Disclaimer:
I do not own Harry Potter, Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling.
I do not own One Piece, One Piece is owned by Eiichiro Oda.
~~~

It was the worst day. In a while, anyways. The usual had occurred, but that alone was not sufficient to make it such a bad day. No, what made this the worst day in a while was the combination of the usual, amplified, together with some new factors.

The beginning of the day wasn't too bad. There was the shouting, the required chores, the small portion of food, but that could all be tolerated. But it got worse. Harry thought back to when it began…

"Boy!"

Harry was quick to move, for he knew that if he kept his uncle waiting for too long, there would be punishment. As much as it was true that his uncle took every opportunity to make matters hard for Harry, Harry knew from experience that minimizing the opportunities his uncle had to make matters worse was a good thing to do. He would still end up punished for one thing or another, but at least he could minimize that punishment. Immediately, he was outside his cupboard, dashing downstairs. Paramount among his thoughts was a simple thing: *What now?* His uncle was waiting for him. "Where were you? I called you a minute ago!" This was decidedly not true, Harry's sense of time proclaimed, it seemed more like a few seconds to him. But as tempted as Harry was to snark at his uncle because of this, he knew that it would simply make matters worse. Instead, he gave the submissive answer, one he judged least likely to cause offense: "Sorry, sir. I came as soon as I could."

Uncle Vernon grunted. "Well enough of that now, you've got a job to do, boy!" This was somewhat surprising to Harry. Under normal circumstances, his uncle would have done a bit more forceful talking before getting to what he wanted him to do.

Thus, the "job" must be more important, Harry reasoned. "What is it, sir?"

"From what I've heard, my son has been accepted into Smeltings Academy!"

Harry gave the expected answer, "Wonderful, sir."

Uncle Vernon hoped to get some excuse to work Harry even harder. When he didn't get such an excuse, he frowned slightly, and then decided to work Harry harder anyway. "Later today, he's going to arrive back here, and I'm throwing a party for him! But first the house needs to be spick and span! No stains, no grime, no messiness, no foulness! Get to it, boy!"

Again giving his uncle no excuse for punishment, Harry stepped forth to do the task. He held no gusto or enthusiasm for it, but he knew that didn't matter to Uncle Vernon, as long as the task got done. Sweep the floors, mop them. Sweep, mop. Tidy objects. Tidy. Wipe counters. Wipe. Scrub tiles, scrub. That was only a small portion of the work that Harry needed to do, but he got it done. Mostly.

The key word: Mostly. It was quite possible that he could have finished the tasks assigned to him, but before Dudley and Aunt Petunia got home? If the traffic was a little bit worse, potentially. But the traffic was fine, and so was the weather. The stop at the ice cream parlor, which could have taken a lot more time, was accelerated in pace as a result of Dudley wanting to show off his new garb at home.

So it happened that Dudley and Aunt Petunia arrived at 4 Privet Drive before Harry could finish his cleaning job. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were all livid, though for different reasons.

Uncle Vernon: "BOY! Didn't I tell you to make this house spick and span?"

"Yes, sir."

"But look at this!" Uncle Vernon indicated a stain in the carpet that Harry had not yet cleaned. "This is not spick and span, is it?"

"No sir. But-"

"NO EXCUSES! I told you I wanted this house clean! CLEAN! Is this clean? NO! It is not!"

Aunt Petunia: "Didn't your uncle tell you to make this house clean?"

"Yes ma'am."

"But this isn't clean! How are we supposed to throw a party for my little Dudleykins in this house now?"

Dudley: "Wait, does that mean I don't get my party?"

"Of course you do, dear. It's just that we might have to… wait… courtesy of your stepbrother…"

Dudley's vocalization was immediate. "WAIT? For my party? HARRRRRRY!"

In the end, an "arrangement" was reached. Harry would clean up the little problems he had left to handle. While Dudley whacked him repeatedly with the annoying stick that he had received from the Academy. How any academy was stupid enough to give its students thick sticks that they were allowed to hit each other with Harry had no idea.

A few painful minutes later, Harry was sent to his cupboard. To quote Uncle Vernon: "There will be no supper for you today, boy! And to think I was thinking of letting you have a little of the ice cream!" This was, of course, a blatant falsehood. Harry knew that his uncle would never let him have desert in Dudley's presence, for such a thing would produce jealousy on Dudley's part.

No food. That could be tolerated. Being locked in the cupboard. That could be tolerated. Bruises. They could also be tolerated. Repeated verbal abuse. Could also be tolerated. But all of them together? Perhaps Harry could have tolerated all of them together. Only perhaps. But then a loud thump emanated from the stairs above him, and sawdust coated him. And he needed to use the bathroom. Although hypothetically Harry could use the small metal implement meant for picking locks he kept under his cot for situations like this… he knew that to exit the cupboard now would invoke his family's wrath. So he had to wait.

He managed to wait until he heard the party start. Then he couldn't wait any longer. He inserted the implement into the lock, and gave a few twists while gripping the knob in a certain way. The lock clicked. Harry waited in silence for a moment. When he was sure that there was nobody waiting to intercept him, he slowly opened the door. The slight creak made his heart skip a beat. Slowly and surely, Harry let the door open. Then he crept out, soon entering the bathroom.

His life continued without incident while he was within the bathroom. When he came out, the main catalysts for his day's main event was present. Dudley. And Vernon. Both with deeply critical eyes.

The tirade began: "YOU! What do you think you're doing?" Harry spoke, "Using the bathroom. I needed-" His uncle interrupted him, "No, you didn't. Congratulations, boy, you made us come here! In the middle of Dudley's party!"

Several whacks with the stick of pain, several more shouts that were far more disruptive to the party than Uncle Vernon's temporarily leaving it, and a promise that he would not get out of the cupboard again tonight, nor again till Uncle Vernon needed Harry for a chore, after all that, Harry found himself within the cupboard once again. And now, it was dark. "You've lost your light privileges, boy! I don't know why I even let you have light in there to begin with! As soon as you're out of there, I'm uninstalling the light bulb in there- you don't need that light when you can't even do as you're told!" And dusty-more than usual, as Dudley had jumped upon the stairs again. More sawdust fell. It was dusty, dark, miserable, an absolute pain. Harry wanted nothing more than to be out of the cupboard, away in a better place.

Since the first few "incidents", Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia aggressively punished Harry for any "funny business", known to most wizards as accidental magic. The end result was that his magical core ended up constricted upon itself. No magic flowed out from it, even with the most potent emotions Harry could feel. How did this happen? A human's body and mind are very adaptable. The body and mind of homo maleficus, variant species of homo sapiens, were no exception. Harry's body and mind grew to associate "funny business" with undesirable happenings. Hence, it restrained the power Harry's magical core contained in order to prevent said undesirable happenings.

Of course, if no magic exited the core, that would imply that the amount of magic within the core was increasing, for the core created magical energy, but did not destroy it. So at this time, Harry had a preposterous amount of arcane power stored within his constricted core.

One way of explaining how his core unconstricted was that Harry's emotions popped. The day's events were simply too much for him to keep himself composed. Many times the amount of emotion necessary for accidental magic flowed through him. This was enough to unconstrict his core. This released the huge buildup of magic energy that had been stored within. And all that power had to go somewhere. As previously stated, Harry had enough emotions for an act of accidental magic.

The end result didn't leave much behind. The following morning, when Vernon opened the cupboard door, expecting to find a young boy he could use to handle his son's labor, he instead found empty air. The cot and the sparse blankets there remained. But no matter how much he searched, he could not find the boy he expected to find.

As much as Harry's family knew that chores in the house would likely go undone until they could find a replacement for Harry's labor, they were still overjoyed to be free of the freak.

The next day, a letter arrived. And Aunt Petunia became afraid.

~~~
Author's Notes:
And that's a wrap on the first chapter of my first fanfic! This will likely be subject to revision later as typos, awkward phrasings, bad grammar, plot holes, whatnot are detected. Reviews, especially ones with criticism(the constructive kind), will be appreciated.