The Boy Who Died
By Opopanax
It was an average, normal, ordinary day in Surrey. The Dursleys of Number Four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. The only blot on their nice ordinary existence was their freakish nephew, a Harry Potter, the offspring of Petunia's sister, Lily. Harry was five years old when he was finally told his name was actually Harry, and not freak or boy. And they only told him that because he had to go to school. The Dursleys, even though they were perfectly normal, by their reckoning anyway, couldn't hide the fact that somebody else lived with them, since they made Harry do all the chores in and out of the house since the age of three.
So, one bright September morning, Harry and his cousin Dudley were bundled into Vernon Dursley's car to go to the Little Whinging primary school. Dudley was wearing a crisp uniform that made him look like a big in pants, while Harry was wearing a shapeless old pair of jeans and a stained and ripped t-shirt that used to belong to Dudley and was at least three sizes too big for him. He was wearing taped together glasses that hid his green eyes from view, and he hadn't been allowed to take a bath for three days. Freaks like him didn't deserve such things as showers, after all.
As the car pulled up to the front gates of the school, Vernon yanked Harry aside by one ear and hissed at him: "You behave yourself, boy, or you will be locked in that cupboard for a week, school or no school, do we understand each other?"
"Yessir," Harry muttered. He kept his eyes downcast, but if Vernon had seen them, they might've given him pause. A bright fire of hatred was burning in Harry's eyes, a thirst for vengeance warmed his heart and mind. He would make them pay for this treatment one day.
Harry knew this horrid life wasn't normal at all. He had watched surreptitiously the families on Privet Drive, showering their children with love and attention, praising them for things done well and nursing their childhood injuries. Harry himself was beaten, starved, worked like a slave, and kept in a cupboard under the stairs. One day, he vowed in his childish way, one day they will pay for this.
# # #
Albert Yaxley had fallen on hard times. Ever since the downfall of the Dark Lord five years ago, things had been hard. He had managed to escape conviction by liberal dispensation of galleons and a plead of the Imperius Curse, but still he was viewed with suspicion. He didn't have as many galleons to throw around as did someone like Lucius Malfoy, so he couldn't get in the good graces of the higher ups at the Ministry.
Yaxley eventually had given up trying to find a well-connected job and had since turned, much to his disgust, to the Muggle world to find employment. He was now a garbage man, which was a far cry from Junior Unspeakable.
As he piloted his truck through the town of Little Whinging, Surrey, Yaxley reminisced about the good old days of terror and mayhem. He couldn't believe that the Dark Lord had fallen to a single infant. Things had been going so well; they were within a hair's breadth of taking over the ministry, Millicent Bagnold was on the ropes. Then Harry Potter had thwarted the Dark Lord when Pettigrew had given them the secret of the Potter's location.
Yaxley didn't know why the Dark Lord went after the Potters. Like most, he just assumed that he did it because the family, James Potter's grandfather and then James Potter himself, had been a thorn in his side since his coming out in '72. Yaxley himself didn't enter the Death Eaters until '78, so he didn't know all the back story, but he heard from gossip among the ranks that the Dark Lord had gone after James Potter's grandparents because they had blocked a great many laws in the Wizengamot that would've benefited Purebloods everywhere. There were vague rumors of a prophecy, but Yaxley, and many other Death Eaters, didn't put much stock in such things. But none of them were brave or stupid enough to question the Dark Lord about it.
Either way, when Yaxley had read about the fall of the Dark Lord on November First 1981, and further, that Albus Dumbledore had named Harry Potter as his vanquisher, he had been stunned. He had immediately contacted Lucius Malfoy for advice. Lucius had told him to turn himself in-far better to throw yourself on the mercy of the DMLE than to be caught involuntarily. Yaxley had thought about doing so, but since Barty Crouch was in charge of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and since he was the one to license the aurors to start using Unforgivables against the Death Eaters, he hadn't. By the time he was caught, Crouch was no longer in charge of the DMLE and Yaxley had been able to plead the Imperius Curse.
What floored him more than anything was the picture of Harry Potter, as an infant, that appeared in the paper on November First. Named the Boy-Who-Lived, it told of how he had survived the Killing Curse with nothing more than a lightning shaped scar on his forehead. Who, Yaxley had thought incredulously, would be stupid enough to print that, knowing it would paint a big target on the boy's back? It was unbelievably stupid, he thought.
Now, five years later, Albert Yaxley, unable to find work in the Wizarding World due to the stigma of having been a suspected follower of the Dark Lord, was driving a garbage truck in Surrey. He was passing the primary school in the morning, heading back to the Public Works Department, when he caught a flash of a very familiar face.
Pulling to the side of the road about four yards beyond the school gate, Yaxley got out of the truck and pretended to fiddle with the tires on the right side. He watched a huge man grab a small boy by the ear and whisper something to him. He caught a flash of messy black hair and green eyes hidden behind glasses. It was Harry Potter, Yaxley was sure. He became even more certain when the boy armed some of the hair out of his eyes and he caught a flash of the lightning scar. Definitely the Boy-Who_lived, Yaxley thought, sneering to himself.
Since Yaxley was in the Muggle world, he carried a pistol with him. It was a Colt Anaaconda, enchanted with a Notice me Not charm, so the British police wouldn't ask any inconvenient questions about it. British laws were particularly tough on people who had firearms. He was overly paranoid and didn't want to get dragged in for using magic to defend himself, should he be mugged. All that was needed was one small infraction and the new head of DMLE, Amelia Bones, would have him carted off to Azkaban faster than you could say Imperius Curse.
So, he got casually back into the truck, pulled the big .45 out of the glove compartment, leaned out the window and shot little Harry Potter in the head, and drove away before anybody spotted him. It was, after all, pretty dumb to print the picture of a boy who was thought to have defeated the most dangerous dark lord in centuries in the paper, where anyone could read about it.
AN: I base this story on a couple of things. In chapter 2 of HP&PS it's mentioned that Harry meets a bunch of wierd characters on the street who seem to know him. And in, uh, chapter six I think it is, Tom the barman knows who he is right away. And everybody knows HP has a scar on his forehead.