Warnings: There is some child abuse mentioned and described a little. I tried to tone it down. The slight violence between Amara and Dudley/Damien/Chad is as far as it's going to go for this fic. I hope it's not too bad. Rating liable to change if I get a few years (Hogwarts) into it, depends. It won't happen any time soon.
Author's Notes: I hope this turns out well, review please. Constructive criticism is ok (not recommended, but ok), please no flaming though. Thanks for reading.
Home, Sweet Home
Chapter One
To the ordinary person, everything about the Andrews family would seem perfectly normal. Roy Andrews and Amber Andrews seemed to be a happily married couple with two well behaved boys, Derek, sixteen, and Chad, fourteen, as well as one seemingly shy daughter, Amara. Amara was usually in no way shy, but she knew it was better not to get involved with other people for fear of Mr. Andrews's disapproval. Amara, eleven, was an adopted child, as few people ever knew unless Mr. and Mrs. Andrews said so, which they would on occasion when explaining her somewhat frightful glance at new strangers when around, explaining she was a somewhat troubled orphaned child whom they'd took in and loved as their own. Of course, whether that was actually true or not was a whole different story…
So, when Mr. and Mrs. Andrews appeared on the corner of Privet Drive in their blue rental car, no one assumed anything suspicious was going on – just an average American family moving to Britain to raise their children and Mr. Andrews coming to start his new job. As they exited the car, Amara looked at their new home on 5 Privet Drive. She knew that while everything looked different – it was all in actual, exactly the same. Nothing was going to change in her life. Or, so she thought. Amara held her book bag with all her possessions in one hand and with the other shut the door.
As she started walking up the sidewalk to the house, she felt a familiar shove in the back and she was falling, she shut her eyes as her face met concrete, trying to put her hands out to protect her from some injury in the fall. It didn't help much as she felt the pain above her right eye, and she lifted herself up a little and rubbed the place that would undoubtedly be bruised and blue in a few moments.
"Sorry, didn't see you there. Perhaps you should move faster," said Chad and smiled snidely, his dark blond hair falling over his eyes.
Amara frowned, as she often did, before taking on the blank almost hopeless look she reserved for being around the 'family'. She started to collect what little things she had that had been knocked out of her back pack and she moved to stand up, but then Derek came up the walk and knocked her the rest of the way down, spilling all her things out again, and making her bruise her knee. She looked up at him as he stopped and made an ungrateful, even hateful face at him as only she dared. He smirked in reply.
"Nope, I'm not sorry, I quite did that on purpose, and I'd wipe that look off your face if I were you before someone else does it for you," he said and turned around, continuing on toward the house. She narrowed her eyes at his back before picking up all her things again.
"Oh for heaven's sake. You're absolutely good for nothing! Why don't you stay out of everyone's way and just stay down there on the curb until we unpack," said Amber as she walked by toward the house.
"That's a good suggestion," said Roy, who then leaned down and roughly dragged her up by her collar and her stuff in the other, dragged her toward the curb of the sidewalk and dropped her roughly on the ground. "Stay there, and don't move a muscle, until all the unpacking is done or you'll sincerely regret it."
He then walked up to the house. She sat there looked depressed and bored staring at the cracks in the street, counting them, and then taking notice of the ants, watching as they went on their way, not aware that about a billion other things could kill them without even noticing. Helpless to the world around them.
Kind of like me, Amara thought. She watched one ant that had gotten caught under a tiny pebble. Soon other ants arrived to lift the pebble off the ant and right him on his way. Amara sighed, At least they have each other, I have no one.
As she was staring at the street, watching the ants intently, she noticed the sounds of cars going up and down the road, and she saw the truck as it came. Some movers followed after. One smiled and waved at her, but when she didn't move and only acknowledged him with a sad expression, he gave her an odd look, raised his eyebrows, and continued on his work as Roy came to join. Amber, who had come to supervise, was trying to tell everyone where she wanted things, when, in truth, they all ended up wherever Roy wished them to go.
Truthfully, Amara wasn't all too upset that she wasn't allowed to move. Having her stay there until everything was moved allowed her to avoid having to do all the horrible chores she had had to do the last time they moved somewhere. It wasn't fun to sit in one place, and she did feel awkward as some of the neighbors would stare occasionally, but at least she didn't have to worry about doing something she was going to absolutely dread.
After a few hours Amber and Roy finished taking things inside and putting everything in the correct room, Roy came over and gently kicked her back before saying harshly, "Come on, up."
She knew why she had not gotten kicked harder – there were too many people around. Indeed, it would be much more difficult for him to exert any extreme force on her outside here, where everyone could see all down the street what he was doing, compared to their old house that was a little ways out of the city and fairly private. She jumped up instantly and grabbed her stuff.
Once inside he began ranting at the movers' incompetence and the nosy neighbors at 7 Privet Drive – next door. This was not a good sign. No one was allowed to be ok or comfortable while Mr. Andrews was angry – no one, especially not Amara. Of course – everyone would have to hear him rant, then hear his drunken rave, and then listen as he broke things in a drunken madness, but not everyone got whatever was left. In fact – Amara had never seen him really go at anyone in the house other than by means of verbal abuse, and that usually only toward Amber (probably because, other than Amara, she was the only one that had to be around him when he was in such a state).
He dragged her by the arm toward a door, and downstairs toward the basement. Amara began to shiver and stumble in the dark trying to keep from falling down the stairs. Tripping and falling into Mr. Andrews was not something she ever wanted to do – especially when there was the risk of stairs. She doubted whether he would fall – even if he were drunk, for he was exceptionally strong and powerful for someone in a simple business profession, and knowledgeable about many methods of self defense and offense (especially offense), and he was an unlikely candidate to miss his balance unless extremely drunk and after releasing all his anger.
When they got to the bottom he put his face close to hers and pulled at her slightly curly brown hair. "Now. Don't you make a word, a sound, or even the slightest noise, or I'll come down here and you'll regret it. No question about it. None. No moving, don't even breathe loudly, got it?" he said menacingly. She nodded, her eyes wide. He slapped her.
"Don't give me that look. Now – I need some time to myself. I'll be upstairs, don't expect I won't be able to hear you though, got it?" he said.
She nodded. He pulled her toward a plain white door that was seemingly a closet and Amara wondered why a basement would need a closet. He opened the door, threw her in it, as she stumbled, falling to her knees, and trying not to make a sound. He slammed it behind her, almost hitting her feet, and she could hear the door lock.
She looked around at her new home. There was a light at the top with a chain – but it had obviously been broken, probably for some time. Even in the dark, however, it was obviously a dreary surrounding. The walls were cracked and it was even more cold in that closet – which was concrete like the rest of the basement – then it was outside the closet, a curious thing. There were tons of spider webs, and Amara silently was thankful she'd recently gotten over her crippling fear of spiders. It was incredibly small – though, Amara thought, large for a closet. There was some things growing in the cracks in the floor, walls, and ceilings, that Amara didn't even want to speculate about.
She noticed a cot on the floor. It was small, even for her, who was a bit tall for her age, and a bit on the skinny side. It was very close to the floor and there was no sort of mattress on it. She sighed and went to sit down. It tipped in one direction as Amara noticed one of the legs was shorter than the rest and she knew – if she could find sleep, that it would be like sleeping in a ship's gallows at sea. She put her stuff down and shivered as the cold of the bars went right through her clothes onto her skin. She took off the necklace that was carefully hidden under her shirt and put it in her bag.
The necklace seemed fairly plain. It was on a black string which Amara tried to keep nice. It was what appeared to be just a perfectly round crystal of some sort that was about an inch in diameter, fastened to the string by some gold bars. She kept it close to her, even slept with it when she felt it safe, unless she feared there was some way to get it broken, and then she would take it off, like she did now. It was given to her at birth, and Amara had been surprised Roy Andrews had explained this to her, and let her have the necklace at all.
On her fifth birthday he had actually given her something, and confused, she'd asked what it was. He told her to read the note he'd taped on the box. It was from the adoption agency, saying that her parents had wished she kept it, and was signed by someone, and had an address at the name of the adoption agency at the bottom.
At first she had thought it was a trick. A way to make her feel perhaps more lonely, something he could use to toy with her, to threaten her with. She had been suspicious that he had bought it himself, for even if it were real, why would he give it back to her? So she had called the woman who had signed it, one time when she was at a pay phone at a gas station, and they had confirmed that it was authentic.
She then laid down, resting her head on her bag, realizing some of the bars were broken and rigid, creating a painful sensation.
As she lay there she realized that she could hear nearly everything that was going on upstairs through a vent in the ceiling. She could hear as he ranted on and on, getting drunker as the night wore longer. She could hear as he got angrier, and angrier, and she knew it would be any second before she would hear his feet on the steps. Before the door would slam open…
Silence. She realized she couldn't hear Roy, or Amber, or anyone. Confused, she dared not move, but soon she lost her balance on the bed as it tilted sideways and scraped the floor. Her heart beat faster as the noise seemed to be like a bomb in the silence.
SLAM. The door was open. Her heart raced, she tried to stand, but tripped over the crooked bars and started to fall, only to be caught by Roy before being slung across the basement into the wall. Her head pounded as things started to happen all too quickly.
The morning would find her unconscious body upstairs.
