Prologue
Harry Potter is a child. In body.
In mind he resembles a grown up far too much. He flinches, suspicious of any moves like a war veteran with PTSD, keeps a running count of all the bits of food and money on him like a homeless person and under the heavy disguise of budding alpha that his magic puts up, he is a thoroughbred omega.
In mind, he is what many a person would call precocious.
He knows his body well, knows every scar that healed so well no one knows it was ever there, every bone that broke and set itself. He knows just how little he can stomach after being starved at the Dursleys over summer, knows just how much water to drink to straddle that line between needing too many bathroom breaks to piss off Petunia and not collapse of dehydration.
He knows that his first Heat will be on the 31st of July, beginning at the moment he turns seventeen.
And that he will spend it alone, without his True Alpha there. He's known it since the moment that his wand was twirled in the hands of a man, no, the boy who should have been in a diary. He's known it since the moment he plucked the basilisk fang off the ground and drove it into that little book that spilled ink and killed Tom Riddle.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Lord Voldemort.
Or, as Harry's mind had ever so kindly informed him the moment he had fallen into Tom's memories to look into his grey, grey eyes,
"Alpha"
There is one thing that the world knows. Alphas are possessive, Omegas are sweet and needy, Betas are everything in between.
This is the one thing Harry knows, he wants , knows little more than the want and the one thing he wants more than anything is to get something to keep.
When the Firebolt is taken from him to be stripped down and tested, he is angry, not just for the betrayal he sees in Hermione but for the fact that something of his was taken from him .
He wants, knows little more than the want and he thinks maybe the world has it right when they say that Omegas are needy.
The fire of the dragon burns hot near him. He flies through the sky on his broomstick, the mother dragon right behind him, all anger, flames and spikes and he understands.
Her hoard is being threatened, the most precious hoard of them all, her eggs, her children …
How can he not understand?
He aches for her pain, but it a phantom one. He will never have a hoard of his own, that empty ache in him that writhed would never be sated. His only hoard is a meaningless one, the one of his own life.
But worthless or not it is all that he has and so he will fly, fight, kill for it.
He fights. He fights again. Fights for that tiny slip of a child floating in the water, runs through the twisting, turning maze and fights for his life from Hagrid's little pets. And his fight just doesn't seem to end. Cedric was killed by the traitor Peter and Alpha was there, itching for another fight and Harry was repulsed.
This was not Alpha , this was just Voldemort. Nothing like the Tom of Harry's deepest, darkest dreams. A worthless empty vessel parading asAlpha.
The Not-Alpha touched his head, sent him reeling with pain, he fought him and failed to kill him and raged.
And as the portkey sent him spinning away from the graveyard, Cedric's too cold hand clutched in his overheated ones, a tugging feeling in the deep of his gut and mind had him wondering…
He thought of the golden dome that surrounded them as their wands met forces, his mother's adoring, knowing gaze, his father's protective one…
Was that his first courting gift?