The Boy-Who-Trusted
Synopsis: In his short life, Harry Potter had learned to trust adults. What no one had bothered to ask was what he trusted them to do.
Warning: AU Rating M Language and suggestion of adult situations and activities
September 5th, 1991
On his fourth day of classes at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter's growing discomfort with his situation reached the breaking point. In later years, he was still surprised it had taken that long, but he initially at the time had high hopes that life could have been better. However, it must be noted that he had not slept well the entire week, being woken up repeatedly by Ron Weasley's snoring, and the incessant whimpering of a couple of his homesick dorm-mates. At least at home in the closet under the stairs, there were walls and floor, a door and some distance between Harry and his uncle's nightly imitation of industrial equipment.
Of course, it was during his 'Double Potions' class with the Slytherin first year students when he snapped. As usual, Professor Snape had been disparaging the Gryffindor students while praising the slightest efforts by the Slytherins. Harry suspected that he gave points to those in his House for being able to figure out how to use an outdoor toilet, much less an indoor one.
After the umpteenth snide remark directed his way, Harry held up his hand.
Professor Snape looked at him and scowled. "What do you want, Potter? Twenty points from Gryffindor for disrupting my valuable class time!"
Harry stood, and asked "Professor, can you please answer a couple of questions for me?"
Snape scowled again, but nodded. Potter seemed to be sufficiently cowed and respectful. "Go ahead"
Harry said in a firm voice, "I can understand why you don't like most of the Gryffindors; most of them have more guts than brains as far as I can tell. But why do you hate me? As far as I know, you never saw me before this week, and yet it is obvious to the whole class that you loathe the ground I walk on."
Snape's face started turning bright red.
Hermione Granger turned to Harry, whom she was sharing a desk with, and started to say, "Harry, you shouldn't speak to a professor…" at which point Harry turned to her and said, "Hermione, for once in your life, can you please shut the fuck up?" For the rest of her life, Hermione would remember the look of total rage in Harry's green eyes.
He then turned back to Snape and asked, "My other question is why you pander to the Slytherins. Are they all spreading their legs for you or sucking you off, or do they have enough blackmail material on you to keep you in line and under their thumbs?"
Snape looked like he was about to explode, when Draco Malfoy's voice echoed through the room. "Ah, Potty's going to get a detention! Wait until my father hears about this!"
Harry turned, looked at the blonde princeling, and turned back to Snape. "Please excuse me professor, I have something to attend to." He walked over and stood beside Malfoy's desk.
Draco turned and sneered the sneer that he had practised daily, and which had stood his family at the top of the pureblood bigot tree for several generations. "What do you think you're doing , Scarhead?"
Harry quietly said, "Just this" and he grabbed the back of Draco's head and smashed his face into the top of the desk several times, until the entire class could hear Draco's nose, cheekbones and several teeth breaking. He then threw Draco headfirst into the classroom wall, and as the boy fell to the floor, followed up with a few well-placed kicks.
Vincent Crabbe stood as quickly as the rotund boy could. He had been told to act as Draco's bodyguard, and it looked like this was the time for it. "Potter you can't….urk!" The last sound was his response to Harry kicking him in the crotch hard enough to lift him six inches off the floor, after which he fell on top of Draco, and threw up all over his erstwhile friend. All future hope for him having offspring had become moot in that moment.
Snape bellowed "What do you think you're doing, Potter?"
Harry looked at the professor, and answered "Just what my uncle and cousin say you're supposed to do to people you despise!"
Behind him, Gregory Goyle rose to his feet. He was also supposed to look after Malfoy. His father had taken him along on muggle hunts, and told him that as a pureblood, it was his right and duty to supress the halfbloods and mudbloods.
Hearing the heavy boy getting to his feet, Harry spun and looked at him.
Goyle stopped in his tracks. Here was a half-blood who was not only not going to be easily intimidated, but looked not only capable but indeed prepared to kill him. He started backing away from the enraged Gryffindor. At this moment, an independent thought crossed his mind, that much of what he had been carefully told had been lies.
Snape pulled his wand, which Harry noticed out the corner of his eye. In a burst of accidental magic from the boy, Snape's wand evaporated in a puff of smoke.
As Harry headed for the door, Snape ran to his desk and pulled out a second wand. He gestured towards the heavy oaken doors of the classroom, which slammed shut. He screamed "Potter, you're not going anywhere!"
As Harry walked through the oak doors as if they were made of air, they heard him yell "Bullshit!"
Professor Snape ran to catch Harry, but found that, to him, the thousand-year-old oak doors remained quite solid, and he fell backwards onto the floor screaming in anger and pain, and mostly humiliation.
As Harry stormed out of the main entrance of Hogwarts, his beautiful white snowy owl flew down and landed on his shoulder. He looked at the bird, and yelled "Go away!"
Hedwig shook her head.
Harry told the owl "Go back to the school. I can't look after you."
The owl flew over to the field, and quickly caught and consumed a field mouse. She then flew back to Harry's shoulder looking very pleased with herself, nodding her head back and forth as if to say "I can look after myself. Thank you very much!""
For the first time that day, Harry smiled. He asked, "Don't you want to stay here with the other owls? You would have better company than I would be."
At this Hedwig shook her head, turned away from Harry and regurgitated an owl pellet consisting of the remains of her recent meal. She then turned to Harry, nodded her head, and as much as she could with a predator's beak, smiled at the boy.
Harry nodded to his familiar and said, "Yeah, I feel the same way about them. Okay girl, it's you and me together." The owl nodded vigourously.
As Harry approached the gates of the school grounds, Hagrid was standing there. "'Arry, you can't leave. This is your 'ome."
Harry shook his head. "No it isn't. At home, the people who hate me are at least honest about it. You picked me up at that island, took me away, showed me wonderful stuff, and then left me in front of the train station with no idea where to go. Then I come here, far away from anyone I know, am told there are wonderful things, but I'm not supposed to tell anybody what they do to us here. When I first got here, your bossman looked over the new students like a new crop of playthings. I've heard a lot about people like that kidnapping little kids and what they do to them. I'm not staying here. No damn way!"
At this point, Minerva McGonagall ran up. The elderly witch appeared quite annoyed and out of breath. "Mr. Potter, where do you think you are going? This is where you live now. We're your family. All your friends are here!"
Harry looked at her in astonishment. "Friends, you say. Hah!"
"I am rooming with a kid who can't stop snoring except when he eats more in one single meal than I have ever had in an entire week! I rode the train with this know-it-all brat of a girl who wouldn't shut up about the books she had read and she knew all about this place and she knew all about me. But what she and the rest of the people apparently knew about me was a total load of crap! Friends! Not bloody likely."
"And family? As I just told this big oaf, at least my family is honest about hating me. Here one quarter of the student body seems to think I am shit incarnate, and I had a professor who, for no reason I have been able to see, hates my guts!"
"And you. You are supposed to be the Head of my House and my advocate in all things if there is any trouble. You didn't smile at us when you took us in for sorting. You didn't smile at any of the new Gryffindors. You don't look like you have smiled in the last century and wouldn't know how if this big guy laid you on your back whipped off your knickers and did the 'lickety-split' thing my aunt seems to like so much."
"No damn way. I'm going."
McGonagall was shocked. "But how are you going to survive without our help!"
Harry smiled. "Shows how much the oh-so knowledgeable people here pay attention. It's harvest time and fall. All the bushes along the railroad track are covered with berries. I worked in the garden enough to know where to find food. And I have this."
He held up the key to his Gringott's vault. Hagrid started patting his pockets frantically as he was supposed to be the 'Keeper-of-the-Keys' for Hogwarts, and he had been carrying Harry's key.
Harry smiled at him. "Did you think that, the way I grew up, I couldn't pick a pocket or two? After all, you told me that this key was mine. Mine. Not yours, not the Headmasters. Mine!"
He turned and walked towards the gate. Professor McGonagall pulled out her wand and slammed the gates shut. Harry turned and smiled, and walked through the steel bars just as he had waked through the Potion Classroom's doors.
He headed down to the railroad track, with his owl on his shoulder, and turned south.
When Lord Voldemort returned, the wizarding world would be on its own.
A/N: Sorry about this one. It came to mind after hearing a new report of a teenage girl who was arrested for recruiting high-school students for prostitution. She preyed on the homeless and abused kids, who had been told by their abusers not to tell anyone what was happening to them. After that, thinking about how Harry was 'recruited' just got more and more creepy.