A/N: Yes, this has an OC. No, she will not be interfering with the plot past the first couple of chapters. First and foremost, this is a Harry Potter story, but there's not much I can do if I can't make up anything on my own. So don't leave right away just because most OCs are Mary Sues. She isn't one.

Did you know that the disclaimers aren't real? That by posting on this site, I'm automatically disclaiming and you can't sue me, even if you try? So this is the space in which I'd like to say,

I own Harry Potter and I AM Doctor Suess. How do you feel about that?

"You'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut."

Nearly eight years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.

Yet, for all they wished he wasn't, Harry Potter was indeed, still there. At the moment, he was lying in his cupboard by the door, using the crack of light from the bottom to examine his fingers. The day before, he had worked up the courage to ask his Uncle Vernon,

"May I go to the park today?" He had hoped that maybe, since he'd asked the right way, and he'd made extra sure to do all his chores without being ordered to, he would be allowed to go. His Uncle Vernon looked completely shocked by the question, and for a moment, Harry dared to believe that his relatives would be pleasantly surprised that he'd been so polite and worked so hard.

Then his uncle's face had twisted, and turned red with anger.

"Absolutely not! We feed you, we allow you to stay here, and you ask for more? You're an ungrateful little brat, just like your worthless parents!" Biting his bottom lip, Harry had struggled not to cry, because it wasn't fair that Dudley got to be fed, and to stay, and go to the park without doing chores or begging. It wasn't his fault that his parents were worthless.

"I- I'm sorry, sir. But I promise I'll be extra good, and I think if I made some friends…" What Harry thought would happen if he made some friends would never be known, since his Aunt took the opportunity to stick her overly sharp nose into the conversation.

"Friends? Who would be friends with a little freak like you?" In a very small voice, Harry answered,

"Maybe if I helped them with their homework, they'd like me. Miss Jennings said-"

"Miss Jennings is a simpering fool. She tells you these things because she wants you to feel better about yourself. They have laws that make teachers act nice, even to stupid little boys."

"If I work-"

"If you want to work, you can do the garden, here." She lowered her voice into a relatively gentler screech, and patted his arm sympathetically. "Anyways, can't you see that they wouldn't like you anyways? If you offer to do work for anyone, they'll allow you to stay as long as you're useful, and then they'll send you away again. Not everyone is as generous as we are, and taking in a little boy…like you…well, it's not something most people would do." She retracted her arm, and wiped at it a little with a pocket handkerchief, which Aunt Petunia immediately disposed of.

Harry did his own laundry, and sometimes Dudley's. She had touched her own son countless times that day, so it really didn't make sense that she'd be worried about contact with Harry. Harry squashed down the tiny surge of resentment before he could even really acknowledge it. He knew he was too skinny, and too small, and had knobby knees, and for some reason, he was a Freak, which meant that there would always be something inherently wrong with him. He really was grateful that he had a place to stay.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon. I'll go do the garden now. Thank you for letting me stay here." His Uncle Vernon was still a little pink, but his eyes were no longer bulging, and he spoke to, instead of yelled at Harry.

"Well, get on with it then, boy."

"Yes, Uncle Vernon." Harry didn't particularly like gardening. Many other boys his age enjoyed running and playing outside, but since the Privet Drive garden consisted of a two foot by one foot patch of dirt and a six foot by eight foot patch of grass, there wasn't much space to run. And anyways, it wasn't the sort of garden one played in. It was the sort of garden that birds didn't land on for fear it was astro-turf. It was neatly mowed and edged, and both the grass and measly plants that had sprung up in the garden were of the sort that had been bullied into existence, not because they wanted to grow there, but because they had been given with military precision, exactly what nutrients would force them into existence.

Despite the perfect green of the lawn, they looked sort of unhappy, in a plastic way.

All in all, the garden was nominally more interesting, but Harry liked the coolness of the cupboard. Sometimes he named the spiders, and pretended they were his friends, but of course, they'd crawl about and away just as they had before they'd been christened. There were spiders outside, too, but instead of the harmless daddy-longlegs variety that had lived inside of his closet, there were rounder ones, and shiny ones, one of which had bitten him, and sent him to the emergency room once.

Uncle Vernon had pinned the bill when it arrived to the ceiling above his bed, to remind him what a burden he was. He'd started doing chores as soon as he'd felt well, and after a few misguided days, Aunt Petunia instructed him in how to do them properly, and started requesting which chores he begin with.

By now, the requests had turned into orders.

Through two pristine fences, he could see that the neighbor's backyards to either side were equally well trimmed, and sometimes Harry had had a dream once that they all had Freaks who went over the uneven bits with scissors. It was a silly, stupid dream, said a voice in his head that sounded strangely like Aunt Petunia, but in the end, he and the other Freaks had run away and lived in a great meadow with perfectly untamed grass, and he'd woken up with tears in his eyes, for some reason. Dreams like those made him want to sleep forever.

Harry liked to look at the foot or so of grass between the end of the Dursley's fence, and the end of the Prewitt's fence behind them, in Number 4, Audrey Drive. Nobody mowed that little strip, since it was an in-between place, but sometimes Harry watered it, because it reminded him of his dream, and flowers grew there that weren't allowed to grow in gardens.

Also, sometimes he heard voices in it. He never told anyone- why give them more proof that he was a freak?- but he thought there might be fairies in the patch of grass because he occasionally heard a no-nonsense voice ordering about her children.

"Cordelia! You stop that this instant! And Caelum, if you make Aster cry, so help me, you'll have to stay holding on to me for the rest of the evening. Do try and maintain some semblance of dignity, Lilith, we are not going to make a spectacle of ourselves by behaving like- Caelum!"

It was so maternal, that Harry grew fond of the Invisible Family. When he imagined his mother, he imagined she must have sounded something like that, only he didn't know what worthless sounded like.

Sometimes he caught a glimpse of a snake in that area, but never did he see the woman, or her children. It was too bad. Harry thought that if he saw her, he might like to pretend that his mother looked something like her too, since his current mental image was somewhere between himself and Aunt Petunia…ugh.

While Harry dawdled and hoped to hear the voices again, a flower in the garden opened up, and from it, grew a single pound note which floated over and landed in his lap. Harry had never been given pocket money before, and immediately, he lost all thoughts of the Invisible Family and thought of all the knick-knacks Dudley bought that he could now buy. Immediately, he became ashamed of himself. There was his Uncle Vernon, pounding at the keys of his computer to make money to feed and clothe him, and Aunt Petunia out buying the food he would eat, and all he was thinking of was himself.

He really was ungrateful. The pound should go to them.

Aunt Petunia came home to an excited Harry, who rushed up to her and practically shouted,

"Aunt Petunia! You'll never guess what happened!"

"I'm sure I'll never care, either." She answered, and dumped the groceries in his hands to put away. Dutifully, he placed each item into its place before he ran to where she was relaxing on the couch with a magazine of the type fashionable women read. The cover featured a woman relaxing in the exact same pose on the couch of her own house. This time, Harry took a few deep breaths so he could tell her calmly about the way he had found to be less of a burden.

"Aunt Petunia. While I was gardening, a flower opened-"

"Which one?"

"A tulip."

"That makes four."

"Actually, there's seven open now. You see-"

"Ha! The Levenson's only have four."

"Yes, but Aunt Petunia, there was money inside of it." Whatever good will he'd earned with the flower, he immediately lost. Suddenly, she looked suspicious and tense. Harry blabbered obliviously on. "So I wondered how it had gotten in there, but while I was humming and thinking about it, another one opened and in that one, there was five pounds! And I realized that it only happened when I hummed, and for the last one, I sang, and there was a ten pound note, all rolled up! I was thinking I could help pay you back for having to keep me."

Aunt Petunia opened up another of the endless handkerchiefs she seemed to keep on hand for times when touching Harry became necessary and beckoned at him. He placed the notes on the handkerchief, and stepped back, biting his lip, but his eyes were shining with excitement.

"I'm not a very good singer, but I'm sure if I-" His Aunt's voice stopped him, harsh and cold.

"No."

"What?"

"You will never sing again, you will never garden again. Your outside duties will be limited to clipping the lawn and hedges. You may weed. There will be no more growing, or…freakish little tricks."

"I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia. I didn't mean to-"

"It doesn't matter, does it?" She hissed. "You did. This is why no one wants a filthy little boy like you running about."

So there Harry lay, using the thin line of light that streamed from under the door to painstakingly check over his body and see what exactly made him a filthy little boy. He was ashamed to admit that he found a little bit of dirt beneath his fingernails from when he'd gardened the day before, but he'd always thought of dirt as a clean sort of dirty, not at all like the various foodstuffs and sodas Dudley would come home sticky with.

Still, he resolved to scrub harder.

Harry wondered what was wrong with him.

Harry was not physically abused. He might have been just on the edge of neglected, but he was certainly not being hit, and he had enough to eat, even if he wasn't good enough to eat the same food as everyone else. At some point, he assumed, they had even carried him in their arms, and fed him from his bottle, or he wouldn't have been there. So when the Meetings for Displaced Children came up at school, twice annually, Harry filled out the boxes that said no he wasn't getting hit, and no he wasn't being starved, and no he wasn't afraid of his new family hurting him. Because he wasn't. He didn't fear being hurt. Even at their angriest, Uncle Vernon never laid a finger on him, and Aunt Petunia only swatted in his direction. He was scared that he would never, ever be loved.

It was wrong, of course, for a Freak like him to hope for anything like that. But since he hadn't been left out on the street to starve like Freaks were supposed to be, of course he had seen how loved Dudley was and wished for that for himself. How ungrateful he was, always wanting more. Still, he could not help it.

The Dursleys did everything they could to reinforce this way of thinking. When they ate out, Harry stayed at home and had a sandwich. Dudley had toys, friends, new clothes and presents. Harry played with the spiders, wore Dudley's hand-me-downs, and was given presents which were worse than no presents at all, presents that reminded him of how little he was wanted. That he was an obligation. He had a special place in his cupboard for his last Christmas present; the hook off of an earring Aunt Petunia had broken.

It wasn't fair, and, if left to his own devices, Harry may have eventually realized that it wasn't fair, and all of the love he wasn't worthy of giving them may have turned into desperation to be acknowledged. He may have become malleable, easily bent to the power of suggestion at any hint of affection. He may have become bitter, and started to hate muggles.

But he wasn't left to his own devices.

It was then, at exactly nine years, two months, and four days, that Harry met the Invisible Family.

"Cordelia! Cordelia! Cordelia!" The voice shrieked, sounding increasingly hysterical. Harry sat by the fence and hoped that Cordelia would answer soon, because the Mum voice sounded worried. Harry decided to brave the wrath of the Dursleys and help out with the search when the Mum voice's calls dissolved into sobbing, with an occasional "Del!" mixed in.

"Ma'am? Please don't cry. I'll help you look for Cordelia." There was a sniff.

"Who is that?"

"My name is Harry."

"Well you sound like a very sweet young-" Another loud sniff. "Young man. But I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"I thought I heard you looking for one of your children. Cordelia."

"Cordelia's only just started leaving. She hasn't gotten very far. I can see her still. She just…she isn't listening. None of them ever do. They're just not smart enough to, but I went and did it again. I do get terribly lonely." Harry was a little taken aback. He'd never heard a mother who didn't firmly believe her child to be the most intelligent in any given room. Then the voice started to cry again.

"Please don't cry, ma'am. I do well in some of my classes. Maybe I could tutor your children in English and Math? Just not Science…"

"That's nice, dear, but they're really just not smart enough to learn. I'm not sure if they know their names. It's very rare to even be able to talk as long as we've been talking. If I may ask, who is your mother?"

"I'm not sure, Ma'am. My parents are dead."

"Oh, you poor dear. Well, if you'd like, you can join my family. I'm sure you'd be a delight."

"R-really?" Harry was floored. He couldn't believe that a family, a mother! could be dangled in front of him so casually.

"Well of course. If you're all on your own, I'd be happy to help take care of you, until you're ready to move out."

"All the way until then? That's a long time, Ma'am!"

"Few months. Then I'll probably have children again." In her sigh, she seemed to release the last shaky breath from her crying. Harry took a shuddery breath as well. He knew it was too good to be true!

"I'm only 9, Ma'am. I can't move out for at least eight more years."

"My god! Years? If I may ask, Harry, what exactly are you?" Could she tell he was a freak already?

"I'm a little boy."

"What kind of little boy? Are you a viper, by any chance?"

"I…I don't think so. I'm just a little boy." A snake slithered out from under the fence, and Harry was just wondering nervously if he should back away from it, when the snake opened it's mouth and spoke with the Mum voice.

"Harry?" Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone else was watching. No one was.

"Did you just talk? But that's impossible. You're a snake!"

"I am not a snake! I am a witch under a terrible curse. What's impossible is that you can talk to me. Who are you, boy?"

"Just Harry, ma'am. Harry Potter." The snake reared back in shock.

"Harry Potter? The Harry Potter?" Harry shrugged, but he felt his heart sinking. She'd heard of him! She knew he was a freak.

"I'm the only Harry Potter I know, Ma'am."

"Where are my manner's dear? My name is Polianthes Xercide Stone, of the most Noble and Ancient house of Stone." She announced, grandly. Harry seemed unimpressed, but when she drooped a little, he tried to put an expression of awe onto his face.

"Do all snakes have such long names? Polly…pollyanthe zur…I'm sorry Ma'am. Could you please repeat it?"

"Polly anth ees zur ci day stone. Polianthes Xercide Stone." Harry looked at her blankly.

"You may call me Anthe." She allowed, and Harry nodded thankfully.

"Thank you Miss Anthe."

"Just Anthe will do, Harry."

"Is it true that you're a witch? Uncle Vernon says that magic isn't real."

"Your Uncle Vernon is incorrect. Magic is very real. I am a witch. If you can do magic too, then you're a wizard." Harry ducked his head. "What's wrong?"

"Sometimes I do things that are…impossible. But I'm not a wizard. I'm a freak." The snake regarded him for a while.

"Well, you can speak to snakes. That is very rare, but it doesn't make you a freak. It makes you special." Harry looked up at her.

"Really?"

"Of course, dear! If you couldn't speak to snakes, who would know that I have been trapped in this form? Nobody! I would just keep mating once a year, and having children who don't understand my words, and leave me the moment they get old enough."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. That sounds so cruel." She sighed.

"No. It's how snakes are. Most animals, really."

"I'm still sorry."

"Well, it's alright now. I'll stay with you."

"You still want to be my mum?"

"I told you I would, didn't I? It's not like I'm doing anything worthwhile out here. And mother to The Boy Who Lived! It would be my pleasure, Harry." Harry started to get nervous. There wasn't a lot of space in the cupboard under the stairs and, well…

"I'm staying with my Aunt and Uncle. I have to ask if you can stay with me, first." Polianthes curled herself up into a spiral, and rested her head lazily on one of her coils.

"I'll wait here. Inform them that I am of the Noble and Ancient house of Stone, and have worked as a private tutor for Arithmancy, Runes, Charms, and Transfiguration. I am certain I would be able to help you with those subjects."

"I don't think they offer those classes at my school."

"They will, dear." Harry hummed so happily that the tips of the grass all started to turn to gold, as he practically skipped inside to ask his relatives for permission to have a family.

Since this is my very first chapter, and my first fic in the fandom, its very important that you all tell me what you think about it. Otherwise I might just decide that the fandom isn't for me, and delete this. Which is fine too, but if anyone likes it, now is the time to speak up…

Harry: Excuse me? , sir?

Me: That's DOCTOR Suess.

Harry: Erm, sorry, right. Mr. Doctor Suess, sir?

Me: Yes?

Harry: What's slash?

Me: MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Harry: …..?