AU. Hogwarts is a boarding house, a home for the broken, the pariahs. It is said that only those who truly need to be there will find their way. After his spiteful relatives kick him to the curb, seventeen-year-old Harry Potter somehow ends up on the building's doorstep, ushered into a strangely fascinating world that may just lead to him regaining control of his life.

Notes: This story is an alternate-universe but it does contain magic. It is just a different sort of magic that will be explained as this story progresses. This story is centered around Harry, which I am sure that you all knew, but it is also centered around Severus Snape as well. (They will not be coupled together.)

"Warnings": This story will contain male/male and female/female pairings. In that vein then, I suppose I should also warn you that it will contain male/female pairings as well. The heavier warning is that this story deals with abuse of the emotional, verbal, physical and sexual natures. I am not glorifying any form of abuse in any way.

This story is a project that my younger brother, a survivor, and I are working on together.


Prologue:

"...And don't come back!"

The shout barely registered in Harry's mind as he stumbled down the front walk of Number 4 Privet Drive. Jamming his hands into the pockets of a ratty, cast-off flannel over-shirt that he had never really considered 'his,' he cast a quick glance back at the house he had just been forcefully ejected from.

He (Harry Potter, a malnourished skinny sort of boy of sixteen-going-on-seventeen with unruly black hair and green eyes that weren't of any natural shade) had been living with his aunt and uncle since the death of his parents (which, by the way, he did not remember) when he was an infant.

Life with the Dursleys had been less than pleasant. They resented his presence with every fiber of their wretched, heartless beings and had never (not once) treated Harry civilly. To them, he was a burden, a nuisance, and had to be treated accordingly. To sugarcoat things, he was denied life's basic necessities, assaulted verbally every time he did or didn't do something 'wrong,' and, on occasion, hit. ('On occasion' grew to mean 'several times a week' as time progressed.')

It seemed that they had finally 'had enough,' which left Harry where he was now, trudging down the street with no particular destination in mind, a knapsack containing all of his meager possessions slung over his left shoulder. Harry was certain that three days worth of hand-me-downs, a slim volume that contained the only memories of his family that he had, a pack of cigarettes, and his life savings of ten pounds would not get him far.

He would be turning seventeen in a few days, he mused absently, as he walked along the gutter. A loud banging broke him free from the almost blank frame of mind that could not truly be considered a reverie.

Harry turned, his gaze focusing on the large purple bus. A boy who could not be that much older than himself, with a pock-marked face and stringy hair, stood in the doorway at the top of the steps. "Well," he said, "you goin' to get on or what?"