Disclaimer: Usually I write out this very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am making no money whatsoever from the writing of this FanFiction.

Warnings: Alternate Universe (ie: kiss canon goodbye), mentions of child abuse/neglect (nothing physical), reasonable corporeal punishment (ie: light spanking), some violence and blood, mild language, and hinted references to consensual sexual activities (there will be no descriptions or lemons within the story).

AN: This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance.

Chapter One: Halloween Horrors

If one were to drive through the small town of Blackmore, Essex along Nine Ashes Lane towards Blackmore Millennium Park, they would soon pass in front of a small block of houses that looked well lived in with their infrequently trimmed and weed infested lawns, disorganized (but vibrant) flower beds, and scattered belongings left in the driveways and on the lawns until you reached the house at the very end of the block.

Number 113 Nine Ashes Lane was a pale blue house with an immaculate lawn, impeccable flower beds, freshly painted white picket fence, and a pristine walkway and drive. The inside of the house was just as neatly kept; the bare wooden floors polished to perfection, the tasteful throw rugs that covered the floors free of lint, the furniture and knickknacks scattered throughout the house were free of dust and symmetrically arranged, the curtains freshly pressed, and the walls unblemished by even a single smudge of sweat, dirt, or childish doodle in waxy colors.

Living in the house, was a small family of three. The man of the house was a loud, overweight man by the name of Vernon Dursley. His wife was a rail-thin and overly nosy woman named Petunia Dursley (née Evans). And their ten year old son was the spitting image of his father right down to his hefty waistline and loud mouth. Mr. Dursley was the Director of Sales for Grunnings (a company that manufactured drills). Mrs. Dursley was a housewife that spent most of her time spying on her neighbors and gossiping with the other ladies at the local bridge club. Dudley, on the other hand, was an obnoxious spoiled brat that toed a very fine line between being assertive and being a bully.

On the surface, it would appear as if the Dursley family was a rather ordinary family. The truth though, was that their appearance of orderliness was a front, for the Dursley family had a dark secret and their greatest fear was that someone would discover their hidden shame. It was a terrible secret that they had kept five years now; one that they had gone to great lengths to hide. Mr. Dursley had even gone so far as to sell the house that his parents had bequeathed to him when they passed away, the very house he'd grown up in as a child, just to protect this secret.

Their secret had a name and his name was Harry James Potter; Mrs. Dursley's nine year old nephew.

Harry's existence hadn't always been such a big secret and there had been a time when their neighbors had both known of his existence and seen him out and about during the day. That had all changed on one fateful Halloween five years earlier when the child had been severely injured in what most people would call a freak accident; an injury that had not been treated by a medical professional and an injury that had left the small child blind. Now, most people might assume that the Dursleys had left their nephew to suffer in the wake of receiving such a terrible injury out of cruelty on their part.

That couldn't be further from the truth.

The reason why they hadn't taken the child to the hospital upon learning he had been injured was because by the time that Mrs. Dursley had found him (a mere ten minutes after he'd been injured) his injuries had already been healed. You see, little Harry was not an ordinary child; he was a wizard. He had been born with a magical core. And it was his magic that had healed little Harry after he'd been injured; even if his magic had not been able to give him back his sight before his immature magical core had been exhausted and damaged beyond repair due to the extensive damage it had been forced to repair to save the little boy's life.

The very magic that healed him was also the very thing that drove the Dursleys to hide all traces of their nephew.

It wasn't like they could take the child to the doctor for an injury that had already been healed. Who would have believed them if they'd claimed that the injury had happened an hour or so earlier when the only evidence that remained was the child's sightless green eyes? No, they would have been accused of child neglect or child abuse and then they would have been persecuted because of the boy's magic. Magic that Vernon Dursley resented (because of all the problems that had cropped up ever since they'd found Harry on their doorstep), Petunia Dursley coveted (ever since she'd first learned her sister had magic and she didn't), and Dudley Dursley feared (because his parents made it out to be something terrible).

And so the elder Dursleys had packed up their family, left their home, and hid the very existence of their nephew from their new neighbors.

Over the course of the five years they'd lived in their new home, the Dursleys had succeeded; none of their neighbors knew little Harry Potter existed. Even better in their eyes was the fact that all of the negative rumors that had circulated around Little Whinging about their family had not followed them to their new home. They were a model family and the small town they had moved to embraced them with open arms even if a few of the older folks grumbled about how unnaturally clean the Dursleys kept their house and yard. The Dursleys were happy though, their life was now nearly perfect and that was all that mattered to them.

At least, they were happy right up until their next door neighbor's mother was murdered in his home on the morning of October 31, 1989.

They were rightly scandalized and frightened by such a crime taking place right next door to their home; after all, it was only sheer chance that one of them had not been home at the time and there was the ever present fear that they might be the next target. They conveniently forgot that the boy they pretended did not exist had been home alone at the time and gave no thought to what he might have witnessed or even that his life would have been in danger if their house and family had been targeted.

They were also very uncomfortable with the police swarming all over the street hunting for witnesses, suspects, and clues. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley cooperated without hesitation though; for they didn't want anyone looking too closely at them, least someone managed to uncover the presence of their nephew. It helped that all three of them had solid alibis; Mr. Dursley had been at work, Mrs. Dursley had been down at the local ladies club playing bridge, and Dudley had, for once, been in class.

After a several days without any leads, the local constable called in a request to Scotland Yard for backup. The Yard's response was to send Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade to investigate and Inspector Lestrade chose to bring in London's only Consulting Detective; the infamous Sherlock Holmes and his ever faithful assistant, Dr. John Watson. The entire town (and the Dursleys in particular) felt a measure of relief to know that there were would be experts on the case now and had high hopes that the culprit would be found quickly so that they could rest easy at night once more.

Too bad no one had warned the Dursleys that keeping a secret from Sherlock Holmes was impossible.

Tuesday, October 31, 1989 8:21 A.M.
No. 113 Nine Ashes Lane, Blackmore, Essex
England

Nine year old Harry Potter let out a weary sigh as he heard the downstairs deadbolt shifting into place as Aunt Petunia locked the front door behind her. He loathed being left alone in the house almost as much as he loathed being locked in the closet. He hated the loud creaks and groans the house would make as the house settled on its foundations or when the wind shook the trees and made the branches scrap against the roof and windows outside. But even worse than the directionless noises that occasionally shot through the house without warning, was the absolute silence that filled the house for much of the day when he was alone.

It was bad enough that someone had taken all of the light and color out of his life but when the house was filled with nothing but silence it made the darkness close in around him.

The muffled sound of a car pulling up in front of the house brought forth another explosive sigh from the young boy as he reached up to finger the coarse gauze that covered his sightless eyes. A flurry of barely heard happy greetings, the muted slamming of the car door, and the half heard sound of the car pulling away from the curb heralded his Aunt's departure for the day. Harry moped for a full two minutes before the growing silence became too much for him. Rolling over on his bed, he slid his left hand beneath his mattress and pulled out the inner workings of an old music box that had had its housing stripped away.

He then sat up, diligently wound the key as far as it would go, pulled out the stop that held the gears in check, and placed the little contraption on the shelf beside his bed as the first tinny notes of Die Moldau* filled his closet.

A small smile curled Harry's lips upwards as the flowing notes of the short song segment filled his closet and chased away both the silence and his fears. After listening to the song play through half a dozen times, Harry closed his sightless eyes and began to hum along with the tune as he felt that nameless something inside of him rise up to dance with the melody on the air currents that flowed through his closet.

Harry hadn't always known about the nameless something inside of him. He wasn't even sure how long the nameless something had been with him. All he knew was that after he'd woken up in darkness, that unnamed something had been there inside of him.

At first, the unfamiliar feel of the Namelessness rushing through him had frightened him. The endless ebb and flow of something lurking just beneath his skin had almost frightened him as much as the darkness itself had frightened him. It had taken him weeks to accept that the nameless something was a part of himself and that it wasn't hurting him. Once he accepted that part of himself, the Namelessness soon became something he treasured. The feel of it flowing through his blood assured him that he was still alive. It also kept him warm when it was cold and cool when it was hot.

It wasn't until he heard his aunt play a waltz on her grandmother's old gramophone for the first time since he'd lost his sight on hers and Uncle Vernon's wedding anniversary that he learned the Namelessness could leave his body.

He'd been softly humming along with the music, lost in the memories of when he had once watched his aunt and uncle dance together on their anniversary through the grate on his cupboard under the stairs; back when they'd still lived in Surrey. He had been completely lost in the music and wishing he could still see what his memories showed him when he felt the nameless something inside of him rise up. Of course, Harry had panicked as he'd believed that the Namelessness would leave him all alone again but the moment he'd stopped humming the Namelessness had settled back down where it belonged.

It took him several weeks before he figured out that the Namelessness only rose up to touch the world around him when he was lost in the music. It didn't matter how simple or complex the song, so long as there was even the smallest hint of a melody, the nameless something inside of him would lift away from him to dance in the air around him. Once he realized that the Namelessness would return to him as soon as he let go of the music, Harry no longer panicked and soon began experimenting with different tunes.

That was how he learned that the Namelessness could touch the world and paint pictures for him in his mind.

At first, he couldn't see very much as the Namelessness couldn't travel very far from him before he got too tired and if he tried to push it further, it would cause him to feel a burning pain (as if his blood was boiling); which meant he saw nothing beyond the walls of his room. That was how he'd learned his new room was the lower half of a former linen closet based upon the crude removal of the shelves. Over time, as he sought to see as much of the world as he could from the small prison that he was only allowed to leave twice a day (least the neighbors catch sight of him). By the time the first anniversary of The Darkness (which is how he referred to the loss of his eyesight) arrived, Harry had a solid mental map of everything in the new house that was within twenty feet of his closet.

By the second anniversary of The Darkness, he'd had the entire house mapped out and had discovered how to open the old secret passageway behind the linen closet that led to the attic. It had taken him six months to find the courage to climb up the ladder and that was only after he'd noticed the discarded music box in the corner of the attic one day when the Namelessness had painted the attic in clearer detail. While he could easily memorize any tune or melody, it was far easier to control the nameless something inside of him if he actually heard the music playing. The Dursleys would never allow him to have anything that would draw attention to him though and so he'd only had his imagination and memory as a music source until that day.

The song the broken music box played was even better than any of the music that his relatives played. The short, thirty-six note song flowed smoothly like the Namelessness flowed through him and the pictures the new song painted were the clearest yet. It was as if the song had been made just for him (though he knew that wasn't true). The broken music box opened up a whole new world for Harry at that point as he sent his Namelessness out beyond the walls of the house for the first time to 'see' the world beyond.

That was also the day he learned that the Namelessness could carry sounds to him even as it painted him pictures. His hearing had sharpened since The Darkness had come but very little sound passed through the walls of the house unless it was very loud (such as the honking of a car horn) or the source was on the within twenty feet of the house and even then the sound was muted. With the Namelessness carrying the sounds to him on the wind, he could now hear each sound as clear as a bell; as if he was standing right next to the source. It wasn't long before Harry began devoting every single minute he could painting the world with the Namelessness and pushing that unnamed something inside of him to even greater lengths.

By the fifth anniversary of The Darkness, Harry had gained enough control of the Namelessness that he could watch the town's entire population going about their business. By that time, he had also learned the names and faces of every single person that lived in or regularly visited Blackmore; he knew where they worked, had memorized their daily schedules, had mapped out every inch of their houses, and knew their secrets better than they knew them. Watching them go about their lives second hand through the Namelessness was the only thing that kept him from going insane inside of his closet, his prison.

On that fateful day, as his Namelessness slipped through the cracks of the house and out into the open air, Harry directed the unnamed force to search out his relatives. The first thing he confirmed was that his uncle was no longer within the boundaries of the small town (which was as far as the Namelessness could currently reach); the heavyset man well on his way to Grunnings' London office where he worked. Next he made certain that Dudley was where he was supposed to be; in class and not skiving off like the pudgy boy often did on a test day. Lastly, he checked to make certain that his aunt had arrived at the Ladies' Club where she played bridge with the other housewives and senior citizens that lived in town every Tuesday and Thursday.

The smile on Harry's lips grew larger as the knowledge that he would have a full four hours to watch the world before his Aunt Petunia would be home. Half a heartbeat later, the Namelessness began speeding through the entire town in joyful abandon as he peeked in on his favorite individuals; such as Mr. Hamilton (the baker in the corner café), Miss Wright (the music teacher at the local school yard), and the wild animals that made their home in Blackmore Millennium Park. He was just giggling about the cat that had been dive bombed and chased out of the park by a blue jay when the Namelessness pulled back to the yard around the Dursleys' house unexpectedly.

Someone had stepped onto his relative's lawn where threads of the Namelessness had formed a net over the entire property so that Harry would not be caught off guard by an unexpected visitor or one of his relatives.

He soon found the two intruders and he frowned when he noticed that it was the two strangers that had been hanging about the area for the past three weeks. They had been all over town, going from door to door carrying some sort of religious pamphlets (according to Aunt Petunia – who'd complained about them; the Namelessness hadn't been able to teach Harry how to read, so he couldn't say whether or not his aunt was telling the truth). They had spent most of their time on Nine Ashes Lane; specifically on the stretch of Nine Ashes Lane that ran past the Dursleys' home.

He sent the Namelessness chasing after them as they climbed over the fence and dropped down into the Dursleys' back yard and the nine year old tensed with fear at the mere thought that they might break into the Dursleys' house; knowing that his aunt and uncle would blame him if anything was stolen or if they somehow stumbled upon him locked up inside of his closet.

Harry breathed out an audible sigh of relief when the two strangers hopped the fence into Mr. Roberts's back yard but then he frowned as he wondered why they were creeping around in anyone's backyard. Curious and more than a little worried about what they could be up to, Harry focused all of the Namelessness outside of his body on Mr. Roberts's house and yard as they knocked on Mr. Roberts's back door and were let into the house by a familiar presence. His attention was briefly pulled away from the three people hovering around the back door when an unfamiliar van pulled up outside of Mr. Roberts's house.

He spent a few minutes trying to make out the picture on the side of the van (which looked vaguely bird-like) when his attention was drawn into the house when he caught wind of a short argument between the two men and the woman that Mr. Roberts had hired to clean his house every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. A frown marred Harry's brow as he wondered why she was there on a Tuesday; Mrs. Smyth never cleaned Mr. Roberts's house on Tuesdays. Knots began forming in Harry's stomach the moment he realized that Mrs. Smyth and the two strangers were taking things from Mr. Roberts's house and packing them into a suitcase.

They were stealing from Mr. Roberts.

The knots in Harry's stomach began twisting themselves even tighter as he realized that he was witnessing a crime and that he couldn't even call for help because he was locked in his closet. It was at that moment that old Mrs. Roberts (Mr. Roberts's elderly but still very active mother) pulled up in her fancy old nineteen-sixty-three Aston Martin and Harry felt a wave of relief now that he knew someone else would catch the thieves in the act and report them.

His relief would turn to horror just fifteen minutes later, when one of the two men roughly grabbed Mrs. Roberts before he stabbed her three times with a knife the moment she confronted them. His connection to the Namelessness violently snapped as the shock of witnessing the heinous crime broke his concentration. Harry rolled over as the backlash from the abrupt disconnection with Namelessness and the horror of seeing Mrs. Roberts stabbed to death by the strangers caused him to vomit. Silent sobs and dry heaves wracked Harry's body for the next hour each time he recalled exactly what he had seen that morning.

When Aunt Petunia arrived home just a few minutes before one in the afternoon, he would be scolded and spanked for making a disgusting mess of his closet. He would then be hauled to the shower and ordered to wash himself while Aunt Petunia cleaned up his floor before he was told to dry off and put on the clean change of Dudley's old clothes that she shoved into his hands. His aunt then replaced the bandages that she demanded he wear to hide 'his disgustingly ugly, dead eyes' before he was returned to his closet. Her final parting words were that he'd be grounded for the rest of the week; meaning that his short daily trips out of the closet would be curtailed further.

Harry didn't care though; he was far too traumatized by Mrs. Roberts's death.

He could still hear her startled cry, muffled as it was behind the man's hand, as the stranger stabbed her first in the middle of her back (severing the spinal cord to stop her from struggling) and then in the stomach with the knife before he stabbed her in the heart. And he could still see the rivers of blood rushing towards the floor to pool beneath her body before the image had exploded when the Namelessness snapped back to him.

Nightmares would terrorize the nine year old for the next four days as the only thing that his relatives spoke about was Mrs. Roberts's murder. The local constabulary (all three elderly members of the small force) swarmed the neighborhood during those four days; the three men interviewing all of the neighbors time and time again in the hopes of finding a witness. Harry had attempted, just once, to tell his aunt that he knew who had killed Mrs. Roberts but she'd slapped him in the face and told him that she would not tolerate him making up lies in order to ruin her perfect life.

Fear, guilt, and helplessness tore at Harry as he remained locked in his closet surrounded by The Darkness that he couldn't escape because he feared what he would see should he allow the Namelessness to paint him another picture.

The suffocating Darkness would eventually become too much for the tormented child though and he would hesitantly send the Namelessness out to chase away The Darkness just so that he could breathe again. He didn't allow the unnamed thing inside of him to wander far at first though; he was still far too frightened of what he might see out there. It would only take a couple of hours for the mostly unchanged interior of his relatives' house to ease some of his fears just enough that he felt it was safe to spread the Namelessness outwards once more.

Once he felt a bit surer of himself, a morbid sense curiosity had him send the Namelessness back into Mr. Roberts's house where he would catch his first glimpse of the two of the men that would turn his world upside down.

Notes:

* Die Moldau (or The Moldau) was composed by Bedřich Smetana in 1874 as part of Má Vlast (My Country or My Homeland) which was comprised of six symphonic poems. Out of the seven or so music box songs I liked, I chose this one because of the way it flowed and inspired instead of soothed and put to sleep.

* 1963 Aston Martin – think James Bond's personal car (for those who are not car suave).