The World Turned Upside Down 1: Year of the Stone

By Smertios

Author's Notes: A couple questions were asked that I'll answer really quickly. The first is regarding Ron's role in this series. Ron will not be a main character, but he will have a role in the series (and it will not be as an antagonist). I like Ron, but I just couldn't get him to fit into the path my plot is taking as a main character without altering him to the point that he would be a completely different character. Apologies to Ron fans. The second question was about the ships: they are final. I've got most of the story plotted out in my head, and a book or so outlined completely, and while I am open to other pairings, in ge4neral (although I prefer HG), they don't fit my plan.

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Chapter 2: Number 2, Privet Drive

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Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive were nauseatingly normal. Neighbors, speaking behind the backs of the couple, were often heard to comment that something had to be wrong with them. Narcissa Black was completely in concurrence with those neighbors. It didn't hurt that she knew their deepest, darkest secret.

Having lived next to the Dursleys for the last nine years, Narcissa thought that their attempts to hide the existence of the scrawny boy who resided underneath their stairway were simultaneously disgusting and humorous. "Dursley, if you don't let me see your nephew, I'll make sure to mention to old Ms. Tubbs at Number 8 that your boy was the one who broke her window."

Vernon Dursley, a comic shade of puce at the moment, sputtered for a moment. Finally, he regained control, and snorted at her, like an angry rhinoceros. "Our Dudley is a perfectly behaved young man. Unlike your hooligan of a son, who has corrupted our nephew."

Narcissa fought to keep her face straight, but she was sure that a small smile appeared on it anyway. "I saw it with my own eyes, Dursley."

He muttered a suggestion under his breath, which she chose to ignore. "Now then, Dursley, where is Harry?"

It wasn't the first time that she had had such a confrontation with Vernon or Petunia. In fact, she couldn't count on both hands how many times she had done so. On a regular basis, she would realize that she had not seen Harry in a day or two, and she would march over to the Dursleys to demand his release.

The man's moustache quivered, and his face became even purpler. After a staring contest of sorts (all the man's own doing, as Narcissa felt no need to waste her time on him), he whirled about with a curse of frustration, and slid the lock on a small door underneath the stairs open. "Boy, there's someone here to see you."

After a moment, a skinny ten-year-old boy poked his head out of the broom closet, looking at the door with hope shining in his eyes. Narcissa noted that he was too skinny again, and that his glasses had been broken. However, she fixed a smile on her face (the boy saw few enough of those as it was), and held a hand out to the boy. "Harry, Draco was wondering if you would like to come have lunch with us."

The boy's eyes lit up and he nodded. Vernon Dursley eyed Narcissa with great contempt. "Just be sure to have him home soon. He's got a lot of chores to do, and it wouldn't be fair to leave them all to poor Dudders."

At that moment, Dudley Dursley came thundering down the stairs, shaking the whole house. "Dad, Dad! Piers wants to know if I can go fishing with him and his father."

Narcissa cast the walrus look-alike Dursley a small smirk. "Chores. I see. Well then, I shall have him back to do his half of them as soon as Dudley has finished his, shall I?"

Without another word, she took Harry's hand, and led him across the disgustingly clean driveway, past the disgustingly homogenous bushes, and onto the street. "What was it this time?"

The boy sighed and shrugged. "When the Dursley's found out you were going to be away on holiday on Dudley's birthday they had to take me along to the zoo with them. There was this snake, and Dudley was bothering it. The glass disappeared from its cage, and I got blamed."

Narcissa nodded with sympathy. This was normally the case. The boy's accidental magic tended to be very strong, and it tended to get him in all sorts of trouble. "How long did they keep you in there?"

"About a week, I think… " Narcissa felt a stab of guilt. While she and Draco had been on vacation, Harry had been stuck in his "room" for a whole week. There were times when she wanted to forget everything that Dumbledore had ever told her, and call the child protective services on those awful people. Harry, however, had another question to ask. "Ms. Black?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"Have you ever heard a snake talk?"

She froze. For a moment the boy shied away from her, as though he expected her to hit him, and she felt a wash of hate for the Dursley's. "I haven't myself, but I've heard of people who have…"

He nodded in content, and they continued their walk in silence. Narcissa was already going over her next letter to Dumbledore in her head. The boy was a Parselmouth! It would be an uncomfortable discovery for most of the Wizarding World that their savior exhibited such a Dark skill, but she felt a small amount of pride for her young charge.

Soon, they turned onto the driveway of the house that she and Draco lived in. It was a fairly normal suburban house, nearly identical to the houses on either side, and painted the dull grey that so many such houses sported. In the driveway, a stereotypical sedan sat, respectably clean.

Narcissa was proud of how good she had become at pretending to be a muggle. When she had first arrived at Privet Drive, her lack of a car, and her less intensive take on lawn care had attracted suspicion, but she had quickly learned to appear as normal as any suburban single mother.

Harry scampered up to the doorway with a grin, and waited impatiently as Narcissa followed at a more sedate pace. When she got to the door, she pulled her key from her pocket, carefully allowing it to tap against her wand, before unlocking the door.

As the door swung open, Draco came dashing down the stairs, grinning at seeing his best friend again after a week of vacation. "Harry! You'll never guess what we saw in Scotland!"

And with that, the two boys were off, discussing the Black's recent holiday. In truth, the true purpose of the trip had been cover for a visit to Hogsmeade to acquire a set of Black family heirlooms from Albus Dumbledore, and transfer those heirlooms to her vault in Gringotts. However, Harry could not know that, as Dumbledore's orders had been that he should not be told that magic existed until he was accepted into Hogwarts.

She walked into the Dining room, waved her wand at the stove (filling the air with a waft of meat pie), and plopped into a nearby chair. 'It won't be long now. Did Albus not say that he would receive the letter upon his Birthday? Three days, then.'

One of the things that she had procured from Dumbledore was a charm that kept all visitors to the house from noticing the many signs of magic in the house. It wasn't that the magic was invisible, or that it stopped, it was just that the muggle's eyes would wander over magical things, taking them for granted, as they would anything else, and their brains would never realize what they had seen. What this meant was that Harry could come over on a nearly daily basis as he did, without it being a problem.

In the way that only boys who had known each other for nearly their whole lives could act, the boys were practically impossible to separate. Of course, it didn't hurt that Harry's home was more of a prison than a home, and Narcissa was willing to feed him regularly.

When Narcissa had first met the boy, he was so thin that you could see his ribs through his shirt. She had not even recognized the child that she'd seen in the newspapers so often in the ragged, starving young man she had seen picking weeds outside of the Dursley's home.

Wizard's cores depended on them receiving proper nutrition. Wizards or witches who did not receive enough food as children would have stunted magical, as well as physical growth. The Dursleys had been literally starving the magic out of the boy.

She had put an end to that. Now, Harry was of a healthy weight, although whenever he was shut into his closet she had to start from the beginning and get him back up to a healthy weight.

With a sigh, she waved her wand again, summoning the pie from the oven. "Boys! Lunch!"

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"Harry! You'll never guess what we saw in Scotland!"

Harry grinned at his best friend's enthusiasm. The pale, blonde-haired boy was practically grinning from ear to ear. "Oh?"

"Well, when we got out of the f- er, car, at my school, there was this huge lake. And guess what they had in it? A giant squid! For real!"

Harry chuckled at that. Draco was occasionally given to exaggeration, and it was much likelier that there had been a small squid or octopus. Nevertheless, he gave Draco an impressed look. "Really? What was it like?"

"Kinda pink, with huuuuuge tentacles!"

Draco and he walked into the living room, which featured a large fireplace, two couches, and some pictures (Harry didn't spend much time on these, as they seemed to be rather incidental). A bookshelf in the corner sported some board games and a small, rather old television. Draco flipped this on, and the boys sprawled out on the two couches.

For a few moments, they watched the television in silence. After a moment, Draco spoke again. "Still planning on going to Greyback School?"

Harry scowled, and nodded. Draco had been admitted to a prestigious private school in Scotland, and was going there, leaving Harry alone at the local public school. "It's Greystone… I think."

"And Dinky-Diddums is still going to Smellings?

"Yeah."

Harry sighed and watched the cartoon on the television with disinterest. After a moment he spoke again. "I wish I was going somewhere else. Y'know, get away from the Dursleys for a while."

"You never know, mate. For all you know, you could be accepted at the best school in all of Britain."

That made Harry laugh. "Yeah… The school I never applied to is just going to send me a letter. 'Dear Mister Potter, it has come to our attention that you are brilliant and amazing, and deserve a full ride scholarship at Eton. Your chauffeur will be waiting outside.' I wish."

Draco chuckled appreciatively, and nodded. "Well don't give up quite yet. In no time, you'll be an adult, and the Dursleys won't be able to tell you a ruddy thing."

"It would be nice to do something important. Uncle Vernon would be so angry if I ended up with a better job than him. Imagine if I were Prime Minister or something…"

"You'd never sleep in a closet again."

"I'd make him sleep in the closet."

Draco made a few gestures, as though trying to cram something through a doorway. "Minister, he won't fit in this one either!"

"Boys! Lunch!"

Still giggling, they dashed off into the kitchen.

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A few days later, Harry awoke to his uncle pounding down the stairs above his closet (not that this was anything new, but Harry was of the opinion that it was always worth note when his ceiling looked ready to give under a family member's weight). The man smacked his hand into the door of Harry's closet. "Boy! Get up! The mail is here!"

Vernon then continued to walk, passing the mail where in sat on the floor, and trudging into the kitchen with a grunt of disapproval.

Harry, bleary eyed from his sudden jolt into wakefulness, stumbled out of his cupboard and scrounged the mail from the ground. 'Junk. Junk. Really junk. From Aunt Marge, so really junk.'

His finger snagged on the next letter, which was addressed in brilliant green ink and addressed to him. 'Mr. Harry James Potter, The Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive. That's funny. I never get mail…'

Dudley thundered past, and dashed into the kitchen, snagging a seat at the table (which was currently set with food made by Aunt Petunia, because Harry was banned from touching food since all the eggs he had cooked had started turning green when he was 6). Harry hid the letter from his view, and then carefully slid it up his sleeve, where it would go unnoticed. He was sure that none of the Dursleys would tolerate him having mail of his own. The last time Draco had sent him a postcard while he was on vacation; the Dursleys had taken it and burned it before he could read it.

He sat down at the table, beside his allotted bread and water, and ate it as quickly as he could, without provoking a scolding from the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon, being fairly grumpy in the morning, grumbled the whole meal about Harry's laziness. Harry, who was more pre-occupied with his letter, forgot to even make his normal mental retorts to the man.

"Boy, did you hear me?" Vernon's growled query was accompanied by a pinch from Aunt Petunia. "I said you will weed the garden and then mow the lawn today. If that Black woman shows up, you're to tell her that you are busy, and she and her horrid wretch of a son are to leave you alone."

Harry nodded glumly, while mentally noting that calling Draco a horrid wretch was rich coming from the Dursleys, whose son was known for terrorizing all the other children on the block along with his gang of brutish followers.

"Good, now get to work."

He was about to protest that he had not finished his meal, when Aunt Petunia whisked his plate and cup away, and pulled his chair from under him. He was braced, and so he landed on his feet, but he felt a surge of anger at his Aunt nonetheless.

Harry walked out of the kitchen, and through the front door, stopping to grab his gardening equipment (two gloves that Narcissa Black had bought him a few years back, a pair of rusty shears, and an old, beaten-up trowel) from his cupboard. The letter up his sleeve slipped his mind, and he got to work on the garden.

If it were not for his long-standing friendship with Draco, Harry surmised that he might have become exactly what the Dursleys wanted: a spineless boy who accepted his lot in life. Draco, however, had taught him the power of indignation. Thanks to Draco's indignation on his part, Harry knew perfectly well that the way the Dursleys treated him was wrong, and he was currently quite angry at the morning's abuse.

He had long since resolved that the best revenge was living well. Rather than stooping to the Dursley's level and engaging in petty games of dominance, Harry was determined to not only be better than them, but to be more successful than them while doing so.

Around noon, a voice from the pavement bordering the Dursley's lawn, called out to him. "Oi! Freak!"

Dudley, Pierce, and a few other members of Dudley's gang were standing, grinning maliciously, and cracking their knuckles. Without a word, Harry dropped his tools and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. Before he could make it past the driveway, Gordon, the thinnest, fastest member of the gang snagged him. "You aren't going anywhere, four-eyes!"

He and Piers held Harry's hands behind his back as Dudley pulled his fist back, and rammed it into Harry's stomach. Colors burst before Harry's eyes, and fire lanced throughout his abdomen. His breath whooshed from his lungs, and he sagged down against his assailant's arms.

Dudley pulled his fist back to slam it into the side of Harry's face, but a cry interrupted him. "Dursley! Put him DOWN!"

Draco was stalking down the walk, his fists balled, and his eyes flashing with anger. Dudley, who had been in one too many scraps with Draco (who was surprisingly adept at scrapping, for such a skinny boy) to want another, quickly waved his gang off of Harry, and sped down the Drive in the opposite direction.

Harry thudded to the ground, and held his stomach for a moment as he gasped for breath. A moment or two later, his friend reached his side and propped him up. Draco still looked angry, but he did not give chase. "You okay, mate?"

After a moment of wheezing, Harry nodded, and rubbed his stomach, which was still burning with pain. In a pained voice, he wheezed out, "Been worse. Thanks for the save."

Draco waved off his thanks and hauled him to his feet. "Why don't you just hit back? The least you could do is give them some trouble for their jollies."

"And have their parents call the Dursleys and tell them about how I brutalized their sons? Thanks, but I think I'll skip that."

His friend grunted in acknowledge, and scuffed his foot in frustration. "I just hate that there's nothing you can do."

Harry had long sense been disabused of any sense of justice in the Dursley's home, and simply shrugged. "Eventually, there will be. Dudley's heading nowhere good. If he's lucky, he'll simply be a washout with no future and nothing to his name. If he's unlucky, he'll end up a gangster rotting away in prison."

A moment of silence stretched into a number of moments of silence, and Draco have a curt nod. Harry let the tension drift away for a moment, and then adopted a smile. "I'm to tell you that I have no time to spend with such a wretched boy, and that I must do my chores."

The blonde snorted in derision. "Cool. Wanna come over and check out some of the comics I bought?"

Harry hesitated for a moment. "If I don't get the lawn done the Dursleys will give me hell tonight."

"I'll give you a hand then."

For an hour or so, they worked on the garden, weeding and trimming, keeping a wary eye on the door and windows (it wouldn't do to have Aunt Petunia see Draco, Harry reasoned, as she was unlikely to forgive him directly disobeying the order to have nothing to do with Draco). As they wrapped that up, Harry pulled the lawnmower out of the garage and pushed it around the yard.

Draco, who had taken refuge from the summer sun and the Dursley's eyes beneath the shade of the ledge, casually watched while resting. After an hour or so of work, Harry was done, and he stowed his equipment back into the shed. As he was tucking the lawnmower away, the letter that he had shoved up his sleeve drifted to the floor, and he stooped to pick it up.

He lazily strolled out into the lawn, whilst eying the envelope with curiosity. Draco met him at the walk, and they began a slow stroll towards his home (Harry figured that the Dursleys would not look for him until dinner, when they would want someone to clean up after them). Draco glanced at the envelope in interest (and, in retrospect, Harry thought, with anticipation). "What's that?"

"You mean it wasn't you who sent it?"

Draco shook his head. "No. Never seen it before."

"I figured that you had sent it, since whoever wrote it knew about my cupboard." Harry pointed out the odd way in which the letter was addressed. "I wonder who it could have been, then."

"Open it and let's find out."

Harry opened the letter, and was surprised to find that it contained not paper, but parchment, similarly adorned with green ink, this time in a very tight, official looking script.

"'Dear Mr. Potter. We are glad to inform you of your admittance into Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.'"

He stopped reading and laughed aloud (albeit feeling some regret that his letter had just been a prank). "Right… Okay, it's just a prank. I wonder how they knew about the cupboard, though."

Harry raised the letter and was prepared to tear it in half, when Draco caught his arm. "Wait."

He paused for a moment, giving his friend an incredulous stare. Then it hit him. He began to laugh harder. "I get it! You sent it."

Draco shook his head, his eyes wide with honest concern. "No, look Harry, it's for real."

"Yeah right. And Unicorns really gallop across the fjords of Norway."

Draco muttered something under his breath. "What did you say?"

The blonde's face turned red. "I said, 'Some of them'."

Harry just rolled his eyes. He stuffed the letter back into the envelope, and was about to ask Draco to cut the act when his friend looked him dead in the eyes with a serious expression on his face. "Harry, I'll explain everything in a minute, just promise you'll hear me out, okay?"

With a shrug, Harry acquiesced to his friend's request. He pulled the letter out, and read the rest. It was a surprisingly good forgery, with a great deal of detail. The equipment list seemed reasonable, and the details of the letter were fairly clear. However, there were small things, like the term Mugwump, which made it clearly fake.

Another moment of walking brought them to the front door, which Draco knocked on loudly. They waited, and after a minute or so, Narcissa Black opened it. To Harry's surprise, Draco smiled broadly and pointed to Harry's letter. "Look, Mum! Harry's Hogwarts letter came!"

His mother smiled at her son's enthusiasm and waved them in the door. She noted the confusion on Harry's face, and patted his arm. "Don't worry, dear. We'll explain it all to you. Why Dumbledore didn't send a staff member, or bring it himself, I don't know…"

"Dumbledore…" That was the name from the letter. How had she known? It seemed unimaginable that composed, caring Ms. Black would take part in a prank of any sort, let alone such an outlandish one. "He was in the letter."

She smiled and bustled them both into the dining room, pulling out cups for tea. "Of course, dear. He is the Headmaster of Hogwarts, you know. "

She set the cups down on the table (Harry noted that they were puzzlingly empty), along with an empty platter. To his surprise, she then pulled out a long, thin stick of wood and muttered a few words, before tapping the tray and each of the cups. He jumped back (narrowly missing knocking his teacup over and sending his chair clattering to the ground) as biscuits appeared on the plate, and the cups filled with tea, like the reverse of water going down a bathtub drain.

For a moment, he sputtered. "Huh… But, what? Wait. How?"

Narcissa smiled impishly and put the stick back in her pocket. "Magic, of course."

Draco guffawed at his friend's astounded expression. "Close your mouth, mate, you're letting in flies."

"Draco," his mother scolded, "Leave the poor boy alone. Besides which, the pest-repelling charms on the house will keep any flies away."

The young Black rolled his eyes at her, but nodded. Harry's wits finally returned to him, and he picked his chair up, and sat down. "What on earth is going on?"

"You're a wizard, mate. A good one too, if family history is any measure."

Narcissa shushed Draco, and passed Harry a chocolate biscuit. "We knew this would happen. After those dreadful muggles told you nothing about your past, Dumbledore said it would be best to wait until they couldn't stop you from going."

"Muggles?"

"Non-magic folk, Harry." Narcissa took a sip of tea, and paused for a moment in thought. "I suppose I had best start from the beginning. First, magic is real, although rarely what muggles think it to be with their silly images of long bearded old men with magic horses and swords and squat old women with warts on their noses. Second, wizards and witches have been living out of sight of muggle culture for the last 500 years."

"In this case, I believe the story begins in the late 1960s. A young and brilliant wizard went very bad. I wish I could say it didn't happen often, but with power comes corruption, and powerful wizards tend to either be outstandingly good or outstandingly evil. At any rate, this young man raised an army of followers and laid siege to the Wizarding world with his followers."

Harry nodded, still a little too shocked to argue with the outstanding claims she was making. "What was his name?"

Narcissa shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and made a face. "We don't like to say it. Normally we just call him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or You-Know-Who. But well… His name was V-Voldemort."

She looked around for a moment, as if checking to see that the aforementioned wizard had not appeared in her dining room with his army of followers. After a moment, she continued her story. "You-Know-Who began his reign of terror by attempting to recruit old magical families to his cause. He would give them one chance to join him, and if they refused, he would kill them. Many families flocked to his cause, some from loyalty, others from fear. Others were killed. It seemed like no one, not even Albus Dumbledore, the man who defeated the previous Dark Lord could end his reign."

"On Halloween in 1981, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named arrived at your family's home in Godric's Hollow. Lily and James fought him, but he killed both of them. And then he turned his wand upon you. No one had ever survived a curse from You-Know-Who before, but when he turned his wand on you, you survived, and he disappeared."

Harry's memory tossed up a flash of green light, and he let out a breath. "So it's all real then, is it?"

Narcissa nodded. "Professor Dumbledore didn't think You-Know-Who was truly gone, and so you were sent to the Dursleys because they were your closest relatives. The Headmaster cast a spell on you that defends you as long as you live in their house. A year or so later I was sent to watch over you, when Dumbledore found out how the Dursleys were treating you. We would have told you sooner, but we were told to wait so that the Dursleys did not have time to prevent you from coming to Hogwarts or cut you off from the Wizarding world."

He sagged back in his chair, while Draco and Narcissa watched him for a response. After a moment, Harry accepted that what his eyes had told him had to be correct. "There's no way that the Dursleys will ever let me go, you know."

Narcissa smiled a predatory smile. "Leave that to me. By the time I'm done with them, they'll be begging you to go. I take it this means you intend to go?"

Harry nodded, and Draco let out a whoop. Narcissa nodded and walked over to the door that opened into the back yard and slid it open. A moment later, a large eagle owl flapped to the ground before her, and she scribbled something on a piece of paper before tying it to the bird's leg. "Take this to Professor Dumbledore, Phineas."

The owl hooted and flew off, while Harry watched in amazement. Draco laughed and said, "Looks like you'll be going to school with me after all, mate. What did I say?"

Harry grinned a little and nodded. He glanced at his letter and read the list of required equipment with interest. "Where do I get all of this?"

"Diagon Alley, of course!" Narcissa closed the door and returned to her seat at the table. "We'll be going in a week, and we will take you with us. The Goblins at Gringotts would like to meet with you about something there, so we'll meet with them as well."

Harry nodded and took a sip of his (now cold) tea. The rest of the evening was spent on tales from Narcissa's Hogwarts years, and on descriptions of the Wizarding world. Harry set off for the Dursleys with both of the Blacks with a broad grin on his face. It wasn't how he had planned it, but he was getting away from the Dursleys, and that was enough.

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Author's Notes: Chapter 12 of Seeking a Center is about 20 done and I'd like to have it done some time this weekend or next week, depending on what the strains of reading and homework for class place on me. I had to switch to Word 2007 when I came to college, so some of my formatting might be utterly fubared (I hate it, by the way. It combines all of the most annoying set of things from previous copies of Word with its own set of obnoxious quirks and obstacles).

I'm afraid that my grasp of British English is not as good as I'd like, and I'm probably missing more than my fair share of proper phrasings. I do my best, but I know that there are a number of very American phrases in there. Look out for the next chapter of Year of the Stone: Diagon Alley and the Black Estate.