Author's Note: I do not and never will own Harry Potter.
I saw a prompt somewhere about Harry going to a camp for abused children and finding Snape working there. So I took that and ran with it. Very AU.
(Set after first year.)
The bars on the windows hadn't been the most humiliating part.
The cans of lukewarm soup pushed through the cat flap in the door hadn't been, either.
Hedwig was at Ron's, and Harry had been so relieved that he'd thought to do that he'd nearly wet himself, but that hadn't been too terrible, either.
No, the worst was a Muggle neighbour noticing that he never came out of the house anymore.
The most humiliating part of Harry's summer was the police coming through the door, forcing open the rows of locks, to see Harry Potter curled up in the center of his grimy mattress, clad only in his shorts, with purpling bruises covering most of his torso and his shoulders from his uncle and cousin's attentions. His eye was puffed shut and he peered at the intruders through the other one.
The worst bit was the look of pity on the lead officer's face.
He'd been taken out of the Dursleys' custody, of course. Dudley had been, too, for all his complaining, but at least he was sent to live with Aunt Marge. Harry was supposed to go to an orphanage, but instead ended up with a foster family, the sister or cousin or someone related to the police officer who'd seen him first. The relative's name was Patricia Brumsley and she had the biggest, most plastic smile on her face that Harry had ever seen.
He had his school trunk (thank Merlin), but no way to contact anybody from school. Would anybody notice when he didn't show up on September first? He couldn't see how he could explain to a Muggle foster family that he was actually magic and had to go back to a wizarding boarding school called Hogwarts. He'd be locked up in a loony bin instead, and even the Dursleys' less-than-tender mercies sounded better.
Having nothing better to do, Harry spent almost an hour searching the Brumsleys' house without looking like he was, hoping for some sign that perhaps they weren't as Muggle as they appeared (although if that were the case, surely someone would have reacted to him, Patricia had seen the blasted lightning scar on his forehead, and hadn't said a word other than to cluck over its reddened appearance). He only stopped when John Brumsley, Patricia's husband, asked him what he was doing, and that was because for a moment, he'd forgotten he wasn't with Uncle Vernon and had dropped into a protective crouch on pure instinct.
Harry spent only a week in the Brumsleys' care before they decided that they knew a place even more well suited for his needs.
Summer camp.