Escapism

Abused!Harry

A crossover different from the others, an A. U. in this scenario:

What if the Dursley's where successful in running away from the Hogwart's letters? What if the Dursley's had also successfully "Beaten the nonsense out" of him?

This.

Disclaimer: I do not own YuGiOh or Harry Potter [Yaoi! etc.]

There have been days when The Boy was so weak he could not muster the energy to move those knobbly knees and start walking to do his chores. One day the lucky streak of the Dursley's began to slowly dwindle when questions started to puncture their lives the more they dared let Harry Potter out. They asked why he was so pale. Why so frail? Why so bony? Why so quiet?

So they stopped letting him out and saying they would send him to St Brutus's School for Incurably Criminal Boys because he was not a good boy. He was a bad boy who rejected his food out of rebellion, a bad boy who took his mother's pale complexion and a bad boy who didn't like other people so he never spoke. That's what the Dursleys told the world so that is what the world believed and the outside probes which represented a possible saviour were torn out of Harry's life.

But like every child, but none more-so then a desperate one, he dreamed. He dreamed of what his dad looked like and that the Dursleys lied about his drunkeness and that he'd burst in and save him, and then tear of his shirt to reveal he's Superman. It never happened, sometimes he dreamed of his mother tip-toeing in while the Dursleys slept and stealing him away into the night and telling him it'd be over. His days of chores and backbreaking labor would end, he wouldn't sleep in the cupboard, he wouldn't be starved within an inch of his life or beaten anymore and he would never have to lie again. He hated lying, he had to do it daily to his teachers at Rossinger's school. They told all the neighbors that Harry no longer lived with them and attended St. Brutus's at age fifteen because Ms Figg was asking questions. They didn't let him even attend Stonewall since it was too close and people who knew them could spot him, so they sent him to Rossingers and made him walk in the shadows, out of sight, early morning without food, miles and miles to another school.

The kids there were all into some latest trend and whilst Harry was narrowly aware of them he never had the money or popularity clout to take part, the current popular game was something to do with trading cards and his heart soared when he saw other kids play it. They knew he was fairly smart too even if for some reason he insisted on hiding it and they knew he was poor, so whilst ripping on him for such was the norm it bordered friendly as they let him be the "Mathman" in their trading card duels, and keep track of their lifepoints.

It was from then on when kids were playing with their booster-packs that Harry became absorbed in something absolutely forbidden -magic.

Unicorns, mermaids, dragons, magicians and sorcerers were all included in the game and for once in his short life Harry Potter felt connected to some part of being a child.

He could never let the Dursleys know he knew of the game or that he liked it, but he loved Duel Monsters, he wished so hard he had a deck to play with the other boys but was reduced to being the "Mathman," and put his brains to some use. In between chores that made his beaten bones ache, Harry would pray for a window of opportunity to arrive, and it did too.

Petunia would leave for a gossip three doors down with a neighbour and instruct Harry to do the dishes but keep his head so low nobody would see him in the window, Dudley was almost always out vandalizing at around this time and Vernon wouldn't be back for an hour. So Harry would discreetly change the channel on television to one the kids all watched and finally got to indulge in the TV show that birthed the card-game he adored.

He began to gain a childish glee from watching characters duel each other and the subplots of mighty Pharaohs, Egypt and mysterious "magic" the forbidden M.

It was like, for all his beatings, starvation and labour, this was one small victory so long as he changed the channel just as the credits rolled because Vernon would burst in and he'd have to pretend to go back to doing the dishes which he would finish early on occasion to watch the show.

There are moments where we all wish ourselves to a fantasy world in our minds, but it's ever so different for a special boy like Harry James Potter who possessed "The Forbidden M" without ever knowing it, the magic which was so powerful, it could form a fantasy he could one day touch within his fingers.

One day a kid at Rossinger's handed him a powerful card, The Magician of Black Chaos, saying he had three and liked Harry more then "that arsehole Ricky," who also occasionally did the lifepoint counting. The day Dudley discovered it he was beaten within an inch of his life, and never had the desperate boy wished so hard to be in another world as drops of blood spilled onto the only duelling card he owned.

That day, he woke up in a place which was most definitely not the cupboard under the stairs, and saw a face that he recognized. A turbaned man which was so frighteningly real that he almost passed out again, pinched himself several times and promptly fell unconscious. This world he had wanted to become real was being dangled in his face in what had to have been a dream, one that he would wake up from in the spider-ridden cupboard.

Surely enough, he was awoken, but by the smooth baritone of a voice that did not belong to Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia.

"What are you doing here, child?"

The boy almost cried with joy, this was no dream, the world was his oyster, for every plea he had ever done in desperation to escape and restore his faith in God, God finally answered back.