Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

This chapter kind of ran away with me.

My head felt like it was full of little men with pickaxes that were oh so merrily whacking away at my brain. I groaned as I pulled myself into a sitting position and froze in shock. I would recognize these dirty walls and the thread bare blanket that covered me anywhere; I'm in the cupboard under the stairs.

I held my hands up and groaned as I realized that I was tiny again. Of course, I never managed to get nearly as tall as the other boys in my year, I barely made it to five foot six, but now I'm back to being the smallest person on the block. Just as I was about to hyperventilate I heard the telltale signs of Petunia waking up for the day and came to the conclusion that I had to have been sent to my younger self in the past because the entire Dursley family was killed several years before the final battle when they refused to allow me to move them somewhere else for their own safety. I should be even more unhinged with that knowledge but I am the Boy-Who-Lived and nothing that's impossible is going to pass up the opportunity to occur in my lifetime.

Every morning Petunia carefully slides out of the bed that she shares with her whale husband, being very careful not to wake him as he rattles the bed with the force of his snores. She changes from the floral cotton nightgown that she's had since they got married and into one of the many day dresses that look like they came out of the latest issue of Housewives United and takes just a bit of time to apply some makeup and to twist her stringy blond hair into its sever bun. After all that is finished she makes her way slowly down the stairs, skipping the second and tenth stair, and raps on my cupboard door three times before opening it with a sneer. "Get out of that cupboard you lazy little freak and make breakfast for my Diddiums and Vernon. You had better not burn the bacon or you won't get anything."

Petunia was not a kind woman by any means and she was more than aware of that. She knew that it wasn't the boy's fault that he was born a freak or that his mother had been one but every time that she looked into those green eyes she could hardly contain the hate that flowed through her. She ordered him into the kitchen like always and watched as he moved with a grace that only made her anger grow hotter as she hovered over him and barked out orders.

When she was a child Lily had been one of her only friends, most of the other children were spiteful and made fun of the way that she looked. Lily had been her confidant and had always been there to share all of her secrets and dreams, until that letter had come.

At first their parents had thought that it was some kind of prank but after that professor showed up and showed them that it wasn't they were so happy about having a witch in the family. Petunia had pleaded with Lily to stay with her and not leave to go to that school for nine months of every year with all of those freaks but Lily didn't even pay attention to her. Even after that Petunia had thought that Lily would see the error of her ways and wouldn't go back after the first year but Lily not only went back but stopped spending time with Petunia over the summers so that she could finish all of her freak work.

It was then that Petunia had started to go to the church down the street hoping to find someone who thought that magic was every bit as horrible as she did. She fell into the faith without even glancing back and started to think of Lily not as her sister but as a possessed heathen that had given herself to Satan. It gave her a reason to hate, a reason to block out all of the good times and remember only the bad.

The most crushing blow to her pride had been when she had announced her engagement to Vernon, not the most handsome man, but he was more than able to provide for her. Minutes after she had announced her wedding Lily had told her all about the rich handsome James Potter that had asked her out for ages that she had finally started to date him. Lily's eventual wedding was twice as big and beautiful as the ceremony that Petunia had had and her hate boiled.

She had hoped that in having Dudley she would finally have something over Lily, surely heathens couldn't have a child as perfect as her own? Lily had beamed with joy when she brought the little devil by and Petunia had been livid though she had hid it, like always, and looked at the child that her heathen sister had brought into the world.

Her Dudley was her pride and joy but even she knew that he was not going to be an Adonis. Even as a baby he was rather portly, like his father, and from the way that he was already eating solid foods it would be a miracle if he stayed under a hundred pounds before too long. But she still thought that any child her sister would have would hardly be able to stack up in the long run and she had been proven wrong yet again.

The child was absolutely beautiful even to her jaded eyes. The wild black hair that topped his head was untidy but it almost seemed to be purposeful and gave him a sense of playfulness that her son lacked. His features were soft and of good proportions and while being slightly underweight he still radiated health without being chunky. It was the eyes that really got to Petunia though. Her own son had very few of her features but Lily's son had more of Lily's features then his father's features and his eyes were the best example. They were the same iridescent emerald green that she had always envied her sister for and they shined with the same startling intelligence.

It was the last nail in the coffin, so to speak, for Petunia and the meeting between sisters ended in tears as Petunia lost her temper and told her heathen sister exactly what she thought about her and her devil child. She made sure that her sister knew that she never wanted to see her again and that she was no longer a sister to Petunia Dursley.

When the child had ended up on her doorstep with nothing but a blanket and a letter addressed to her in an unfamiliar script she had wanted to do nothing but leave the child with the nearest orphanage and be done with it but the letter had ended those thoughts quickly. The letter was from the head freak of the school that took Lily away from her and left her no doubts that if she tried to get rid of the little freaky baby there would be hell to pay. She had taken the baby in and provided only the minimum amount of care to keep it alive while trying to find a way to squash the magic out of him. If he didn't get that blasted letter at eleven he was normal and she would have no problem giving him the second bedroom of Diddiums but she already knew that he would be just like her sister.

I worked almost mechanically under the hawk like stare that, no matter how long I have been subjected to it, still feels far too invasive. Cooking was one of the few things that I was forced to do at the Dursleys that I actually enjoy, it gives me time to think as the food that they ate most of the time was easy enough to cook that I didn't need to pay too much attention unless they decided to have something special. I certainly needed the time to think right now.

Somehow I managed to land myself in the past, in my child body. Okay, that wasn't exactly something that I was expecting to happen but then again, nothing normal happens to me if it can help it so it's not really that much of a surprise. What I need to do now is figure out where I'm going to go from here.

The calendar on the wall proudly proclaimed that I was officially six years old as of three days ago which meant it would be another five years before Hagrid would be sent to fetch me and I would be told about the wizarding world. I could simply let it play out like it did the first time and keep my head down until Hogwarts or I could take the opportunity to change the way things happened. Of course I would have to be careful not to tip my hand too early, or I would risk losing the advantage of knowing what was going to happen before it did.

The first thing that I needed to do was find a way to get to Diagon Alley while keeping the Dursleys from finding out that I left the house. It would be simple enough to get there, apparation would be written off as a case of accidental magic, but keeping the Dursleys from finding out when they worked me from dawn to dusk under Petunia's unwavering gaze would be next to impossible. Perhaps if I apparated from my cupboard during the night I would be able to slip out unnoticed, after all Dumbledore didn't add the apparation wards until I started Hogwarts and my address had to be disclosed to the Board of Governors, Lucius Malfoy among them.

I doled the piping hot food onto the three plates with twice as much ending up on Vernon and Dudley's plates just as the two whales made it down the stairs and Petunia sat primly in her seat with an upturned nose and a sniff of distain. I stepped back and crossed my arms behind my back with my head tilted downward in the pose that I remembered as the one that they always preferred and waited for them to finish to eat whatever they decided to leave behind, which probably wouldn't be much if anything. I was right of course, the only thing that I got was the half eaten toast from Petunia's plate and the grapefruit pieces that the males out right refused to lay a hand on. That was the extent on my breakfast with a glass of water to flush it down.

I didn't waste any time after the whales and the horse exited the room, eating my small breakfast as quickly as I could before waiting patiently until the sounds of Vernon's new car faded into the distance and the front door slammed with Dudley yelling that he was going to go over to Pier's house for a while reached my ears. I made my way to the living room to have a list of chores shoved into my hands before being told to get to work by an angrier than usual Petunia. The list was long and filled with things that no one else my size should have ever been expected to do and if I was still the same little boy that I had been the first time it would likely have been next to impossible but now I am a adult wizard in a child's body. Every time that I escaped the acid like glare that Petunia seemed to save just for me I used the bare minimum amount of magic to speed the process of the chores just a bit, enough to help me get them done but not enough to alert my loving aunt that there was anything wrong. The best part is that the morons at the Ministry would write everything off as accidental magic.

"Sir, there have been thousands of reports of accidental magic registering at 4 Privet Drive in the last several weeks." The secretary had drawn the short stick so to speak and was now the third person sent to tell Fudge about the bursts. He was in the middle of a meeting with a couple of shady looking individuals but the amount of magic coming from the area was starting to throw up red flags for all of the workers in the records room. The only reason for a child to have that many outbursts was if they were being mistreated and that simply couldn't be allowed.

Fudge gave her the same look that the others had received and no doubt shoo her off but one of the men sitting in front of him raised a hand and stopped Fudge in his tracks before giving her a look that seemed to bare her soul. "If I am not mistaking the only reason that so much magic would be used by a child is if the child's life was in mortal peril on a regular basis, yes?"

The man's accent made his words roll out in a way that was both pleasant and disarming. "Yes, it is the belief of everyone in the records department that the child is being abused by his guardians and while normally we would pull the child's records ourselves and handle it, this particular child's files are sealed and we need the Minister's approval to pull them."

She could almost see the sweat starting to form on Fudge's brow as the man stared at him with those eyes and the other person in the room stared just as intensely before a distinctly feminine voice cut through the air like a knife causing chills to run up and down her spine. "This is likely not the first time that they have sought to have this poor child's records. Does this mean that you approve of the abuse of an obviously magical child who is in the custody of non-magical beings as their magic is so easy to sense? Are you the kind of man that would allow lesser beings to harm one of our own just because they are magical?'

Fudge flinched violently at the accusations that flew and him and now the sweat was really pouring from him liberally. "It is not my decision, the boy there has a magical guardian who has ordered those files sealed and desires for the boy to spend his childhood within that house with the full backing of the Wizarding Gamut. There is nothing that I can do without a convening of the Gamut and the person that holds the rights to the boy's files has too much power there for me to have any affect."

The male shady character seemed to recline in thought before sitting up straight with a manic gleam in his eyes. "The only person with enough power in that foolish excuse for a court is Dumbledore and the only child that he would want such complete control over is Harry Potter. So you are saying that he wishes for the boy to live with hateful muggles for the entirety of his childhood, how interesting."

I hate being a child! The cupboard had become a sanctuary once again as I cuddled with the flattened pillow and I allowed my magic to slide though my body and heal the wounds internally while leaving the outside discoloration in place. I had always wondered why I never struck out at Vernon the first time I was a child and now I knew why and Dumbledore was going to pay. The wards on the house were varied and none of them were particularly useful for him. The most prominent were the standard ministry wards that monitored the use of magic of underage wizards that were only used if the child lived with muggles, if you were a pureblood you could practice magic all you wanted and they wouldn't be the wiser. The wards that were supposed to protect him from the forces of evil were barely there at all, mere wisps of vapor that probably couldn't protect him from a dark natured fly. The one that really pissed him off was the only true protection ward on the property; it was a ward to protect the Dursleys from my magic. No matter how much I wanted to use my magic to harm them it wouldn't be able to so much as stub their toe. The only reason that I was able to blow up Marge that one summer was because she wasn't actually harmed in the process though it was certainly enjoyable. The last ward was to keep wizarding mail from making it to the house unless it was approved by Dumbledore himself.

The Dursleys were much like they were the first time through; mean and hateful, though Petunia seemed to be even more antagonistic than usual. I did my chores in silence and managed to get them all done but nothing was enough for Petunia. She would make up another chore that hadn't been on the list that I didn't get done just to make sure that I was punished and that I didn't get dinner. The first time I had at least gotten a dinner every couple of days at least. At this rate I won't even make it to five feet this time if I make it to Hogwarts at all. Something has to give or I'll have to make a run for it and leave any advantage that I have in the dust.

The man watched in the shadows as the horse like woman strutted through the shopping area like she owned the place while many of the people around her looked at her as if she was something on the bottom of their shoe. Something about her made his skin crawl and he knew that he had the right woman. He followed her until she entered a relatively empty part of the shopping area and pulled her into a darkened alley while casting a silencing charm on the woman. "Hush now, we wouldn't want anyone to come along and find you dead in this alley now would we?" The struggling abruptly stopped and he finished dragging her into the darkness before they both disappeared with a soft pop that drew no attention from the people bustling through the shopping area.

I knew that there was something very wrong the moment that Petunia walked through the door after her weekly trip to the downtown shopping center that she loved so much. The first thing that tipped me off was the fact that she was home almost a full three hours before she normally even thought about coming home and she seemed somewhat dazed, almost as if she didn't quite know what was going on and was having a hard time trying to understand anything. She entered the house without a word and moved to the living room without so much as glancing at me and sat in front of the television and stared at the screen without flinching.

When I tried to find the reason in her mind it turned out to be hazy and blank. She had been obliviated recently and whoever had done it was a master at the art. Hopefully it wasn't one of Voldemort's followers but I know better than to get my hopes up. I sighed and returned to scrubbing the wooden floors next to the entryway. There was very little that I could do about it without ruining my entire advantage and I have no idea if this same thing happened the first time and I just didn't know about it.

Everything after that was just the way that I remembered it with the open hostility, chores and beatings that I remembered though this time I was able to keep myself from the worst of it with the small amounts of magic that the wards allowed me to have. I quickly forgot about the day that Petunia had been magically accosted until a couple of months later when a very rapid and unfriendly knock sounded at the door and I was ordered to open it and tell whoever was there that we did not want any.

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