A dark corridor loomed ahead. Off to the left and the right were doors, identical to each other. The creak of the floor boards only added to the dreary atmosphere of the dilapidated building.

Enter the left door, and one may find a dusty scene. A worn, formerly crimson, couch sat in the corner, the stuffing long flattened from decades of use. A now unrecognizable painting adorned the wall while a book shelf across the room held what looked more like ancient relics than books. Only one window allowed the moonlight to peak through, and a miniscule amount at that.

The room to the right was a bit more hospitable and actually had the appearance of someone's presence in the past few months. A shabby, but comfortable arm chair was placed in front of a fireplace and a stunning, albeit long out of tune, piano was set in the corner. Peeled wallpaper gave the impression of past grandeur. This building must have been an elegant house in a former life.

Back through the hallway, down the staircase, out the door, and several miles away, our hero was lying on his bed, dressed in an old gray sweatshirt with an ever increasing whole on the bottom of the left sleeve. His jet black hair was ruffled as always, and his glasses had a fresh piece of duct tape binding them together. His name was Harry Potter. Harry was one of the most well known figures in his own world, the world of wizards, making the fact that the only people who really knew him were either dead, or one of two insignificant soon-to-be 6th years at the Hogwarts school of Wizarding and witchcraft, quite ironic.

Harry was occupying himself by glaring up at his white ceiling, a common summer occurrence for him. His world had been progressively crashing around him since the ages ago when he first came to know the reason for all the oddities in his life, televisions breaking without cause or reason, and other seeming impossibilities. This moment of epiphany was when Hagrid, the intimidating but gentle grounds keeper at Hogwarts, tore down the door to a little shack that Harry's Uncle Vernon had cooped Harry, himself, Harry's Aunt Petunia, and Harry's cousin Dudley in and told Harry of the truth. Since then, Harry had had multiple attempts on his life, participated in a dangerous wizarding competition he hadn't even entered, and shouldn't have been allowed to be in, witnessed the death of a fellow student by the unforgivable curse, Avada Kedavra, had lost his fugitive godfather whom was the only true father figure in his life to servants of the very man who was trying to kill Harry himself, and had discovered a shocking prophecy on his own destiny. It was quite a bit for a boy the age of sixteen to handle.

After a few minutes of glaring, Harry was interrupted by a tapping noise on his window. He prodded his thick glasses back in front of his shockingly green eyes, and went over to investigate.

"Hedwig, there you are! Where've you been? I must have sent you out five hours ago," he spoke to the owl in a curious way, as people only speak to their animals when they are sure no one else is listening. With a sharp yank, he pulled open the window and let Hedwig in. "You know it only takes about an hour to fly to Hermione's house. Oh well, atleast you're here." He gently tugged off a scroll of parchment, presumably containing a note from Hermione.

Harry's eyes flew rapidly over the paper when it was unrolled, as he mumbled the contents of it. "Everything's well.Mom and Dad.Ron's devising some scheme or another.chicken for dinner.See you soon," It popped into Harry's mind as he was reading, he would be seeing her soon, and Ron too. With a glance at his calendar, his eyes lit up to see that in just a week, Ron would come pick him up for a trip to Diagon Alley and then to the Burrow where Hermione and him would be staying till they took their trip back to Hogwarts.

"BOY, GET DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!" Uncle Vernon's voice came rapidly to Harry's ears from the bottom of the stairs. He slammed shut his window, tossed down Hermione's note and sprinted from his room. Harry almost toppled directly on top of his uncle's rather large mass, but was able to narrowly avoid it by gripping the railing.

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," he gulped. What would it be this time? Dudley failed a subject and it was Harry's fault for being too noisy for poor little Dudleykins to study. That was a possibility, but maybe Harry had forgotten to clean Dudley's room or put away one of his own extremely oversized hand-me-downs.

Vernon's face was particularly red today, and several veins were bulging from his thick neck. Whatever Harry did, it must have been big. Perhaps for once Harry actually did something that was worthy of punishment.

"I think I've had about as much as I can take of you, boy. Dudley just came home with a bruised rump 'cause of you! It was all you and th- tha-," Vernon stumbled over his own fear of the word, but was able to speak it when he lowered his voice into a whisper, "that magic stuff of yours. I oughta toss you out for this I tell you."

Harry just stood there in a daze. "How could Uncle Vernon be such a twit?" he thought to himself. It was true that Harry had knocked Dudley down on his bottom rather hard, but it wasn't his fault. Dudley and his thug gang had cornered him and Harry's anger had just exploded into a burst of magic, knocking over Dudley and his whole crew. Of course Harry fled the scene as fast as he could, but it must have taken Dudley a bit longer, maybe he had a nicotine craving and decided to stop and have a smoke.

"You've been ruining this house. Ever since you got that letter its been chaos around here. Well you're going to stop all this nonsense, whether you like it or not," and with that he tugged on Harry's overgrown sweatshirt and threw him down on the ground .

"Argh!" Harry called as his bony body slammed the ground. He felt the need to yell more, but he couldn't bear to give his uncle the pleasure of his pain, so he kept it all inside.

Vernon dropped his tremendous foot onto Harry's back, pinning Harry down to the floor. There'd be a large bruise on Harry's back in the morning. "Feel that boy? Every bad apple needs a beating, straightens them right out. Of course, you might need quite a few to fix you."

This continued on for an hour or so. After it was all over Harry limped up to his messy little room upstairs and collapsed onto his bed, letting out one loud moan of pain as a spring from his ancient box spring mattress struck his back. "Just one more week," he told himself, "one more week and I can leave this God forsaken place until next year. Just one more." and with that, he drifted off to sleep, or possibly passed out from the pain, whichever it was, he awakened the next morning and the week continued on in the same fashion.

Finally, it was the day Ron was to come for him. He hid his remaining cuts, scrapes and bruises with a long-sleeved shirt and packed up his belongs to ready himself for his release from the torture that was his home.

A/N: Hi! Well this chapter was a bit shorter than I was planning it to be, but that's alright because I got everything done that I wanted to in it. I know that I've been neglecting my other stories, but I just haven't been in the mood to write recently until tonight (I did this all in one sitting, cause I was uber bored) For all of you Wilted Flower fans (Yes all two of you) I'm gonna update it soon.So anyways I hope you like this new fiction, I have only like one more event in the plot planned out so I'll have to get my creative juices flowing. Pleaseeeeeeee review