also distracted at the time, assuming no one would run a red light, and did not notice what was happening. He looked up and noticed.

Collision course.

He slammed on his brakes and yelled. His car jerked to a halt and missed her car by just a couple of seconds. Of course, she had no idea she was ever in danger. She continued along the road oblivious of what could have been a quick demise. He swore at her disappearing vehicle in loud tones before puttering away himself. He muttered something rather misogynistic about women and their behavior about automobiles on his way and how ridiculous this was. Fortunately, he won't ever be coming back. Who ever wanted to read a story about a small-time salary worker? This is about an unusual seven year old boy! He will be back soon, assuredly. But for now, Martha Croxley was pulling into a certain primary school where a certain little boy would be attending. When she walked into the teacher's lounge, she made a point to engage the teacher of the six year olds—now her sevens-she would be inheriting, a pug-faced but decent lady, and find out what to expect of the little buggers.

"Oh, they're a bunch of dears. Mostly bright, all eager to learn. The one you have to watch out for is the Potter boy. A real troublemaker, that one. He's hard as anything to catch in the act, but we get all kinds of stories about what he does back home to his cousin. Be careful with that one, he's a terror." Ms. Croxley nodded a bit dumbly at that. It had, after all, come flowing out of her mouth in what had seemed like just a couple of seconds. The sound reminded her of a yipping dog. Yip yip yip yip. The lady kept at it. "We keep full records of all the students here. I put them in your classroom in case you wanted to look them over before tomorrow. Just don't forget to put them back when you're done!"

Yip yip yip yip.

Before Ms. Croxley could even think to ask where she was supposed to return the folders, the woman had jumped to her feet and walked out of the room and to a door marked "Stairs". Her big mammal brain was telling her to run up the stairs to the roof and throw herself off. You see, her brain was old and tired from being around so long, so it quit. It told her to do all sorts of crazy things, like snort the pencil shavings. She'd almost done that one, but stopped herself at the last second, wondering how she'd gotten so crazy. The same thing happened this time as she got to the roof, fortunately for her. She just stared of the edge and wondered why on earth she'd come up in the first place. How odd! Fortunately, she won't be around anymore, so you won't have to deal with that crazy big brained teacher.

Shrugging, Ms. Croxley walked to her new classroom and sat down at the desk. She pored through the stack of files and finally plucked out the folder marked H. Potter. It was by far the thickest of the bunch. She flipped open the cover and began skimming through the section marked Behavior.

'Numerous reports of misconduct at home. Just as many at school. Gets into fights and shows up to class bruised on a regular basis. Particularly nasty behavior toward his cousin. Which one is the cousin?' She reached again for the stack and found a normal sized folder marked D. Dursley. Its contents were rather mundane. 'Poor grades, but only a few behavioral problems, mostly related to defending himself from the cousin.' She switched back to the Potter file. 'Personal Information section… adopted by Dursley family after he was orphaned.' That one word snapped her to attention.

Orphaned.

'He's an orphan.'

She sighed, in both exasperation and pity. It's hard to be sympathetic to a kid who's got such a mean streak.

"But he's still just a kid. You can at least try." Her conscience felt strongly about such things. She'd been orphaned too, after all. Never knew the identity of her parents or anything. You see, not all children are like Harry Potter. Some have guardians and parents who are not at all concerned about uteruses. Unfortunately for little baby Martha, this did not make her fate any different than Harry's. Her parents abandoned her as an infant and ran away. They simply did not care whose womb she came out of. She was unacceptable. How terrible to know such a thing about yourself! Even Harry's parents had only involuntarily given up their child, what with death and all. Ms. Croxley lived with the fact that her parents left her despite being perfectly functional human beings. Well, except for the child abandonment issue. So she'd lived at an orphanarium until her age of majority.

Shaking her head lightly, she continued to dive through Harry Potter's record-a small mountain even compared to most of the older children-and only grew more upset with what she saw. Page after page filled with descriptions of rule-breaking, fights, and all sorts of misconduct. 'Regardless of his circumstances, this is too much. There's a fight logged on almost every bloody day!' She winced at some of the injuries described. 'Couldn't imagine why. Seems like he gets his arse kicked more than anything else.' She'd had enough. The folder was closed with a soft thud. She would find out the next day exactly what kind of child this Harry Potter was and she would stop this bullshit. She was a teacher, not a damn babysitter.

Of course, nothing really ever goes to plan. The fact that Martha Croxley was still alive is testimony to that. Harry Potter would meet her for the first time in just a few minutes. It's about time! The poor boy hadn't gotten a moment's peace since that You-Know-Who business. That wasn't changing so far today.

"Oh, hey Harry! Welcome back to school!"

Harry barely cocked his head to look at his cousin's friend. Piers. That malicious voice. He knew what was coming. Sitting in a crowded area didn't ever help, but he'd tried it anyway.

"Aw, what's the matter? Forget how to speak?"

Harry said nothing. Sometimes Piers got bored and went away.

"Nah, he's just too dumb to say anything!" No chance of that happening anymore. Dudley never gave up once he got it in mind to play with Harry. "We'll give you a welcome back party at your favorite spot." Dudley gave a little smirk. "Ha! Should we drag him?"

Harry remained silent, but stood and plodded toward the stairs behind the teacher's offices. Better than being tugged away by his shirt. Harry was always amazed that, in the two years of poundings next to a building meant for teachers, no teachers had ever come to his aid. 'How strange.' He kept thinking on it. It helped distract him from the fists. That was eight now. 'So why did they all think it was him who started these fights anyway?' Nine. 'That's so stupid. I'm the only one who ever ended up hurt. Dudley's excuses weren't all that'—ten—'good anyhow.' Eleven and twelve, both had hit at once. Harry may have only been seven, but even he could see that something terribly unfair was going on. Thirteen. Harry wished with all his heart that they'd just stop. Just stop. Fourteen. Stop. The fists stopped. Beating a prone victim isn't nearly as fun, you know. That's what they would have thought if they were capable of articulating such complex emotions as boredom. Dudley gave him a sharp kick in the ribs and they walked away.

How fortunate for Harry!

Only fourteen punches. That beat the old record by four punches easily.

Even more wonderful for Harry was the ignorance of one Martha Croxley. As it happens, she was supposed to be sitting with the teachers outside the school on the playground, watching the children like a proper babysitter. The teachers, of course, never considered the blind spots where kids could be taken with little notice. However, Ms. Croxley was a new teacher and hadn't been properly informed of her full duties just yet, so she sat in the teacher's lounge. She had seen the whole thing from the second story window.

How fortunate for Harry!

And how terrible that such a thing is considered good fortune.

Now the young woman was quite confused. This did not fit. Nothing fit. Was that really Potter? Maybe the teacher that had told her it was him was mistaken. She hadn't even read through any of the other folders because of how interested she was in the Potter boy. Now that interest was multiplied a hundredfold. The bell rang. As students began pouring into her classroom, she turned and realized she had actual lessons to teach. The kids had apparently picked up on Harry's tendencies and heckled him a bit with such gems as "Oi, Harry! Nice face!" and "You look like a week old banana, Potter!". She would wait until after school.

As the students begin to head out the doors and for the buses, she turned to Dudley and handed him an official-looking piece of paper. He looked at her with dull confusion and she replied "Show it to your parents. Harry is staying here with me. Detention. I will arrange for his return home later." Harry's face was crestfallen. Dudley gave Harry a smile and a smack on the back where a particularly nasty bruise was located and walked out. Harry froze up, then spoke.

"Detention? But—"

"That's enough out of you. Sit in a desk in the front row and wait for me. I'll be back in just a couple minutes."

Harry nodded in resignation and she walked out of the room. Of course, it was quite illegal for a teacher to drive a student home, but they didn't know that. 'If I'm right… this is worth it.' She grabbed the yellowed folded card stock marked H. Potter and brought it back with her into the classroom where Harry sat. Droplets of salinated water had already begun trickling down his cheeks. It had nothing to do with the beatings or the punishments, of course. Those tears had dried up long ago. However, for both of the last two years Harry had hoped beyond all hope that he could get a teacher to help him. He'd had no such luck. And now this one hated him before he could even do anything. Harry hated crying and he almost never did it anymore, but it was just too much. He'd failed again. Another year of beatings, cupboards, hunger pangs… and the loneliness. People don't understand. A year is a long time. Three hundred and sixty-five days. Eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five hours. All that time spent absolutely alone. No friends, no family, no father or mother figure. Nothing. Imagine it! Harry did. And so the tears flowed.

She read the papers inside the yellowed folded card stock and then looked back to him.

"Harry Potter."

He sniffled.

"Do you know what I have here?"

He shook his head no. Students weren't supposed to know what's in the folders, but exceptions are always made for the exceptional. Such is the way of the world.

"This folder has many pages in it and they're all about you. Do you know what they might say?" Another nod no. "Let me tell you. It says that you're a bad boy. It says that you pick fights and are mean to other students. Is that true?"

Harry looked like he would open his mouth, but didn't. He shook his head again.

"Harry, listen to me. This is my first day teaching here. Before reading this, I had no idea who you were. This—" She wagged the yellowed folded card stock in the air, "makes you sound like a very bad person, but the boy sitting in front of me doesn't act like that at all. So, can you tell me why these papers say such terrible things about you?"

Harry looked at her balefully and lowered his head. He didn't answer. She prodded him again. "Some of the things in here are things your Uncle said about you. Now, why would he say these things about you if they're not true?"

Harry's head shot up like a launching catapult and his tears faded from his eyes for a brief moment and were replaced by… something. Was it determination? Or rage?

"He hates me. He always has hated me. He says mean things about me to our neighbors too. He says I'm a…" He tried his best to imitate Vernon's inflection. "… freak."

And that's coming from the uterus guy! What bollocks!

Harry didn't stop. "He says I'm lucky they took me in after my parents died. He says I don't deserve it."

Incidentally, Ms. Croxley felt like she would explode after hearing each sentence that began with "He says…" That unpleasant feeling wasn't done yet.

"He says I don't deserve a room, that Dudley gets two rooms because he's a good boy and I'm not. All he does is get presents and eat and sleep and-" Harry forgot to mention breathing, but that was just a nuisance that interrupted the other three things, after all. Now he stopped. His voice was all choked up. Humans have a bad tendency of being unable to speak in times when speech is needed most, because their big mammal brains get overwhelmed with emotions and can't make the parts move all right like they used to.

Ms. Croxley looked at the boy in front of her with a glint in her eye and told him why he was really here. This wasn't for punishment. This was for something else entirely. After-school lessons in a class no one had ever taken before. If it were to have a title, it would be Being An Orphan: How To Stay Alive, Sane, and Reasonably Content. You see, Martha Croxley had quickly devised a plan. She fancied herself some kind of mentor, a light for this little orphan child to look up to and learn from. "I'm going to teach you how to make all pain go away," she said. She was quite a self-deluded person. In reality, she was just a bitter, angry young woman who was determined to impart her frustrations onto this unsuspecting boy, who had nothing and no one else to look up to. So she poured information into his big, malleable mammal brain.

"Write this down!" she snapped, "These things are important!" Of course, they weren't so important. She told him simple things, things a seven year old could easily process and imprint upon his own mind. Orphans are hated by everyone. You can't trust anyone but yourself. Break the rules if you have to. Put yourself first and let others fall if they get in the way of that. Things like that. In other words, she was teaching him how to be an absolute bastard.

She was going to live out her hatred vicariously through him.

But Harry Potter doesn't hate so easily.

After a full two hours of this, she slid Harry into the seat of her car and drove him home to 4 Privet Drive. That's a bit inaccurate, actually, as she drove to a place a block away from Privet Drive, then let him out of the car. "Tell them I made you walk part of the way," she said, "they'll think I'm a right proper teacher for that, I'm sure!" Sure as the coming sunset, Harry arrived home to a glowering uncle.

"Boy! Dudley gave me that note from your teacher." He waved it at Harry's nose, his face pulsing and throbbing like a dog's when it sticks its head out the car window. "What is the meaning of this?"

Harry faltered for just a moment, but summoned up his courage and replied, "She said… she said a bad student like me needs detention for punishment, sir." He remembered what she said about walking home. "She even dropped me off too soon and made me walk part of the way. Said it was 'good for my character', sir, and that if you don't mind she'll keep me after school until I behave right."

That did the trick.

Angry people are predictable people. That's one of the things Harry had learned that day from his new and thoroughly fucked up teacher.

From then on, every day after school, Harry was drilled incessantly on the methods of selfishness. He was taught how to steal food from the market, how to keep his uncle from beating him, how to avoid his cousin. Take small things that can be placed in backpacks, wake up before dawn to do housework, and sit near teachers during recess respectively. Harry never had a chance. He hadn't just been physically starved, after all. Emotionally and mentally he was barren as a desert. Croxley didn't give a damn about either of those things. She was just a lonely and bitter woman who had also been crushed early in life by people who cared too much about uteruses. Where do they find these people, anyway?

Who can say! Who indeed!

Because of his unsated hunger, he devoured her words with no restraint. His notebook began filling rapidly, not with math or grammar or science, but with life. In his chicken scratch handwriting, he scribbled every single thing she said that he thought was even slightly important and drilled it into his brain when he was locked in the cupboard.

After two weeks of this, Harry met someone new yet again. Once school was over, Martha told him that she had to leave for a brief time. He had been instructed to sit still in Croxley's classroom and shut up. She departed and did not return for forty and five minutes, after which she returned with a little girl, much littler than Harry. She looked about five, with about the most scornful face you'd ever imagine seeing on such a young girl. She got that and the red in her brownish red hair from her mother. Her father, who neither she nor Martha knew in any capacity, had given her his immaculate hair (the brownish part included), smooth cheeks, and rampant oversexuality. She hadn't quite learned about that one. She's only five! Sheesh.

"Harry, this is my daughter. Bloody daycare closing early just because the head is in the hospital? A right wanker he is anyway, hope he bites the dust right this afternoon. Damn tosser. She has to stay here with me because the daycare is run by retards. Carrington, go sit in the corner! Read a book or summin'." She sidled over to the corner and slouched down in it in a way that didn't acknowledge she'd heard a thing. "Now Harry, let's talk about what to do when you make friends. What was the rule number one we discussed last week about friends?"

"Never trust a friend with everything about myself."

"That's right. Even your best friend can't know everything about you. They'll just turn it on you later. You have to always keep them going along with little bits about you, never the whole story."

Croxley had learned that one when she was eleven, from a particularly nasty little boy she'd met in the orphanage. He had wormed his way into her trust for months and she began to lean on him. She told him about her rare sickness. Kawasaki disease. His big mammal brain told him it would be funny to tell all the kids about her problem, so he did. Kawasaki's is, of course, an entirely non-transmissible genetic disease. Try telling a bunch of prepubescents that. It took her years to get over the stigma that resulted from being known as the sick girl. That's partly why Harry was learning to be an absolute bastard instead of getting beaten by one.

The day was a Monday. The daycare manager had gotten sick two days ago, on a Saturday. Harry had met Croxley on a Monday as well, two weeks prior. The daycare manager died on Friday. Martha Croxley died on Tuesday.

The divergence had given her a bit of a reprieve, but fate waits for no one. It had been her driving yet again. She hadn't slept enough Monday night and drifted off at the wheel of her big metal wheeled thing, right into a conifer. Whoops. Harry found out that morning, but he didn't cry. That was in the book, too.

Harry never gave it a name. Croxley had made him jot down everything she said into a grey-covered notebook, which he referred to in his head as "the book" or "his book". During their second week, Vernon had almost seen it and taken it away from him, so Harry made six extra copies and hid them in easy to find places. One under the floorboards of the cupboard, one buried at the playground near his house, another in a tree trunk outside of what used to be Croxley's classroom, and so on. When he got home that Tuesday, Dudley was quick to tell the Dursleys about how his teacher had died.

"Yeah, she got in a car crash! She fell asleep and drove into a tree. How dumb do you have to be to do that!"

Harry said nothing. He'd memorized the entire book, and from the book he knew that no matter how good it felt to give in to your anger in the moment, it wasn't worth it. Save revenge for later. Deep down, he wanted to push Dudley to the ground and beat him senseless, but that wouldn't do any good. Harry put spoiled cheese on his sandwich the next day instead. Dudley vomited for three whole days because of it, which gave Harry all the glee he needed. Vernon chose this moment to join Dudley in trampling on her memory.

"Bah, I knew it was too good to be true. At least keeping the boy after school made him a bit better mannered, unlike his freak parents. I don't know what she did, but I wish she'd told us so I could do it too." If he'd have known what it was, he would have said no such thing. He didn't want to do that at all. He was too busy worrying about womb origins and drills and such. "Boy! Since your teacher's dead, does that mean you come back on the bus with Dudley after school again?"

"No sir, the other teachers will keep me still, sometimes even longer."

That was a lie, of course. Harry was already getting better at that.

Harry Potter was not going back to Privet Drive when he was supposed to if he could help it, not with his world in front of him. He wasn't a complete prick just yet, though. Croxley only had two weeks to get to him. She hadn't broken him, but he was twisted out of place just enough to make a difference. All thanks to the efforts of an angry, embittered Squib.

Oh, did you not know?

Neither did she. It didn't really matter in the end.

Martha Croxley was not born with that title. No one knows what the hell she was born as, not even her parents. You see, her mother and father were magic-users, like Harry Potter would someday be. At a young age, they had conceived a child and waited with excitement for the day it would come to use magic. That day never came. Their child was perfectly normal in all sorts of ways: well-adjusted, properly mannered, even quite handsome. But he couldn't use magic, and that's all his parents cared about. Oh, they continued to raise him just fine. It was too late to simply let the child go. He went on to have a decent and normal life in the Muggle world that really shouldn't get too much attention.

Fortunately for the parents, the discovery of his magical impotence did not come too late for the mother. She was still fertile. They tried again.

December 1962

She sat in the hospital bed, tense with excitement and exhausted from her effort. The nurse of St. Mungo's Hospital skittered to and fro in the room, running magical tests on the newborn, checking on its health and current condition. Hospital things, you know. He stood apprehensively. His wife spoke to him in a tired half-whisper.

"Isn't she beautiful? Our baby. We still need a name for her."

"We'll figure that out later, sweetheart. Just relax for now."

The nurse turned to them and spoke. "I have to check on another patient. I'll see to you in just a moment, excuse me." She left the room in the manner that many of her type seem to, with a hurried shuffle like a penguin waddling very rapidly. Her penguin walk was the last thing on his mind, though. He was thinking about his trip to Knockturn Alley.

"We don't have anything like that here! Look, if you want sketchy products like that, try that mangy street vendor in the space between Borgin and Burke's and the Wailing Witch. He has ridiculous stuff like that sometimes. Don't say I didn't warn you!"

He didn't care. He'd heard rumors of a certain potion being sold in Knockturn Alley. A potion that told you whether or not your baby would be magical. He had to have it.

He made his way to Borgin and Burke's and glanced to the left of it. Sure enough, a raggedy, scruffy man sat on the ground with a case full of… something. Could it be? He had to ask.

"Hullo, rat. I heard you might have the Squibseer Potion. Don't waste my time, just tell me whether or not you've got some in that bloody case of yours."

The desolate man squinted up at him. "What's it to you? That's not a Ministry-approved potion, why would I have it?"

"Don't waste my fucking time! I had one Squib and it won't happen again! Now tell me, do you have any of the bloody potion or not?"

The man smiled. More of a grimace, really, with a mouth full of more gaps than teeth. "Yeah, I got it." He withdrew a vial full of a purple substance. "Ten galleons for absolute certainty." The father made a face. He didn't appreciate the pricing.

"Ten galleons? I already told you not to waste my fucking time. I'll give you five galleons and you'll give me the damn potion, whether you do so willingly or not."

Haggling isn't so hard, really.

So he had waited for the nurse to leave the room. His wife was still holding the baby. "Can I hold her? Just for a moment."

She relented and handed him the baby. He took the precious bundle of life in his hands delicately. His daughter, his magic-using daughter! He knew it had to be, but he was going to use the potion just in case. He turned his back to his wife so that the baby was out of eyesight and slipped the long, thin vial from behind his ear and poured it in the infant's mouth. The sign would soon be on her forehead, with an M for magic-user and an S for a Squib. In his heart-wrenching anxiety, he didn't even think to take the potion himself first.

All the damn thing did was put an S on the forehead of the drinker for five seconds. It was Knockturn Alley, what did he think was going to happen? The potion was a poorly made fake that would mark anyone who took it as an outcast, a Squib. The baby was no exception.

His heart sunk to his stomach when he saw it. A big S emblazoned on her forehead in bright red. 'It simply isn't possible. Not two. Not two in a row. Not again, not a-fucking-gain, no, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no—'

And on and on went his big mammal brain. He was driving himself insane with grief. He bought the potion as a self-relief mechanism, but in his heart he hadn't even considered a future in which his second child was a Squib. 'Another fucking Squib. That bitch. How could she give me two Squibs? My magical blood is pure. That god damn half-blood must have something to do with it. And the baby…'

"Honey, are you all right?"

He was shaking. She must have noticed. The nurse walked back in and began shuffling around the mother, examining her now. He walked numbly toward the door and closed it.

"Honey?"

"Obliviate."

He hit the nurse dead on. Her eyes glazed over.

"Honey! What the hell are you—"

"Obliviate."

Accurate again.

"You won't remember that I used the Memory Charm. You will remember that the baby died tragically just after childbirth." He choked up with frustration at this failure. Abject, absolute failure, again. "She displayed infantile accidental magic that went haywire and it killed her. You'll remember that I Disapparated in my grief with the baby's body and that I'll be back. You were okay with this, but upset that I left with little explanation."

He Disapparated into Muggle London in a haze, still not really sure of himself or what he was doing. He found a Muggle orphanage and left the baby there. No explanation, no note, no name. The woman who found her was named Martha Dearborn. She worked at the Daniel Croxley Memorial Orphanarium as a glorified babysitter, taking care of the restless children with no home, no parents, no one to love them.

October 1987

Her father is still out there. Her mother is not. That's his fault. The birth of a second Squib child drove him over the edge and he ended up poisoning her the day after the baby "died" for her failure to produce a proper heir. The doctors said it was grief from the loss of her child that stripped her of her will to live. That's a reasonable assumption to make. They didn't realize that the father had just become one of those damn uterus people, like Vernon and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Her womb wasn't fit for magical children, so it was better off not being around. He found another uterus for his purposes instead and fertilized several eggs inside it, all magical. He is currently leading a happy life. What a magnificent bastard. How is it that the asses of the world get such happy endings?

Who can say! Who indeed!