Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply
A/N: I felt that this needed a little bit of work so the first nine chapters are reworked, I changed a bit in every chapter
If one were to look at Privet Drive, one would see an average suburban town with each house and lawn looking alike with only little brass numbers telling which house was which. Now let's take a look at number 4. We see a normal two story home with four bedrooms and two bathrooms and living there a husband, a wife, and a son. Anyone who visits would tell you how much they loved their son, but they would have never guessed that there was another boy living there for there were no pictures of this boy on the walls or mantel. Nor did this boy sleep in one of the bedrooms; he slept in the cupboard under the stairs.
This boy was at the tender age of five and doing chores that you couldn't get most kids to do at all. But at age three this boy was cooking and cleaning for his "family", and when he turned four they added the yard work to his already large list. Not only was he expected to do all the chores, if he didn't finish on time, he got a beating. If he dropped a plate or missed a spot when cleaning the floor, he got a fist planted into his gut. All in all, this conditioning made him learn quite quickly, even though it was never enough for his relatives.
On this evening the little boy was sitting in his cupboard, where his aunt put him because he broke one of the fine china dishes, waiting for his uncle to get home to give him his punishment. Looking around the small space, he quickly spotted the only thing he could call his:small blue baby blanket that had, what he had learned at his primary school, his name embroidered on it.
Upon his cupboard door being yanked open, he knew he was in serious trouble. He could smell the alcohol coming off his uncle in waves. Not half a second later he was roughly grabbed around the neck and yanked out and up to his uncle's eye level.
The purple faced Vernon then proceeded to yell at the boy, "You stupid ungrateful little freak." Vernon started shaking the boy violently with every word, "we took you in out of the goodness of our hearts, fed you our food, clothed you, and all we ask is for you to do a few little chores around the house and you can't even do them right!" With the end of the sentence the boy was thrown against the wall making a solid, albeit slightly muffled, thud.
Walking over to where his nephew slid to the floor, Vernon picked his prone form up and got a few punches in before dropping him back onto the floor for a few well placed kicks. When satisfied with that and sure that his nephew wouldn't be able to do or move too much, he grabbed the boy by one of his arms and dragged him into the kitchen.
When in the center of the kitchen Vernon let go of the boy's arm and walked over to the stove. After turning on one of the front burners, Vernon went and got a knife out of the butchers block. "Boy," he said, "am I ever going to teach you a lesson that you won't ever live to forget."
The poor little boy's eyes widened at the sight of the knife. He knew his relatives didn't like him much, in fact they made sure to often point out how much of a burden they thought him to be quite often, but he never thought that they wanted him dead. And as he focused on the knife the more he thought on what his uncle might do to him, the more that funny feeling started to build up. After checking the stove again, Vernon placed the knife down turned around, ceased his nephew, and dragged him over to the stove.
"Now you're going to pay for everything you and your freakish kind has ever done to my family." With that said, Vernon grabbed the right side of the boy's face in one of his meaty hands and pressed the left side onto the hot burner and held it there listening to the skin pop, sizzle, and hiss alongside his nephew's blood curdling wails of pain.
All too soon for Vernon the screams of the little boy grew into nothing but soft whimpers of agony. The strong scent of burning flesh hung in the air as Vernon pulled the now mutilated face of his nephew off the burner, leaving strips and chunks of dead and partly dead tissue stuck to it. The biggest of them all was the liquefied remains of his eye looking almost like a soft boiled egg. Smirking at this, Vernon picked up one of the thicker shards of china his wife had left on the counter as evidence of the freaks wrong doing and slammed it into the boys right eye destroying it but stopping short of piercing his brain.
At the moment all the poor boy knew was pain, searing, white hot, pain. He was scared, he couldn't see, he was losing a lot of blood, and the feeling was building up quicker now.
'I need to get away from here, somewhere safe, far, far away, someplace where Uncle Vernon can't find or get to me.' the boy started thinking over and over again in his head. As he was thinking this through, a green mist started to surround him. Upon seeing this Vernon became even more enraged picked up the knife and threw it at the boy embedding it into his shoulder just as the mist flashed bright. When the light cleared there was no sign of the boy.
Somewhere a bright green light flashed, and a small boy fell to the ground. Not that the person outside at the time could even see what was going on. "Who's there?" demanded the girl. A pain-filled moan was the only answer she received in reply. Creeping closer to where she thought the sound came from, she tried again, "Who's there?"
Listening carefully she heard the soft replay for what she could now tell was a boy. "My name is Harry. Please, I need help." And with that the boy succumbed to the dark but painless abyss known as unconsciousness.
