WARNING: The following story is very explicit, and features violent rape and murder. If you are not comfortable reading it, please do not continue.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I do not often write author's notes, because I find that they are often pointless and neglected by the readers. However, I would like to say this: I see the whole 'Harry gets raped by Vernon, is rescued by Remus/Dumbledore/Snape' story too many times. This is my interpretation. Reviews are much appreciated.

Underneath the Bridge

"In violence we forget who we are." ­– Mary McCarthy

Harry stared at the blank parchment before him, quill in hand, head resting lazily on his right fist. He had been in the same position for over half an hour, trying to think of a response to Ron's owl. However, he could not concentrate on anything but the irate yelling of his aunt and uncle.

Harry imagined Uncle Vernon's purpling face, spittle coming in great spats from his loose-lipped mouth. He had seen it many times before in the course of his fifteen years with the Dursleys, but imagining that unearthly anger directed at Aunt Petunia was extremely difficult. And imagining her screaming in retaliation was even harder. Yet, if his ears did not deceive him, it was happening just one floor below him.

The situation made Harry's stomach tighten and his limbs freeze. His eyes remained on the parchment before him while he descended into his thoughts. It was difficult to describe how Harry felt about his aunt and uncle's steady climb to separation. Though they were in no way his parents and had never treated him as a son, he still felt a sad disappointment at their fighting. Since Sirius's death, he noticed more and more the world in which he lived and breathed and suffocated, each at once, and to different degrees. Every time he heard of miscarriages, wars, suicides, orphans, illnesses, he became angry, never knowing exactly who or what to be angry at.

He jolted at the sound of the front door slamming, and again at the sound of wheels screeching against the concrete of the driveway. Vernon began stomping along the hallway, emitting an occasional shout of frustration. Harry wanted to leave, but feared that moving would some how end badly. He heard the clinking of bottles and urged himself to leave, get up, get out, get as far away as possible.

No. He sat, frozen in his seat, as still as model cavemen in museums. The only difference was in the rapid beating of his heart, the warm blood flooding his brain and the pounding in his ear drums.

Eventually, Harry silently moved his chair back from the desk and began gathering his things in a quick, hurried, and sloppy manner, focusing only on remaining unheard.

However, as is always likely to happen in such hurried, panicked situations, he failed miserably. As he dumped his school books into his trunk, it toppled off the dresser with a bang and many soft rumblings of his belongings, one after the other. Shortly afterwards, footsteps clomped along the stairs, the sound of his uncle's labored breathing becoming louder and louder. Harry quickly searched the room for his wand and upon not spotting it, something to protect himself with.

Harry grabbed the chair in his flimsy arms, raising it and moving to wedge the door closed, but his uncle pushed the door harshly open, stumbling into the room, face purple with rage and shiny with sweat. His lips curled into a snarl. He approached Harry with gleaming, malicious eyes and a growl in his throat.

"Boy! I've had it with you! You're the problem! You've always been the damn bloody problem! And Now," Vernon raged, the alcohol sweet and acrid on his breath "You've run Petunia off, my sweet, dear Petunia. Turned her against me! You're a foul, bastard of a boy, a freak!" Spittle flew from his lips as he steadily backed Harry into a corner between his bed and the wall.

Meanwhile, Harry hugged the chair firmly to himself, still scanning the room for anything and everything that could be used in his defense.

"But today is the day you finally learn a lesson!" yelled Vernon. He stopped and noticed the chair in Harry's arms and gripped the legs, jerking it from Harry's hands and throwing it across the room.

"You honestly think you could have stopped me with a chair?" he shouted. Harry felt each drop of saliva as it landed on his face, and saw great spots of it upon his glasses.

The next sequence of events happened too quickly for Harry to fully ready himself. His shirt and trousers were harshly taken off, and his glasses fell with a great clatter to the floor. Vernon grabbed his neck with a shaking hand and pushed him onto the floor until he was on all fours, starring at the rough hard wood planks. As he felt his boxers being pushed away from his buttocks, he noticed how hard both of them were breathing, and how his heart beat erratically against his chest.

The sound of a zipper, then pain, stretching, bleeding, coarse pain starting at his puckered anus and traveling up and down his spine with each harsh thrust, as his uncle rammed into him. He screamed loudly with no one to hear him but Vernon, and by this time Vernon could only focus on the sexual pleasure, and thought it an added bonus that it was causing such agony to his freak of a nephew.

Soon Harry felt his throat become hoarse, and he could no longer scream for the pain and the dizziness of it all. He could barely hold himself up against his uncle's vicious pummeling. However, he felt a steady strength gathering in his chest, and a determination, a focus in his mind. Fight back.

He bit his lip to keep from screaming, and felt the muscles in his arms tighten to the point of exhaustion. Suddenly though, the movements of his uncle stopped. But just as soon, a new, indescribable pain began for Harry. It seemed as if Vernon's repulsive cock was swelling, growing larger and longer, and Harry scurried as fast as he could to get away. Turning round he saw his uncle begin, if it was at all possible, to swell and enlarge in size, much in the same way as Aunt Marge had three years ago. Only this time, it happened much more rapidly and affected Vernon's entire body at once. He began to moan with the pain of it, his quickly inflating body hovering up towards the low ceiling.

Vernon continued to expand until he almost filled the small bedroom with his round girth, and now he was screaming himself dry at the agony. Harry watched as his remaining clothes ripped loudly from his ever expanding body, leaving him a naked, floating, balloon of air, fat, and tightly stretched skin floating grotesquely against the ceiling, his miniscule, beady eyes staring out at Harry from his huge purpled face.

With a last deafening scream and an impossibly loud sound, Vernon exploded, and Harry ducked his head down, shutting his eyes tightly against the sight. But he couldn't stop from feeling the spatters of warm blood against his skin, tinting his hair, and staining his eye lids. Lifting his head, he breathed heavily before opening his eyes to the sight before him. It looked as if someone had sprayed his room haphazardly with red paint. Everything lay still with an oozing layer of blood atop it, the walls, the bed spread, his desk, quill, and parchment. Each and every thing in Harry's room was stained with it.

Harry hadn't realized it until the tears began to mix with the blood on his face, but he was heaving great sobs into his elbow, shutting his eyes to the unbearably gruesome scene. Without any other thought than to leave, Harry pushed himself up with the support of the walls next to him, trying hard not to notice how slippery everything was to the touch. As an after thought, he began searching through the ruin for his wand and glasses, and upon finding them, left the room and descended quickly down the stairs, relieved once he reached fresh night air.

He was still shaking horribly, completely terrified by what he'd just done. He had killed another human being. He had murdered his uncle.

The ministry! he thought, eyes widening in shock. They'll be here any minute. They will take me away to Azkaban.

Harry thought frantically about where he could go, but solutions eluded him. At last he began to run recklessly through the grid-like streets. He was a sight, sprinting along in only boxers, the majority of his body covered and dripping in blood. But it was late, and no one was out to see him. He came upon the old park, with its broken swings and its rickety metal slide. Next to the park, there was a shallow creek, dried up now in late July, holding only caked, dry dirt. A bridge connected the park to the street running along the other side of the creek, and Harry ran and ducked underneath it, leaning against the curved wall and scooting deeper within the dark, conscious of each noise he heard.

A squeak sounded to his right and he jumped up, hitting his head painfully against the concrete overhead. It turned out only to be the sound of a disgruntled rat.

Harry listened carefully for any other strange sounds, until all that he heard was the chirping of crickets and his labored breathing. He noticed something in his hands then besides his wand. His blood smeared glasses. He performed a quick evanesco upon the blood before unfolding them and putting them on.

"Lumos" he whispered, and his wand emitted a bright light, revealing his surroundings. A few more rats scurried away from the light, but other than that Harry was completely alone. A few words of graffiti were written on the support walls, some of them vulgar, and some of them of delusional teenage love, things like 'Kate loves Josh,' or 'Fuck off, you wanker.'

"Nox." He was thrown into darkness once again, still looking around himself cautiously, extremely aware now of his entire environment. He began to notice how wet he felt, and how cold, even though he knew he was sweating with the humid heat of the summer night. Bringing his arms up to hold himself, he felt the blood all over his forearms, and against his chest, but couldn't bear to think of what he'd just done.

Once he calmed down, he fell into a state of numbness and apathy. He began thinking that he wouldn't care if he was caught now. He decided he didn't care about anything or anyone anymore.