Chapter One
"Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life." - Henry Beston.
The incessant thumping, and the shower of plaster that rained down on his head not long after, was the first thing that greeted young Harry Potter as he opened his almost alarmingly green eyes to the cold winter morning. His cupboard was shrouded in darkness, with no windows to let in any light, and so it was impossible to determine what time of day it was, but there were no screams and no shouts, and so he presumed it was still morning. Shifting under his thin blankets, Harry Potter reached one thin, goose-bump covered arm up to the ceiling and fumbled around for a second or two before he managed to grab a hold of the pull for the light. He yanked downwards, and his cupboard was bathed in a weak glow, one that didn't even come close to piercing the shadows in the corners of the small cupboard under the stairs. The light swung backwards and forwards, and he squinted at something hanging from the wall, pulling a small pen, the kind commonly found in banks, out from beneath his pillow and reaching up to cross out another day on his small, cheap calendar as he pushed his glasses further up his nose.
3rdJanuary 1988. The fuzzy image of a zebra foal eyed him with a mix of curiosity and trepidation, it's expression frozen on the January page of the 'Safari Africa' calendar that Dudley had received on Christmas Morning and promptly chucked at Harry's head. When Harry had instinctively ducked under the onslaught of glossy pages, he had been subjected to a vicious backhand courtesy of his Uncle Vernon for daring to avoid 'valid punishment of his inherently freakish nature' and locked in his cupboard for the rest of Christmas, and the best part of Boxing Day.
Rubbing his lower jaw absently as he remembered the sharp sting of pain, Harry carefully extracted his legs from the thin covers and crawled out of the small nest of blankets which he claimed as a bed. He found the cord of the light once again, and turned it off before pushing the door of his cupboard open and scrambling out into the hallway. As he stood he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the large mirror suspended from the wall opposite.
Harry Potter, aged seven and a half, was almost impossibly small for his age, standing at approximately 3'4", and was almost dangerously thin, even for his small frame. He wore a huge, baggy T-shirt which had a gaping hole in it's hem, and ripped pockets. It's neckline hung off of his left shoulder to reveal a yellowing bruise that all but covered his shoulder, and which disappeared down past his collar bone. Harry rolled his shoulder forward tentatively and winced: it hurt. Harry also wore large black pants which would have slipped from his narrow hips had they not been held tightly in place by a worn brown leather belt. On his feet were a pair of Dudley's old trainers. They were too big and were falling apart at the seams. Harry scuffed them against the thick carpet beneath his foot, and watched with interest as a hole in the sole gaped and then shrank back in on itself. He glanced back up at the mirror and, frowning deeply, and unsure of his own motives, tried to look past all of the clothing and the bruises and the malnutrition.
Harry Potter, aged seven and a half, had a largest, brightest green eyes that he had ever seen on any creature that wasn't feline. They were almond shaped and seemed almost luminescent, framed by thick, dark eyelashes. His skin was pale as opposed to it's usual light tan earned from hours of working in the Dursley's garden. Harry guessed that it had something to do with it being winter - the Dursleys never asked him to do anything for them in the garden when the winter months rolled 'round, no doubt fearing the looks and stares and whispers that would no doubt result. Instead Harry was locked away in his cupboard, called out only to prepare meals for his relatives. His hair was a jet black mess of tangles and tufts piled on the top of his head and sticking out every which way.
Harry frowned, picking out his Aunt Petunia's cooing voice from the kitchen, and Dudley's answering demand - it had been Dudley's charge down the stairs that had woken him up, he remembered. Making his mind up, Harry brought his hand down from where it had been patting futilely at his hair, trying to get the particularly stubborn bit at the back to lie flat, and licked at his palm until a decent amount of saliva had been transferred to his skin. Happy with that, he reached up and began smoothing his hair down again, hoping that the moisture would weigh the errant clumps down. For a moment it did, and Harry spared a moment to smile happily at his reflection before he quickly made his way into the kitchen, not noticing how the back of his hair immediately pinged upwards, back into it's original position.
The kitchen at Number Four Privet Drive was very much like every other room in the house: spotless, with everything in it's place. Harry knew that Aunt Petunia's worst nightmare was to find herself hosting guests when the house was a wreck, and so spent a good few hours long after the Dursleys had retired for the evening, slipping silently from room to room and making sure that everything was exactly how it should be.
Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were all clustered around the dining room table. Uncle Vernon was reading the daily newspaper, halfway through an article which was, if his mutterings and sharp commentary to his wife and son were anything to go by, a particularly insulting and horrendous piece of work about the increasing price of petrol. Aunt Petunia was nodding to her husband distractedly, murmuring 'yes, dear' every so often as she tried to convince Dudley to stop carving away at the dining room table with the Swiss Army knife he'd gotten from Aunt Marge at Christmas. 'Never too early for the little critter to learn how to defend himself' had been Marge's booming response when questioned by a less than pleased Uncle Vernon, and so the gift had stayed.
Smiling hopefully as he entered the kitchen, and trying to catch his Aunt's eye as he crossed over to the stove, Harry received nothing more than a disgusted glance from his Uncle Vernon, who didn't even pause in his mutterings, and the interest of his cousin, whose gaze followed him from one end of the room to the other. Aunt Petunia didn't even look up from her task of retrieving the knife from Dudley without incurring a temper tantrum and Harry sighed, deflating as he reached into one of the cupboards for a frying pan. He bit his lip as he made a detour to the fridge after setting the pan on the stove and lighting the gas flame underneath it.
Once the pan was hot enough, Harry poured a small amount of cooking oil into it, and swilled it around until it covered the base of the frying pan before carefully laying six strips of bacon out onto the hot, spitting surface. Harry was oblivious, his gaze fixed onto the rapidly shrivelling strips of bacon, focusing with all of his will power on keeping his lower lip from trembling and his eyes from watering. It just wasn't fair.
It wasn't long before the warm, heavy smell of cooking bacon was wafting through the air, and a growl came from behind him. Harry started and turned.
Behind him was Killer, one of Dudley's latest acquisitions. Killer was a mutt, and the man who the Dursleys had taken Killer to get checked out by had suggested that he was a half-Rottweiler, half-Alsatian mix. The dog was large, almost as tall as Harry, and heavy set, though much of the dog's bulky appearance was an illusion, created by copious amounts of fur and fluff. Dudley had found him wandering the streets a few weeks before Christmas, and had managed to bully his parents into letting him keep him.
Life for Harry had gotten increasingly worse ever since Killer's induction into the household, but Harry didn't resent the dog for this, and told the creature so on a regular basis for fear that the animal might start to hate him, too.
Right now Killer was wagging his tail at Harry so vigorously that Harry feared it might fall off, and was staring balefully up at the small boy, drool falling in globules from the dog's mouth. The raven-haired boy glanced reluctantly back at the frying pan, correctly guessing what it was that Killer wanted, and then up at the Dursleys. They seemed suitably distracted - Uncle Vernon had moved onto an article about Margaret Thatcher, and Dudley was glaring at his mother who had finally managed to get her hands on the knife Dudley had been brandishing earlier.
Quickly, Harry snatched a piece of bacon from the frying pan and dropped it onto the counter to let it cool, unaware of Uncle Vernon's gaze abandoning his paper and following his movements.
"BOY!" Harry jumped, hand catching on the handle of the frying pan as it shot down to his side, and knocking the pan from the stove and onto the tiles below. With a loud crack, one of the tiles split down the middle, and Killer darted forwards to grab the strips of bacon in his mouth before beating a hasty retreat.
Harry turned scared, pleading eyes to his Uncle who had shot from his chair and was advancing on him. "No, please! I didn't mean to - I ... please! Uncle Vernon, I - "
A hand clamped down on the flesh of his upper arm, and Harry yelped, distantly aware of Dudley's snickering and Aunt Petunia's deathly silence, almost louder than his own blood pounding in his ears. Knuckles drove into his jaw, and he would have met the ground had Vernon not been holding him tightly upright by his elbow. "You are no nephew of mine!" Vernon roared into his ear drum, dragging Harry behind him as he stormed from the kitchen and into the hall. With one solid push, Uncle Vernon shoved Harry into his cupboard, and slammed the door shut, muffling the boy's weak whimpers and pleas.
In the darkness of the cupboard under the stairs, Harry's eyes adjusted in the dim light to see the world in a series of greys and darker greys. And, as the muted image of a gangly zebra colt watched on, a single tear rolled down his cheek. "Please ..."
The solid metallic clanking of a bolt being slid firmly into place was the only answer.
Harry was let out of his cupboard only once that night: to walk Killer around the block. The task fell to Harry most nights, as it usually coincided with either Eastenders or Match of the Day, and his aunt and uncle wouldn't dream of even considering sending Dudley out alone in the waning light. But despite the darkness and his wildly overactive imagination, Harry was perfectly safe most nights: the neighbourhood in which the Dursley's lived was a perfect picture of suburbia, free from all of the crime and vandalism of the inner city, and Killer was easily large enough to deter any of the 'hoodlums' that Aunt Petunia insisted were out there, just lurking in the shadows.
As he walked, the night air was cool against his skin, sharp as it shot down his windpipe and into his lungs, like an icy yet somehow comforting blade. It ruffled through his hair like a mother's caress, and his every foot fall sounded too loud as he walked down the sleeping street. A lot of people hated being out and about at night time, or so his Aunt Petunia claimed, but young Harry Potter liked it. There was an eerie, end of the world sense to the air, like he and Killer were the last people ... dogs ... creatures alive and awake. Just him, the heavy amber glow of the street light, and the steady clicking of Killer's nails on the pavement beside him.
A large, almost ethereal moon hung high in the sky, cold and bleak against a backdrop of darkening blue, freckled by twinkling stars. It was a full moon, and Harry shivered, a spark of foreboding crawling down his spine. From his side, Killer growled.
The young boy's breathing became laboured as he froze, not so much as twitching as he fought a losing battle against hyperventilation and followed Killer's line of sight to a small patch of trees and shrubs located just within the boundaries of the nearby park, no more than fifteen feet away. Harry's eyes felt like they were popping out of his skull, but the rest of his face was frozen in burgeoning panic. He swallowed, pulling up seven year old logic and tentatively calling out, "... H-hello?"
It was little more than a strangled whisper, but it was enough.
Something ... canine burst from the trees, vaulted the small fence between them, and lunged at Harry with a hungry snarl. It was nothing more than a light brown blur, speckled with grey, and Harry had no time to do anything but whimper and slam his eyes shut, waiting for the beast to gobble him all up. Then it was on him, a seemingly impossible weight barrelling into him and sending him crashing to the ground. His elbow hit the pavement with a sickening crack, and a white hot heat shot outwards from the bone. Harry yelled out, squirming, and then something was piercing the crook between his neck and his shoulder. He cried louder, and help came.
The weight pinning him to the ground was suddenly gone, and he instinctively scrambled back, away from the danger, sniffling and holding his hand tight to the crook of his neck. It came away bloodied. His glasses had fallen from his nose some time during the assault, but he saw a faint blur of darker black on the ground and he reached for them, sliding them back onto his nose and gasping at what he saw. The right lens of his glasses had cracked upon impact with the ground, but he could still make sense of what he was seeing.
Killer was between him and the unidentified canine, and with the sudden contrast Harry knew that the new dog was much bulkier and taller than the substantial mutt. The two canines clashed them, claws and teeth flashing, snarls and warning growls and yowls of pain tearing from their throats. Harry watched the fight for a minute or so longer before his vocal chords loosened and a frightened squeak slipped past his clamped lips. Killer's attention flickered to Harry for but a moment, shooting the boy a silent message: 'Go!' But the moment's distraction was enough. The new dog leapt in, past Killer's defences, and lunged towards the crossbreed's jugular.
Harry scrambled to his feet, and hung there for a moment, torn between helping Killer and leaving the dog to fight alone. Killer's surprised, and then quickly agonised howl made up his mind, and he swung on his heel, running in a random direction as fast as his short legs could carry him. He couldn't go back to the Dursleys. Not without Killer ... Killer ... the young boy ducked his head as he stopped for breath at the edge of a wood that he didn't recognise, his collar bone aching and weak and numb.
Remembering the pain from earlier, Harry reached up to inspect his collar bone, and felt a large lump just beneath the surface of his skin, about the size of a robin's egg. Confused, and scared that he was going to die, Harry's panic only further intensified the stars swimming behind his vision from pain and exertion and blood loss. He swayed on his feet and, with a startled, weak gasp, fell to the ground. Unconscious.