Chapter 1:

He woke up moments before his alarm would have awoken him and looked over to the readout: 7:00 AM it read. He had better hurry up and get his "family" their breakfast made, if he didn't, there would surely be a beating waiting in the wings. It didn't do to keep his cousin from his morning meal.

Today was a special day. His birthday. Not that it mattered, it hadn't been celebrated in a decade. He didn't particularly care, though, as it allowed him to stay out of the path of his cousin for another day.

Still, it's not every day you turn eleven. Happy birthday to me. He thought to himself as he rose from his bed. As he stood, he hit his head on the ceiling of his "room." Closet, actually. Ever since Harry Potter had arrived on the Dursley's doorstep he hadn't rated a real bedroom. No, the closet under the stairs had ever been his domain. That isn't to say there wasn't a perfectly good spare for him to use, however, storage for his cousin's disused toys and other accoutrements of entertainment was deemed a more appropriate use for the room.

He pulled the string that turned on the solitary, ancient and inconsistent incandescent bulb, taking care to gently remove the spider that had made its way from the ceiling of the cupboard. He had ever treated his friends with the utmost care and gentleness, for the spiders of his closet were his sole companions. His cousin had made sure of that.

His cousin, for lack of a better word, was a bully. His vast size - a result of his coddling at the hands of the head of the Dursley household - made him particularly well suited to that particular pastime. Not that he was well suited for anything else, his brain was sorely underdeveloped.

Casting his filial musings aside, he dressed in ratty hand-me-downs that he had received by way of his cousin outgrowing them several years prior. They were ill-fitting coming, as they were, from such a… large individual. He had never been particularly big, rather, classically athletic: tall, broad shouldered, and narrow-waisted, his athleticism a result of many confrontations with his cousin and his gang.

Properly attired, he exited his sanctuary in favor of the harsh reality of his life outside the cupboard under the stairs - his cousin and his eternally enabling parents. He went into the kitchen before anyone else had made their way down for their morning meal. He had been doing this ever since he was tall enough to see over the stovetop - no, before then, even. He had the burns and belt-marks to prove it. Now, though, as he had begun to hit his growth spurt, he was easily able to prepare a classic English breakfast with the quiet economy of much-practiced motion.

He had just plated the eggs, after already laying out steaks and hash, and was pouring orange juice when he heard someone tromping ungracefully down the stairs. Great, the lump's up and raring to go. He carefully schooled his features to belie the animosity he had for the boy who had ruined his whole life.

Before his day could preemptively be ruined by his bloated cousin, the Dursley matriarch, Petunia Dursley, a waifish, boney-faced woman with a perpetual grimace and bags under her eyes, made her way into the dining room. This effectively quelled all thought his cousin had of starting trouble so early. She began her daily contribution to the morning repast - making coffee. He had been made to do that as well once he began his duties as breakfast chef, but, unlike his skills with eggs and fried hash, he was never able to nail down the coffee making process, the brew always ended up boiling away, no matter how watchful he had been.

There were other odd occurrences that plagued the denizen of the cupboard under the stairs at number 4 Privet Drive. These episodes always corresponded to a situation in which he was under great stress. The first he could remember was the first time his cousin's gang had caught him. He managed to escape their clutches, but, when he ran away, he was cornered and was suddenly on the roof of a nearby school building. He had tried to explain it away, but it still earned him a beating. Not his first, nor his last.

His reverie was broken as a tall, spare man limped his way down the stairs. He had an odd, waddling gait that would have been more appropriate for a man twice his size. It made sense, of course, he himself used to be twice his current size. Stress, he told his coworkers. A home life that was falling down around his ears. They would never know how… literal he was being.

The man joined his family at the table and everyone began their meal. Breakfast, as always, was a subdued affair. Mealtimes invariable were. In fact, any time when the entire family gathered was markedly dispirited. It had always been like that.

The only member of the quartet spoke that morning was his cousin, and as usual, it was to complain about his portions. "How come I only get three eggs?" He shouted with his usual petulance.

"Because, darling, we only had ten eggs left this morning." She imploringly explained, trying to smile in a sweet and placating manner, and failing miserably. It came out as more of a wince. Not that hurt her case any, his cousin had stopped looking at her the moment his plea had been made.

Instead, his cousin's gaze fell on his plate, where half a steak and one of his eggs remained. "Make him give me the rest of his!" the boy, who was already rapidly approaching a previously unheard of body composition where he was as wide as he was tall, demanded peevishly.

Rather than put up a fight in which he stood no chance, he complied, shoving his remaining egg onto his cousin's plate.

"Steak, too!" his cousin ordered. At which point, the head of the Dursley house made his voice heard for the first time. "You heard him, b-boy! Give him the steak!" he said with a raised voice in a half-cocked effort to appear stern in the face of the portly boys ever-increasing demands. He again simply complied. The meal was almost over, and, so far, he had managed to avoid any major, painful confrontations. It was not to be, however.

As he got up to clear the table of the now empty dishes, the mail flap was heard snapping closed. He gingerly placed the tableware in the sink to soak while he went to the door to retrieve the day's mail. As per usual, there were bills, credit card offers, other useless detritus that would be discarded as soon as its nature was determined. Notable items included a postcard from Vernon's sister, Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Man, as well as a letter addressed to… him of all people. This letter was strange for a number of reasons, not least of which that it was addressed to him, as he had not, in recent memory, gotten any mail. Other oddities were its construction - a thick material quite unlike the machine made paper he was used to, as well as the emerald green ink. Also, the letter was rather unusually specific in its address, denoting the very "room" in which he lived.

He took all of this in as he returned to the kitchen to deliver the mail to Vernon to be sorted through while he cleaned the dishes. He would read this strange letter after he was done with his morning's chores. Or so he thought.

As soon as his cousin saw the envelope in his hands after he had handed the remainder to Vernon, he went berserk. "Give me that!" his cousin insisted.

"No, it's mine!" he shot back.

"Yours? Who'd be writing to you?" he inquired, scorn and incredulity dripping from his voice, as he made for the envelope.

The resident of the cupboard made a break for his abode, however, not even his agility and finely tuned reflexes allowed him to evade the incoming tackle from his whalish cousin. They thudded to the egregiously expensive wood flooring, painfully in his case. He had the wind knocked out of him from the force of the impact and the weight of his cousin on his chest as the corpulent child grabbed at the letter he clung to desperately.

Quickly, in an atypically tactical move, his cousin abandoned his attempts to grab the envelope directly, opting instead to incapacitate its holder. As was his wont, he chose to employ fisticuffs in this endeavor. As his cousin threw the first punch, he felt a… power welling up within him. It was familiar, in fact, it was the exact same feeling he had when he escaped his cousin's gang after school by teleporting onto the roof of a nearby building. Before he could connect the dots, however, the feeling abruptly left him. Its outlet was the boy currently sitting astride his chest.

The pulse of… force flung the obese child off his chest at an odd angle, causing him to fly into the juncture of the wall and thee ceiling, impacting with a resounding crack that left hairline fractures spider-webbing outwards from the point of contact. His cousin fell from there to the counter, and, thence, to the floor right next to him, landing both times with a dull thud. The impact having knocked him out, as he had yet to cry out in pain or make any other sort of noise.

He beat a hasty retreat to his cupboard. He didn't want to be there when his cousin awoke from his stupor. Not only would he suffer his cousin's wrath directly, but Vernon would be forced to punish him as well, to appease his cousin. Hopefully he'd be able to hide out in the cupboard until his cousin came to and was appeased by other means than a beating for him.

Now that he had escaped the clutches of his bully of a cousin, he took the time to more closely examine the envelope containing his letter. The envelope was sealed in… wax? Odd, he thought. Also strange was the forward: To Mr. Dudley Dursley, Cupboard-under-the-stairs, Number 4 Privet Drive, Surrey. Stranger still was the return address: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

What on Earth was a Hogwarts?