Author's Note: I do not, and never will, own Harry Potter.
Welcome to the first installment of "Fifty Shades of Rescue," written for the Fifty Shades Of... Challenge. Fifty ways Harry ends up away from the Dursleys. This should be interesting.
General warning for child abuse and child neglect throughout the collection, and if I need more specific warnings, I'll put them up on the individual stories.
Harry had never believed in angels.
He'd wanted to. For a few years in primary school, the Dursleys had taken him with them to church. He didn't understand much of it (and felt horribly uncomfortable, standing in a pew in his shabby, too-big clothes that always smelled, no matter how much he washed them), but the awe had kept him quiet. The hymns were nice, and he thought the preacher looked kind.
When one of the church ladies had asked after Harry and why he was so skinny, Aunt Petunia had started leaving him at home again.
The minister had mentioned angels. The stained glass windows had shown off beautiful white wings, flaming swords, and stern but kind faces. The descriptions in the bible were a bit more esoteric, wheels and eyes and things that sounded fantastical and nightmarish all at the same time.
When Harry met Albus Dumbledore, his first year at Hogwarts, he thought for a moment that the man might be an angel.
He should have known better.
He pleaded with the man for nearly an hour at the end of the year, still bruised and burned from the fight with You Know Who's shade, but the man had been adamant.
"You must return to your aunt and uncle," the Headmaster had said, sucking on a sherbet lemon. "They will protect you."
From what? Harry had longed to scream at him. Certainly not from themselves!
But he'd said nothing, his throat burning with all that he held back. It would do no good.
The Dursleys never hit him much. They didn't need to. It was more than enough to know just how much he was unwanted.
Everyone in the wizarding world knew his name, but he'd thought his name was Boy until he was four.
Everyone in the wizarding world celebrated the Boy Who Lived and the demise of You Know Who, but all Harry wanted was to know what his parents looked like. What they acted like. James liked Quidditch and Lily was good at Potions and Charms, but that told him nothing. Just enough for it to hurt even more.
Ron Weasley had to pull bars off his window to rescue him that summer and Molly Weasley clucked over him and gave him extra sandwiches at every lunch and dinner, but he already knew that it would be futile.
Angels didn't exist.
At the end of the school year, battered and bloody once more, with the knowledge he'd come a hair's breadth from death vibrating in his veins and poisoning his lungs, he was surprised when Molly Weasley picked up Hedwig's cage and told him, in the kindest voice he'd ever heard, that he was coming with the Weasleys.
"But-the Headmaster-" he started to stammer, confused, when Molly clicked her tongue and shook her head.
"What the Headmaster doesn't know won't hurt him," Molly said. "It's already been arranged with the Dursleys." Their name sounded like a curse on her tongue, and Harry found himself grinning so hard, it hurt.
Harry had never believed in angels, but perhaps he just hadn't been looking in the right places.