Harry gazed upon a certain spot on the white plaster of Number Four Privet Drive. His green eyes were lifeless, apathetic, and dead as his uncle grunted with sick pleasure as blow after blow fell upon the five year old's small and tender body.

He never noticed the shadows darken in a certain corner of the second bedroom. He never noticed...something, writhing in those shadows as his uncle grabbed his abused and bloody body and tossed into the cupboard under the stairs, the darkness within becoming a comfort to the numb mind of the beaten child.

As Harry accepted Morpheus' sweet embrace, he never saw a pair of brilliant crimson eyes gaze upon him from the shadows of his cupboard…

A quiet hush fell upon Number Four Privet Drive as something...happened. The sky darkened from its original sunny disposition into a dead, dull grey. The plants seemed to wilt into themselves. The grass seemed browner.

Harry groaned as he woke up from his slumber, feeling a tad relieved as he could not feel the usual aches and pains from the beatings. Even with his emotions dulled, his senses broken by constant assault, Harry could still feel the constant ache of abuse within his broken bones as his magic desperately tried to keep him alive.

Settling into a comfortable position, Harry gazed into the darkness and found comfort in it. After all, the pitch-black color of nothingness never harmed him. If anything, it gave him sweet reprieve from the despondence of his life. It held him tight in its embraced back when he would shed tears….after the tenth or eleventh beating, Harry did not shed tears anymore. He did not whimper or scream. He did not do anything, save for festering his rage, his hatred, and a depraved, savage darkness deep within the depths of his mind. Save for mechanically doing his chores, Harry could sit still as a statue for the entire day. If he were to act as if he were nonexistent, the greater the chances of the Dursleys ignoring him.

It was here, that we saw the first flickers of emotion in Harry's young face. Disgust. He felt disgust for humans. Most especially of the Dursleys. He did not hate them for all of the horrors they had committed to him. No, if anything, he merely treated them as one might bugs: with indifference and disgust. In his eyes, man were insects; parasites. No, Harry did not hate the Dursleys, he hated the fact they could do so to him. He despised him on a near-nihilitive level for his powerlessness.

As he ruminated in thoughts beyond his years, Harry saw a tendril of abyssal-like darkness grip his leg. Despite the abnormality and horror of this occurrence, all he felt was fascination as he followed it back to the other side of his cupboard, whose shadows seemed to have become void-like in their darkness. Looking at it, if he could, Harry would've felt a shudder run down his spine as he saw a writhing mass of shadowy, pitch-black matter. At its center, a pair of brilliant crimson eyes could be seen, displayed above a Glasgow grin that was all razor-sharp fangs.

If Harry were a normal child, he would've wet himself in fear. As it was, he is anything but, and so….he smiled at the Darkness, and it smiled back.

Time passed, as it does, and in the blink of an eye, three years had passed since Harry met the Darkness. They now shared a bond incomprehensible by the minds of mortal men and women. The Darkness bonded itself with its new host, feeling an ominous, almost predatory protectiveness over its new master. It could feel that something was different with this new master. Harry could tap even further into its awesome and nigh-omnipotent power than any of its previous hosts. In addition, it quite liked Harry's newfound love of classical literature, and alongside it, his master's rather advanced vocabulary.

We now find ourselves back in the cupboard, with Harry sitting in one corner of the cupboard, and the Darkness manifesting itself in the other in the form of a short, pitch-black humanoid figure.

"Master…" The voice of the Darkness broke Harry out of his thoughts. It resonated with an unnaturally deep, bass-like tone and held a discomforting, warbling quality to it. "Master….why do you still allow this mortals to beat you? To abuse you when you can easily show them horrors beyond their imagination?"

Harry listened attentively with a blank face before, slowly, a disturbing smile began to fill up his porcelain pale face. "My sweet, sweet Darkness...I am merely fattening up our first prey. After all, the insects have grown more and more lax in their foolishness. They think me a broken boy, a slave to be used as they so please...the sheer despair upon their faces when I show them what I am capable of...what I can do to them. It will be...wonderful."

"Yes, master...and I shall aid you in this endeavor, master…" The Darkness gave a monstrous caricature of a smile, all razor-sharp fangs and teeth. "My power is yours to command, to use as you wish, master…"

"My sweet, sweet Darkness…" Harry murmured before smiling back at the Darkness.

Dudley held his breath as he hid within the closet. Dry blood ran down the left side of his profusely sweating face. He had a festering bruise on top of his forehead. None of that mattered though. Oh no, no it didn't. The freak, as his parents called him, he changed. Became a monster. Like those demons that the nice nuns who would give him cookies at the church would speak about.

He tried to hold his upset stomach and stall his breathing at the same time as the chilling screams of his parents stopped. As his young age, he could not comprehend the true meaning of death, but he could understand pain. And as the neighborhood bully, he understand pain very well.

In his panic, Dudley never noticed the tendrils of darkness that slipped into the closet. He never saw the Glasgow grin full of razor-sharp fangs and stretched so impossible large that it couldn't be real.

A sound. A step.

The closet door opened, and all Dudley saw was a pair of hauntingly glowing green eyes before his world erupted into unimaginable, inhuman pain...

...overnight, Number Four Privet Drive became hell on earth.

Harry - no, Hadrian - watched the burning house on Number Four Privet Drive dispassionately, feeling nothing but a hollow, perverse sense of victory. The Darkness wrapped itself protectively around him on his neck, a small dragon created from the shadowy, pitch-black matter that filled the otherworldly dimension it had dominion over.

"Master...now what?" The Darkness asked with a somehow innocent quality to its deep, inhuman voice. Regardless of its form, its voice would never change. Always remaining a deep, inhuman, telepathic bellow consumed with a garbled, resonating tone..

"You said I am a wizard, no?" Harry smiled his smile, his porcelain pale face lighting up for a moment with the unbound curiosity of a child. "Well, I remember you telling me about Knockturn Alley and all of its interesting knicknacks...might as well check that out!"

And with a clap, a twirl, and a Glasgow grin, they were off amidst the sounds of sirens as police and firemen rushed to save whatever they could of Number Four Privet Drive and her residents. At least, whatever remained of the Dursleys' bodies. After all...their pitch-black, vile souls were safely sitting at the bottom of Harry's stomach.