Summary: We all know that Harry Potter grew up with the Dursleys in Private Drive number 7 but what would happen if shortly after Dumbeldore placed Harry with them their living arrangements changed. How would this effect Harry Potter and the decisions he later makes? Slash LV/HP

A Night of Sulphur

A night of sulphur
in the garden
with winding trees
ex'quisite breeze

but sulphur ling'ring
in the air

and in the blue heather
I heard
a girls voice
clear as the moon

follow me down
she sang, she cried
follow me down
down
down
to the riverside

so I left my bench
and jumped the trail
which
hov'ring on
that perfect
voice

made its way
to southern shores
the voice called on
away, anon

follow me down
it sang, it cried
follow me down
down
down
down to the riverside

and at that river
silent shore
all voices converge
in quiet waves
had it been I
who'd dreamt
that voice,
the last
of fading
childhood
days?

By Jason Bentsman

The night was cold, the sort of cold that you felt deep in your bones and gripped you at the throat making it hard to breath. It was actually quite a suitable atmosphere mused Dumbeldore in his mind.

After all it was quite ironic that on this cold and dark October night. One of the darkest wizard's of the century known as the Dark Lord Voldemort to his followers and as you know who to the average wizard was defeated.

And that by a mere babe of not yet two years old. But it's not yet the right time now. I can always think over the surprisingly poetic defeat of Voldemort after I am back at Hogwarts.

Yes, that's what I'll do but first I must handle this matter. And then as If aware of his thoughts the until then peacefully sleeping child stirred in his arms.

But it seemed that the disturbance was not very troubling to the child. He whimpered a little bit and after that he went right back to sleep.

It was not long before the wizard spotted the house. In the shimmering light of the moon it could be seen clearly and if Albus Dumbeldore was a superstitious person than he would have seen it for what it was.

A bad omen for the future but alas he wasn't so he thought nothing further of it as it came into the field of his sight.

Number 4, Privet Drive was the same as any other house in the street a small house with a white picket fence in front of the door.

And a small backyard behind the house all by all it was a typical house in the suburbs. And as he stood there he silently transfigured a pebble he saw lying around on the ground in a basket.

He set the basket down and put the sleeping babe inside. He pulled a slightly crumpled letter out of his robe pocket and laid it in the basket beside the sleeping child.

And as he mused silently to himself he knew that what he was condemning the child known as Harry Potter and now also by the title the boy who lived, to a hard life of pain and loneliness. But he thought to himself later you shall be happy to know that your suffering spared the lives of thousands of people. After all this shall make you prepared for what is to come as the savior of the wizarding world.

And with that last thought, Albus Dumbeldore apparated away to Hogwarts. Where he thought upon the poetic defeat of the dark lord and the small thought he spared on Harry Potter was that it was all for the greater good. And this would be the last thought that he spared on Harry Potter for 11 years.

A small child of perhaps five years old was lying crumbled in the corner of a room. If, you could call it a room.

The room or space as you could call it existed out off a second hand closet, an old lumpy mattress full off spiders and fly's and a wooden chair seated against the window. Not far from the chair laid a boy with bruises in all the colors of the rainbow.

He wasn't crying like you would assume a child of his age would do. No, he was just staring motionlessly at the ceiling as if it was the most interesting sight in the world. He would have probably continued this for hours if he hadn't heard a disturbance from outside his private space or as others called it the hall closet.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were going at it again. "Vernon what is the meaning of this" Screamed my aunt. Her already shrill voice going even shriller if that was possible.

Vernon answered like he did every time that she asked about the bills that still hadn't been paid yet. "Pet , everything is in order we will pay that another time"."There's absolutely no hurry" He said trying to sooth my aunt. "No hurry , you say these are bills from 8 months ago if we don't pay them this week than they will take the house" Said my aunt. "And what will we do then sleep on the streets" my aunt cried.

I don't know what I felt than but later I would look back on this day and would clearly be able to say that that was the day that I fist felt satisfaction. That day I was truly happy that they were suffering even if I didn't understand that back then. A few days later we had to leave the house behind.

The bank had accepted the house as payment for all the unpaid bills. We moved to another city in a very different neighborhood from where we lived before. I was relocated from the hall closet to the basement in the new house.

It would take me a month to get used to the police sirens and the gunshots that sometimes broke out in the night but it wasn't rare either to see someone shooting someone in the middle of the day. Nothing much changed for me. In the 3 year that I have been living there.

My aunt still beat me every day with a broom or kicked me until I laid bleeding in a corner. I still heard my uncle panting behind his computer every night watching naked children. And I knew from the way he had been looking at me lately that he wanted to test for himself what it felt like to do those things to me.

I may be only 8 years old but I had seen enough young girls disappear from their corner of the street were they usually picked off customers. To know what they did to them. I had heard enough older boys from school tell stories about what happened to little girls and boys who went away with older men.

Practically every week they found one or more of them lying dead in a ditch. And this I knew from experience, I had found a naked boy laying in a ditch not far from school less than two months ago. His eyes were wide open. Almost as if he was still looking at his attacker.I didn't dare call the police because Uncle Vernon would probably blame my freakishness for what happened. So I ran without looking back at the boy who was floating in the water with his eyes wide open as if trying to beseech me to come back.

I still couldn't get the images out of my head. I am not naïve anymore I haven't been for a long time. Dudley should be grateful for my freakish presence in this house.

After all, I will get all the "loving" attention from his Daddy in place of him.

To be continued