A/N: I do not own Harry Potter. I own the Plot and all OOCness and OC's in here…and anything that was not in the Harry Potter Series, just to be safe.

NOTE –

I have no idea WHERE this was going. I was sitting upstairs, and my aunt was complaining about our crabapple tree, and I wrote this. If you want to adopt, PM me.

COLLAR RULES

1. Sirius HAS to remain alive no matter what.

2. The Orchard has have something to do with Dark Creatures or Fae, but NOT WEREWOLVES, because I am honestly getting irritated by all the werewolves and vampires and Veela and such, people. Some creativity, please.

3. Harry has to be at least SLIGHTLY Dark, or Gray/Neutral.

The Orchard

PROLOGUE

Harry Potter lay dozing in the bushes under the open window of his relative's house, Number Four Privet Drive. This summer was a hot one, and though he had been banished to the too-sunny yard to do menial tasks meant to humiliate and exhaust him, he was almost grateful. It had been a break, something different from the mind-numbingly dull routine he'd settled into.

He woke up every morning to a pounding headache, a nightmare grasping at him with its oily, putrid claws, and his dead classmate's last moments flashing past his eyes, his name on his lips. Depression had settled heavily on the soon-to-be fifteen-year-old's heart, suffocating and a steadily throbbing ache, like a broken or rotten tooth.

But, even though Voldemort, the most feared Dark Wizard of the century, was literally back from the dead, he had yet to do anything remotely…well, Dark Lordish.

Harry sighed softly, listening idly to the news through the open window, knowing that should he be caught, he would be in for a thrashing… And almost wishing he would get caught, if only so that the dark, lonely thoughts and feeling of abandonment would go away for a while and just leave him alone… Vibrant green eyes dull and dark with his depression, hidden slightly behind gawky, round glasses, stared up at the clear blue sky forlornly. Harry lifted a hand and dragged his ebony hair back from his forehead, exposing the raw-looking lightening-bolt scar that had started all his troubles.

The scar he'd gotten when Voldemort had murdered his parents and tried to murder him as well…

The scar that marked him as a Savior to the Wizarding World…

The thing that made him more of a freak then he already was…

And, suddenly, just like that, his depression was gone, replaced by a furious, helpless frustration that had him pushing himself to his feet, his massive cousin's clothes hanging like folds of elephant skin off his near-skeletal body. Fidgeting, frustrated and head aching more fiercely then before, Harry took off at a jog, face lifting into the small, choking breeze that barely wisped by. He made his way to the park, feeling a little less angry, a little less trapped, the farther away from Number Four and Privet Drive he got.

He bypassed his usual swing, ignored the dented monkey bars, avoided the gratified bathrooms, and slipped into what was affectionately known as The Orchard: a large cluster of trees, forty, perhaps fifty in all, with two apple trees at the very edge. While it was well-known by all those who had children or who they themselves frequented the park, that the apple trees were fair game, it was also well-known that bad things often happened to those who went into the Depths of The Orchard.

Harry had always used that in his favor, going as close to the darker, somehow more sinister-looking trees just beyond the cheerful apples when his cousin Dudley and his gang of bullies decided to play Harry Hunting (in which they would chase, attempt to catch, and gleefully pummel the much smaller boy to a bloody, bruised mass). He had never had any problems from the Depths of The Orchard, though he'd known and heard of those who had. Of course, he'd never truly gone into them, either…

Now, as he slid down the trunk of one of the apple trees, facing into those shadowy, ominous places, he thought upon those instances. Winston Julius, a boy who had been bullied by Dudley's gang as well, had fled into the Depths when Harry had been eight. He had been a tall, bird-like, large-bespectacled boy with straw-like hair and squinty blue eyes, freckles, and braces for the rather obvious over-bite he hated. He had run into the Depths… And had emerged five hours later, hollow-eyed, vacant, drooling, and catatonic. He had spoken one word, and one word only, and, if memory served, had yet to speak another while resting in the nearest Asylum.

"Echo," Harry murmured softly, grimacing slightly in pain as his head began to pound harder, heading from a simple headache towards a migraine. He sighed and, green eyes glazing in a far-away look, he thought back to other instances.

Jenny Clip, a thirteen-year-old girl who was more looks then sense, had gone into the Depths when Harry was six, and had returned raped with no memory of the attack. The police had gone in to look for evidence, but one of the four that went in never returned. More policemen had come with hounds, and the dogs had been positively terrified at one moment, delighted the next, but had, as a whole, refused to enter The Orchard past the safe-point.

The Orchard was older then Harry was. It had been there since before his Aunt Petunia was born. He knew, because on one rare occasion when Gryffindor bravery had over-shot his Uncle's early-age training, he had worked up the courage to ask who had planted The Orchard. His aunt had sniffed primly, but it hadn't been enough to hide the small, nervous tremble of her hands as she had continued her knitting.

"It's always been there," She'd snapped at him. "My Grandmother Rose and her brother Eric used to pick the apples from those two trees." Then she'd glared at him, and snapped that he shouldn't ask questions, and should get back to work. He'd been twelve at the time.

He'd gone to the library the following summer, before the Aunt Marge Incident, and had found old newspaper clippings detailing many odd occurrences from as far back as the newspaper began, and some old records from even farther. Disappearances, 'accidents', murders, rapes, and the sudden attacks of catatonic-idiocy that had befallen poor Winston. Superstitions had abound, especially since it was mention that when the Village of Hamfin (which had existed in place of Surrey, England, where Privet Drive now rested, during the fourteen hundreds) had attempted to burn The Orchard, the wind had abruptly changed and sent the deadly flames into the village's crops instead. Many died that winter of starvation, and still, The Orchard remained.

Harry pulled his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around them securely, staring blankly into the Depths, chin on his knees. His head hurt fiercely, and his bones ached from sheer tiredness. He was exhausted, from constant nightmares and constant fear and constant pain and CONSTANT VIGILANCE as far as Voldemort was concerned…

He just wanted to rest a bit…

Closing his eyes slowly, he sighed and slid uneasily into familiar nightmares and memories, sitting in the cool shade of the large apple tree, facing the ominous, unfriendly Depths of The Orchard.

He had stared, unseeing, into those Depths before sleeping…

And they stared back, seeing far more then he would have believed, while he slept upon their doorstep.

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