Chapter One: Night Conversations

Though they sounded as if they were talking to him from a long distance away, Harry could hear their voices clearly. The first voice flowed softly through Harry's head, like a gentle river. The second was sharp but powerful, like a bullet ripping through his mind. "Harry? Harry? Can you hear us?" The two voices spoke in unison.

"Yes," Harry replied, startled. "Who, who are you?"

"Why Harry, has it been that long? Try hard. Don't you remember?"

Despite Harry's distrust of incorporeal voices, he found a soothing presence in these ones. It were as if he was finally speaking to a familiar friend, as if he had heard them before, but could not assign them faces. Harry scrunched his face in concentration, trying to remember. "Think Harry, about when you were young."

"Who comforted you?" asked the first voice with it's flowing words.

"Who protected you?" boomed the second.

"Who healed you?", the said together in unison once more, now more forcefully than before.

And finally, for the first time in eight years, Harry remembered.

Harry could see himself in his tiny claustrophobic cupboard under the stairs. He was curled up on his small dirty cot, having been thrown inside after his uncle was done giving him his most recent beating. The tangy metallic stench of blood surrounded him, as he clutched his broken arm closer to him with every whimper. Suddenly, the blackness around him began to swirl. Two shadows emerged from the darkness, gently coiling around him. "What have they done to you this time Harry," asked the figure with the flowing voice.

Harry was very familiar with these two shadows. They had come to check on him, to help him, many times before.

"Arm... broken" Harry stammered out through clenched teeth.

"Don't worry child," said the voice like flowing water, "Allow me." The shadows twisted to form an arm draped in darkness, whose hand waved above Harry's broken bones.

"Now Harry," the second voice began in a powerful whisper. "I told you last time what would happen if they did this again."

"No please, you can't. You can't let them know that you're helping me. Uncle Vernon... he'd kill me," frantically replied Harry.

"I said what I said Harry. I'm not taking no for an answer, not this time." Two new arms emerged from the shadow, each cloaked in an ethereal sleeve, followed by a hooded head. It turned toward the locked cupboard door. One hand was raised. Suddenly the door of the cupboard exploded outward, and the shadows spilled out, now in two human forms.

"VERNON" the shadows screamed ripping their way through the hallway toward the living room where Vernon Dursley sat with his wife. Vernon barely looked up in time to see the second shadow raise his hand once more, before he was tossed across the room into the far wall. Vernon groaned softly.

"Albus, do something!" Harry heard his aunt say. Albus, Harry thought to himself as he surveyed his memory. It couldn't have been... no. But yet Harry saw, as his eight year old self tumbled out of the cupboard out into the hall and slowly creeped toward the opening to the living room, Albus Dumbledore sitting opposite from Petunia, wand outstretched. Harry heard Dumbledore mutter something under his breath, and suddenly, with a scream, the two shadows were thrown from the house. Dumbledore turned his gaze toward where Harry was barely poking his head in to the room.

"Hello Harry, well this is quite a mess, isn't it?" Harry head his mentor speak clearly in his recollection. "We can't have you remembering this, can we? So sorry dear. Obliviate."

"Harry, wait for us. We have found a way, we can come back. All you need to do is step outside your house, tomorrow night. We will know." Harry snapped out of his memories, cognizant of the present once more.

"Wait," replied Harry, startled. "What are you going to do? Why are you coming? Where have you been?"

"Just wait for us Harry, just step outside."

Harry's eyes sprung open as he bolted up in bed.