AN: This is a manipulative Dumbledore story only Harry will have allies among the Hogwarts staff and several cool powers to boot.
Letter
Phoenix of Pestilence
Chapter one
-Harry-
Four year old Harry Potter was terrified as he awaited his punishment for his Uncle. He was about to be whipped because his cousin, Dudley, had accused him of stealing some of his toys that Dudley had traded for sweats with his friends. As his Uncle whipped him though he was desperate for the pain to stop and ended up doing something that had been ingrained in him for as long as he could remember to not do… he screamed. As the yell was born in his throat he felt a tugging sensation in his stomach and when it was loosed he somehow knew that it wasn't a normal scream because it made his Uncle drop him off of his lap in surprise and he distinctly heard all of the glass in the house break.
As he fell several scabs on his back that had not properly healed and were weakened from his whipping cracked open letting blood run down his back and onto the floor. As he looked around he saw his dazed Uncle shake his head before glaring at him and lumbering towards him. Panicking he screamed again causing his Uncle to clutch his ears in pain before falling back onto the wooden coffee table which shattered under his wait. As he tried to process this he heard the doorbell ring but as he went to answer it he felt himself losing consciousness.
When he regained consciousness he looked around and saw that he was in a very clean white room surrounded by beeping machines, "Where am I?" he asked dazed as he saw a lady with a clipboard.
"You're in the hospital little one." the lady said softly after jumping at his voice, "The Police found out about your relatives abuse of you and your Aunt and Uncle are going to stand trial.".
After that he was tested repeatedly by doctors for several days before he was finally sent to an orphanage where they said he would live until he was adopted. While there he did his best to stay anonymous, the other kids didn't seem to care at all about him and never paid him any mind normally but the man who ran the Orphanage, John Martel, always seemed to be watching him and it greatly unsettled him.
Finally one day when he was six he was going into the bathroom but before he could close the door it was forced open and Mr. Martel walked in. At first he was confused but when the man started undoing his belt buckle he instinctively recoiled thinking he was about to be whipped. When the a simply threw the belt aside however and started unbuttoning his pants however he was confused once more. "You have been here for two years now kid and so it's time for you to start paying me." he growled as he continued to struggle with the zipper on his pants.
"What do you?" he began before he was backhanded by Mr. Martel.
"You are going to be servicing me until you leave and will not be mention this to anybody. You will be giving me blowjobs and anything else that I want understand?" Mr. Martel snarled at him, spittle flying from his mouth.
At this point he was very scared because he knew vaguely what the man was talking about. A few months prior he had walked in on a couple of the older orphans there in the middle of sex as the called it and they had sat him down and explained what was going on so he wasn't scared.
Backing up as fast as he could he looked at the man in terror as Mr. Martel simply said "There's no use trying to escape kid so you might as well accept it and get it over with.". As he panicked and hoped for anything that might help him he felt the tugging sensation in his stomach that he had felt when he had screamed and stopped his Uncle only this time it was joined by a burning sensation in his throat. Surprised he coughed and a small yellow puff of smoke came out of his mouth making Mr. Martel yell out in shock. Following his instinct he took a big breath and exhaled releasing a steady cloud of yellow gas that encased Mr. Martel.
As he watched Mr. Martel started gagging while clutching his throat as his skin began rotting before he fell down unmoving. Scared he ripped open the door an ran past the shocked kids as he tried to simply get as far away from the orphanage as possible. Eventually he came to a stop panting near a store several blocks away in London. As he stopped to regain his breath he saw some teenagers waving a knife in front of the store cashiers face as he quickly dumbed money in a bag held by the other one. Smirking they shoved the man back before running out of the store and down the alley he was standing next to.
When they saw him they smirked cruelly, "Hey lookey here Frank, a stay brat away from its parents.".
"We could use a new pet Mikey." the other one laughed as they eyed him up in the same way Mr. Martel had.
Eyes widening for a moment he then got angry, angry at almost everyone he met always trying to hurt him, he knew there were good people out there but he only ever really had to deal with the bad ones. Willing his power to him he felt the familiar pull in his gut and yelled at the two sending them back onto their backs clutching their ears. Smiling without the least bit of remorse he walked past them as he picked up the knife, bag of money, and gave them each a good kick for good measure. Then he walked into the store which he realized was a bakery. Walking up to the man who was looking dejected about being robbed he lifted up the bag of money and the knife, "The two who robbed you are holding their ears in pain in the alley." he said simply before walking out, not giving the man a chance to say anything.
He continued on until he entered a small forest outside of the town and climbed into a tree to sleep for the night. The next day he walked back into the town hoping to find something to eat. As he passed the bakery the cashier from the previous night ran outside of the store holding several loafs of bread, "Here you go lad," the baker said with a smile as he handed over the bread, "I wanted to thank you for what I am guessing you did last night. Where are your parents though?" he asked looking around at the last bit.
Looking down cast he muttered, "Dead." before running off back to his tree. As time went on the baker spread the word about the small black haired orphan boy who caught two robbers. When he was eight he was walking by a sports store when a teenager ran out with some boxes tucked under his arm and being chased by a security guard yelling "Stop! Thief!".
Focusing his power, which he had become very adept at doing over the past two years, he focused a blast of his 'banshee scream' as he had dubbed it and sent it at the thief's chest knocking him flat when he was rounding the corner so nobody could see what he did. When the Security Guard rounded the corner he was greeted with the sight of the shoplifter he was trying to stop lying face-down on the ground moaning with an eight year old boy sitting on his cross-legged on his back.
The store had given him one of the boxes that the teenager had been trying to steal and when he got back to his 'hone', which by that point he had gotten several abandoned boards from alleyways and crates to build a make-shift hut, he opened the box to find a bow and thirty arrows.
Over the next few weeks he experimented with his powers and trained with his new bow and even found ways of combining them. He discovered that he could release his 'death cloud', which after looking though the library he found forced the victim to suffer accelerated bubonic plague that would not spread and only affect the one victim, onto the arrow head which would absorb the clouds power and get a yellow color to the steel and the wound would infect the victim with the plague. He changed fifteen arrows to do this and kept them separate from his normal arrows which he used to hunt.
He continued as he had for the past two years after that and stopped any crimes he saw with different levels of force depending on how bad it was. When he saw a simple robbery or shoplifting he would send a 'banshee scream' at their chest to knock the wind out of criminal, when it was a mugging which threatened violence he used a wider area scream and took away part of their hearing, when they had hurt someone trying to rob them or just to hurt them he hit them with a regular arrow. But when he saw someone trying to commit murder or rape he shot his 'plague arrows' as he liked to call them at the person and collected them so he could quickly leave the seen without any evidence left behind. As he did this many people in the moderately sized town saw him nearby the criminals as they were caught or the victims recognized him from town stories about the black haired boy who stopped criminals.
When the townsfolk started trying to find him he eventually discovered another power which could make it so nobody could find his 'home', which he realized when people form the town would be calling out for him and nearing the hut when they would suddenly stop, turn around, and walk away.
Eventually, five years after he began living in the woods, an owl flew over to him with a letter clutched in its talons which it dropped at his feet. Raising an eyebrow at the bird he opened the letter and read that he had been accepted to attend a school for magic called Hogwarts. Pulling out a piece of paper and a pen he had found a few days ago he wrote out a letter asking for a representative from the school to meet him as he had never heard of the "Diagon Alley" mentioned in the letter before giving it to the bird and going to sleep.
The next morning he awoke to a loud crack that startled him out of the hammock he had made a couple of years ago out of some spare rope he found in town. "Mr. Potter?" a woman asked surprised from the entrance to his hut, "What are you doing here?".
"I live here." he grumbled as he brushed himself off, "Are you the representative from Hogwarts?".
"Yes I am but I thought you were with the Dursleys." the elderly woman said confused.
"I was taken away from there when I was four and their abuse was discovered. After a brief stay in a hospital I was taken to an orphanage where the caretaker tried to rape me after two years of staying there. I ended doing something which killed him and ran away and have lived here in the woods ever since. The townsfolk often leave food or other supplies for me nearby as I have stopped a lot of crimes in the past five years." he said explaining.
"I told the headmaster that was the worst place to put you." the woman muttered quietly but he still heard and looked up at her confused, "I was there when you were baby and the headmaster insisted on putting you with those people." she explained sadly.
"It isn't your fault. The Dursley's yes, the care taker Mr. Martel yes, the Headmaster even yes, but you no. Besides if I hadn't been placed there I might have never discovered my awesome powers.".
Looking down at him the woman asked, "That's twice now you have mentioned powers. Do you already know magic?".
Shaking his head he said, "Not exactly, I can't make things appear or disappear or change anything into anything else but I have found three different abilities. Come on I'll show you." and walked behind his hut to a small clearing where he trained. Grabbing a large piece of glass which was form a broken pane form town he propped it up against a tree. Turning to the woman he said, "You might want to plug your ears Mrs.…".
"Sorry, I am Professor McGonagall." the newly names Professor McGonagall said as she waved a stick around and a bubble appeared around her ears, "Go ahead, I can hear but my ears are protected from most damage.".
Nodding he said, "This is how the neighbors knew I was in trouble and then taken from the Dursleys.", he then sucked in a big breath and screamed as the glass shattered, grinning he said "The cop who took me to the orphanage said my Uncle went deaf from it.".
"That sounded somewhat like a banshee's scream." Professor McGonagall mused which made him fall over laughing. "And what pray tell is so funny?" she asked in a stern voice which quickly sobered him up and he mentally made a note to not maker angry.
"I found it funny because I call it my banshee scream and have for a few years." he said quickly.
Chuckling she replied "Well I guess that is somewhat amusing. Tell Mr. Potter what else can you do.".
"Well the simplest one is that whenever the townsfolk try to find me they always have problems. Whenever they get near my hut they seem to just stop and walk away as if they were never looking for me in the first place." he said hoping she could explain.
"You are telling me that you used accidental magic to create a muggle repelling ward?" she asked incredulous before pulling out the stick that he assumed was a wand and waving it before muttering, "Of course he did, the son of James and Lily Potter can't do anything normal.".
"The third thing is that I can breathe out this death cloud and even found out I could imbued my arrows with it." he said nervously.
"What do you mean 'death cloud?" the Professor asked confused.
"Well it causes whoever breathes it to have accelerated bubonic plague that only affects those who breath the gas or get cut by the imbued arrows.".
"I have no idea how that is possible Mr. Potter but I will find out and until we know why don't we keep it to ourselves." the professor said thankfully not asking how he knew what it did. "How about tonight you spend the night at Hogwarts where my friend Poppy Pomphrey, who's the school nurse, can give you a check-up." she said smiling.
"Can we do something first though?" he asked nervously as he desperately wanted her to agree to his request.
"What would that be?" she asked him curious.
"Can we see my parent's graves?" he asked quietly looking down at his feet.
He quickly found himself wrapped in a hug as the teary eyed professor said "Of course we can dear boy." before she let go and helped him gather his possessions, although she was unhappy about the bow.
Once they had everything packed he had her remove the 'ward' she said he put up and he left a note for the townsfolk saying that he was thankful for everything they had done for him but he was now going to go to a boarding school his parents had attended and had the Professor place a spell on the note to make any nearby townsfolk drawn to it until it was found. Grabbing his arm the professor spun around and he felt as if he was being squeezed through a tight tube before he landed panting on the ground. "Note to self," he grumbled "find a better way of magical travel.".
He spent several minutes simply staring at the tombstones that read James Potter and Lily Potter before he felt ready to leave. Standing up he suddenly noticed a faint calling in the back of his mind and a pulling sensation towards a different part of the town. "Professor how come I feel drawn that way?" he asked pointing towards what he assumed was the source of the pull.
"That's the direction to where your old home is." she said surprised, "Why are you being drawn there?".
"Could my parents have left me something and enchanted it like you did my note?" he asked and when she nodded they quickly marched off to investigate. After about five minutes of walking they stopped in front of a crumbling cottage and walked in. Eventually they traced the pull to a chest that was covered by some debris.
Opening it he found a couple of wands, some books, and a letter. Opening the letter he read:
Dear Harry,
If you're reading this then your father and I are dead. I want you to know though that we both loved you. We are having to go into hiding right now because the Dark Lord Voldemort is after us due to a prophecy which says:
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"
We know that this will seem scary for you but you have the right to know. We want you to grow strong and train hard but to also to live your life and have fun. Make friends, find a girl to love, and have a happy family. We hope that you are going to be raised by your Godfather Sirius Black but in case something happens we want it known that he was not our Secret Keeper Peter Pettigrew was.
Finally we have to let you know that there is a partial binding on your magical core that may wear down after a while. You keep changing into your animagus form and have no control over it so we bound it until you were old enough to control it and not change unexpectedly without control over your abilities. Your form is that of the Phoenix of Pestilence which is a better fighter than the normal phoenix. They have a banshee like scream attack and can release a cloud of plague that only affects those who breath it in so it doesn't spread.
We love you Harry,
Mom and Dad
Crying softly he handed the letter to Professor McGonagall as he sat down and began rocking back and forth as he took in the first words he had ever hear, or read, from his parents and the knowledge that they did love him.
