So, guys. I won't usually post another chapter this fast, but today is my birthday and this update is kind of like a gift to myself. I hope you enjoy it. Happy Vanlentine's!

Warnings: There may be some grammar and spelling mistakes, as I am still looking for a Beta. Again, if someone is interested please contact me!

It was not bad, it was worse. The amount of strength I had to gather just to open my tired eyes was baffling, and my efforts were only rewarded with the awareness of pain.

So much pain.

Everything in my body hurt. My head felt as if it were about to split through my brand new scar and my magical core, which was still not yet accustomed to being bound and sealed, sent constant waves of pain through my entire body.

And then there was the cold. It was freezing and the small blanket that covered me wasn't enough to keep the warmth from disappearing.

Then again, what else could you expect from an english november night but this kind of coldness that went right to the bones. And yet Albus bloody Dumbledore, saviour extraordinaire of the Wizarding World, paladin of all that is fair and light, couldn't remember to put a warming charm on a one year old infant when he left me on Petunia's doorstep.

In the middle of the night.

In freezing november.

How I hated the man. I would never get tired of saying it.

So, given the situation, the only thing that was left to do was wait. I had thought many times about what my next step should be in this crusade of mine, but I unfortunately had very few options available.

Whilst being bound to the limits of my youthful body, the idea of seeking for independence was to be immediately and yet sadly discarded. And though I was tempted to simply stand up from my moses basket and crawl into the night, hoping to be found by a nice, wandering police officer, the fact was that it would be in vain as it was way too easy to track me down and bring me back to Privet Drive.

The old goat had his ways, after all. Most likely it would take him two days at most to notice that the wards around the house hadn't settled, which would mean that I hadn't even made it through the front door. And as much as I wanted it to be different, the truth was that Dumbledore needed only one more day to read the minds of the muggles around the neighbourhood, policemen included. Or he could actually go directly to the nearest police station and ask about my whereabouts.

Easy as a walk through the park.

The officers would certainly who the old man was talking about. You don't find infants walking down the streets of Privet Drive every night, after all.

So all in all, I would be found in a maximum of three days and brought back to Petunia in the same amount of time and nothing I tried would stop it from happening, not with this tiny legs and certainly not with this yet-to-be-developed, half sealed magical core. The odds were all against me.

Then again, the former scenario depended too much on being found by someone nice enough to care. There always was the possibility of being found by a pedophile, may their souls burn in hell.

All in all, the only safe and Dumbledore proof option at the moment was to stay exactly where I was and wait for Petunia to find me. Which would not be happening until at least two hours from then and, even if I tried to cry to make myself be noticed, I most likely wouldn't be heard. Joy.

But sticking to my decision proved to be difficult for my circumstances were turning out to be unbearable. While the pain in my head was slowly subsiding, the cold was as strong as before and my body was absolutely frozen. I knew I wouldn't die from hypothermia since I had already lived this situation before and clearly had come unscathed from it, but that knowledge didn't bring me any comfort to my current predicament.

Unable to improve the situation I was in, I let escape a heavy sigh that and decided to pass time planning ahead the steps I would take in the years to come.

The truth was that I didn't think myself capable of surviving with the Dursley for another ten years. Again. Or more like, I wasn't sure they would survive my wrath if they ended up treating me again like a pariah, a freak. I had grown too used to being respected, and sometimes even feared by every adult I met, which were emotions that always hand in hand with being the commander of the last remaining dark forces.

But then again, the fear I had instilled in the hearts of light and some dark wizards alike was very different to the anxious hate the Dursleys had always felt for me.

While the first ones were wary of my power and the punishments I could take in retaliation for their actions, my lovely relatives could only look at me in disgust for the power they could not even begin to understand and the fear that touching me may infect them with my unnatural freakishness.

Those kind of feelings made them strike at me before I could become a real threat to them.

From a rational point of view, it was actually a very natural reaction for human beings. But it didn't mean that I would put up with their treatment. Absolutely not.

Sadly, there was nothing I could do to stop their neglect for at least another four years. That was the time my magical core would need to grow sufficiently and start to manifest itself through accidental magic, and it was also around the time when my relatives would decide I was old enough to start earning my keeping.

Not that I would indulge them, mind you.

But I had already allowed myself to dwell on those thoughts for more than was necessary, or even healthy, and I concluded that as much as I was aware of what I did not want to happen, I still hadn't decided on the actions I wanted to take. I really had no clue about what the perfect solution to my dilemma was, and the uncertainty was starting to wear on me.

There still were too many variables to consider as well as too many unsolved problems for which I hadn't got the answers to. At least, not at the moment.

It was so irritating, so terribly frustrating. The amount of matters and possibilities I had to tend to was enormous and I lacked the proper knowledge to solve them. I needed to meet with the goblins as soon as I could and visit the library in Diagon Alley so get my hands on as much information as possible, yet it was information I was unable to get in my current body.

The same body that was still half frozen under the thin blanket.

Oh Merlin, this wasn't a good way to start my self imposed mission, not at all. I could only hope that Petunia would open the door soon enough, and until then the only thing left for me to do was to keep on dwelling on my frustration. Or sleeping. I was actually quite tired and could feel my eyelids start to close, so without much thought I let myself drift off.

Until Petunia's shriek woke me up again.

Eight months went by slowly, in a similar speed to the pace of a turtle. My second birthday was approaching and everything was as normal as it could get. I had to admit to myself that things were not as terrible yet as I remembered. All things considered, the Dursleys did their part in taking care of an infant, changing my nappies and feeding me almost regularly. The rest of the time, they left me to my own devices, alone in what I remembered as Dudley's second bedroom.

I found it kind of unsettling, actually. Things were going too smoothly as far as I could tell, which I never would have guessed when Petunia found me on their doorstep. The pandemonium that broke in number 4 Privet Drive that morning was the most epic I had experienced to date, only surpassed by the time the house was invaded by Hogwarts letters. Oh, and when I inflated Marge. If I had not been so scared of getting expelled, I would have actually found the situation quite hilarious. I did so now, after getting some perspective on the matter.

But the fact remained that the Dursleys were treating me far too decently. They didn't coddle me by any means and they had certainly not displayed any signs of affection towards me, yet their treatment was actually kind of proper and lacked the neglect they had once bestowed upon me.

Had they been like this the first time around, I couldn't help but wonder. And if they had, why did their attitude take such a drastic turn during the next few years?

I could feel the answer in the backside of my mind but as soon as I tried to grasp it, it disappeared.

If only the memories of my first years of life were easier to access to. Unfortunately, an eidetic memory was not among the abilities I had been blessed with, and as the common human being that I was it was normal for me not to remember such a thing.

Which now left me with a large quantity of questions I could not answer. Merlin, this was starting to happen way too often.

But the answer to this specific matter came sooner than expected. It had already been a year since I was left with the Dursleys and I was letting Petunia change my nappies again, which even after all this months I still found very, very uncomfortable. And embarrassing.

I was a grown up man, after all.

When she was done and picked me up to put me in my cot her eyes, so different from the warm green of my mother's, locked with mine and she said in a soft voice, "Let's hope that you don't end up a freak like her".

And in that moment I knew. Of course their past neglect had to do with magic. When had it not.

It looked like the Dursleys were still expecting me to be a muggle, just like them. Or a squib, in my case. During my first life, my accidental magic must have started to act around the time I was five, which coincidentally was also the age from when I had my earliest memories.

This was actually a golden opportunity. If I got to control my magical core and stop any accidental magic from happening, they would think I was as normal as them. No neglect, no cupboard under the stairs. I could probably survive life with them without and prevent it from ending up in a massacre.

Well, that solved the problem of what to do for the next few years.

Obviously it did not mean that I wouldn't be able to do any magic at all, provided that I only practiced in the solitude of my room. Practicing was not optional, after all, not with it being the easiest way for me to gain the ability of wielding wandless magic. It had to be started at a young age so that I could keep on using it as an adult.

Knowing that the Ministry had been aware of this little fact never ceased to anger me.

From the information I had gathered through the years, I also learned the reasons for which the Law for the Prohibition of Underage Magic held a specific clause, one that prohibits parents from teaching magic to their children under the age of eleven.

It was quite logical actually, even if the reason for it still made me furious.

Since muggleborns only learned about the magical world at the age of eleven, many of them started to protest against the privilege purebloods and some half bloods had in regards of learning magic at an early age. The latter could do wandless magic, while those who came from muggle upbringing did not.

Some purebloods didn't hesitate on using this fact as proof of their own superiority, claiming to be more powerful than those of lesser blood for something that actually was beyond their control. It was not a matter of power, but of using it in a different way and using it earlier.

Still, the protest that came from a great number of muggleborns ended up forcing the Ministry to take action.

The options were many, but the final decision ended up being a double edged one. Instead of helping muggleborns in controlling their magic from a younger age, which entailed disclosing the magical world to them as soon as they were identified, the Ministry decided that it would be a lot easier to prohibit underage magic altogether.

Of course, this had the benefit of making the wizarding world easier to control since they all depended heavily on their wands now. Ministry regulated wands.

It was a win-win situation for the Ministry of Magic, but a downfall for British wizards and witches. It left the country on the verge of mediocrity when compared to other magical nations, yet it didn't stop the Government from spreading that cheap propaganda claiming them to be one of the strongest in the world.

It was so pathetic it made it hard to breath and I did not have any intention of participating in that type of madness.

Maybe, if things went according to plan, I would be able to change that special kind of fallacy.

As my fifth birthday approached I couldn't help but feel some kind of nervousness in regards of my current predicament, since even a half sealed magical core was hard to control the first times it manifested.

This was particularly difficult for me, since even with part of my magic bound I was still slightly more powerful than the average wizard my age, which meant that I had to direct every amount of self control I had into stopping any magic from manifesting without me wanting it to.

It was called 'accidental' for a reason, after all, and as such it tended to happen in the least convenient moments.

During this years in the life of every witch and wizard, the magical core experienced some kind of growth spurt which didn't stabilise until their preteen years. Hence why Hogwarts education started at age eleven, since until then one's magic seemed to have a will on its own.

It was terribly hard to control, and the difficulty grew with your power level.

Fortunately, I was not a typical child and had a clear advantage because of my mental age. I just needed to find some time, usually during the night, so I could practice my wandless abilities and stop the uncontrolled manifestations of my magic.

As easy as it sounded, I soon found out that it was not. At least, it wasn't what with Petunia's watchful gaze always upon me. At this point I was sure she was aware of the intricacies of a child wizard's biology. She had lived with a witch for eleven years, after all, and seemed to be paying special attention towards me, going as far as checking on me late at night.

She was suspicious, and I couldn't fault her for it.

Still, it was starting to find it incredibly irritating since her attitude shortened the amount of time I had to practice and made my levels of paranoia steadily grow, which didn't help at all in controlling my accidental magic.

Because of that very reason, I decided that my best option was to start practicing with anti-muggle charms hoping that by putting them at the entrance of my room they would grant me some well deserved privacy. They were not as powerful as actual wards and an obstinate muggle may be able to break through them, but I was sure that with an extra dose of power it would suffice. And power was not something I lacked.

So every night after dinner I took some time to meditate. The process was similar to the one needed for occlumency, an art I had mastered during my thirties, and with every deep breath I took I went further down in some sort of trance.

Nothing existed down there except myself and magic.

It was beautiful, really. The experience always brought me some sense of peace, and I always ended up entranced watching my magical core as it moved in soft waves. But I could already see the differences between the state it was in right now and the one I was used to having. For instance, this one was smaller and not only in a too-young, yet-to-develop kind of way. Something was missing, and I couldn't specify what it was.

Then there was also a change in the magic's colour. While my core had always been a dark shade of silver, right now it was clearly white. A bright, somewhat pearly kind of white. It was beautiful yet unnerving at the same time.

What had caused this kind of transformation in my magical core through the years? If the events so far had not changed in comparison to my original time line, then I could safely assume that my core had been white the first time around.

Was the change caused by my use of dark magic? I had after all dwelled a lot in the Dark Arts through the years, yet as far as I knew the possibility was unheard of. Wizards were born with a clear affinity in their magical core, an affinity which went unchanged until their deaths. Then again, the impossible seemed to always apply to me. It was kind of irritating, really, because the results were always unpredictable whenever I was concerned.

To solve this mystery I needed to gather more information, which unfortunately was only to be found in Diagon Alley and I was not ready to go there yet, not until I had gathered a better control of my magic.

Decision made, I vowed to put on extra care on the development of my wandless abilities so that my mastering of it would take place sooner than anticipated.

Afterwards, a trip to Gringotts was in order.

I would be trully grateful if you could point me out any blatant mistakes in my grammar. Thanks again ;)