Alright. Here is part one only six months later. Sorry about that to anyone following the story. Life caught up with me and things have been crazy busy. And because I hate being that author who's ANs are longer then the story and makes excuses for laziness here it is...
I own nothing.
Published 9/06/11
Boy Freak
Harry Potter grew up in a cupboard. It was small, dark, and safe.
It was a cage.
The wizarding world skirts around that fact because they don't want to know how their hero suffered.
It was enough that he suffered.
He was Boy (Freak) until he was five and school started and Freak thinks that maybe he's escaped the cage when he hears the name Harry.
Harry is the name is the name Freak assigns to the parts of him that the Dursleys can't touch.
Freak is expendable. Freak is the part Harry lets the Dursleys kill.
Harry buries Freak in a shack far from his safe cupboard, when Hagrid kicks down the door and tells him about magic.
Harry doesn't need Freak anymore. He's magic. He's free.
Except
Except for the first time Harry is in charge and he has no idea what he's supposed to be doing. People need him. (They want a herosymbolmartyr for the cause). He (Harry) makes friends and everyone stares at him, whispering and pointing. He's supposed to be a hero, supposed to be great (but terrible).
In a grave that doesn't really exist (how could it?) Freak stirs.
Harry cracks on Halloween when a girl's scream echoing out of the bathroom. Because Harry never had to run from Dudley, Harry doesn't know how to fight. Doesn't know how to die (kicking and screaming). Harry is Freak's creation and he's weak because of it.
So he (Harry) lets Freak out and Freak doesn't hesitate, as he leaps on the troll's back.
Harry cracks, having never really existed to begin with, Freak fights, and Granger sees something in his eyes that prompts her to lie.
Freak decides he likes her. Because Granger (call me Hermione) sees when everyone else, except maybe the Slytherins (the speculative looks he receives from Nott and Zambini are interesting), are blind.
Quidditch is freedom. There's no other way to describe flying and lucking into the seeker's position is not what Freak expected when he went after Malfoy. No other first year has unrestricted access to a broom, so it makes the game, while pointless worthwhile.
Freak flies for Harry in the first game and nearly falls when Harry fights his way to the front in the middle of his nimbus being jinxed.
Harry is a Gryffindor, pure gold. Bright, flashy and soft. With enough pressure anyone can shape gold, and it dents when mishandled.
Freak is silver, hard and bright. Silver tarnishes but it doesn't bend. Doesn't break.
Hermione doesn't realize how much of the time Freak is in control.
When he looks in the mirror all he sees is Harry because there is nothing Freak desires.
Still it is Harry that leads Ron and Hermione through the challenge, Freak screaming in silent protest the whole way. Harry has no sense of self-preservation. Freak is the same but he resents dragging children into the mix.
Harry doesn't understand when Quirrel recoils from his touch. Freak does. It's Freak that latches on to him, burning him up, 'til he's ashes (ashes we all fall down).
(Voldemort lied. Or maybe he believed, Harry doesn't know which is worse. Freak knows. True Believers are worse then liars. There is no dark, no light, no power. Only magic.)
Second year is Freak slipping into the cracks Harry leaves open, as he is less sure of himself everyday.
You'll be next mudbloods. Malfoy believes it.
Hissing at Slytherins makes them jump Freak finds, so he indulges in a bit of petty childishness that ends when Zambini points out he's supposed to be a hero.
(They want a figurehead or a martyr. Freak isn't sure which but he knows enough. Heroes have a shelf life and they are only truly useful when dead.)
Hermione is found with a mirror in hand and Freak rages so loudly behind Harry's eyes that their body doubles up in pain. He spends the night in the hospital wing under observation because Madam Pomfrey can't find a physical reason for the pain that tied him up in knots.
Harry could tell her the cause and spare himself the night in the hospital.
He's hated them since he was six and they treated him for burns and the staff who were so nice, ignored signs of starvation.
(It's Freaks memory.)
But he knows how it sounds and the whispers just died down so he let's it be.
Harry lets go and Freak hisses coward.
The next night it's a little blond first year who cocks her head and tells him the nargles are infesting him.
(Luna Lovegood sees.)
Really it's not that unexpected when Ginny disappears if her brothers had paid any attention to her previously this could have been prevented.
All of it. He owes the little idiot a beating for taking away the only one Freak could name as a friend. He let's Ron rope him to the half-assed rescue mission (because honestly why wouldn't they go to a competent teacher is beyond him).
Hissing at the engraved snake feels natural. So does the sword in his hand, the phoenix's tears in his side, the basilisk's fang replacing the sword.
He asks Riddle if he believes it. Light, dark, power. Riddle thinks it's a moment of weakness.
That makes him laugh, hollow and empty. The sound echoes out of his chest. Freak hasn't been weak since he found magic and jumped a troll.
(Freak would burn the world for a reason. Just one. Riddle would have burned the world just to watch it burn.)
He has been calling her Mione in his head for months. But asking her permission is something different. He takes her stunned expression as a yes.
(Dumbledore lied too. For the greater good. And he truly believes it.)
Dementors are different. Abominations. Freak enjoys the idea of them. The reality makes him want to hurt something.
Pain. Screaming. Not Harry. Freak thinks if they had survived he would have been less... fragmented.
Divination is worthless. It amuses Freak to hear her predict his death. But breathing the smoke irritates his lungs and he ends up sleeping through half the class in the back of the room.
Mione saw him with the clearest eyes he has ever seen. And she never asked. He named her clever not for seeing but for refusing to indulge in her curiosity.
Sirius Black. Is not what they expected. Being pulled aside by Mr. Weasely gave him some clue of what was known. But Black was family. He shouldn't have betrayed them. Should have known better.
(Freak doesn't define family because he knows knows knows his frame of reference was screwed by the Dursleys.)
Freak writes Ron off as a loss after he screams at Mione and expects Harry to side with him.
Remus is what he thinks a father should be like. A bit strict, fun, patient. He (Harry) and Mione figure out Lupin's a werewolf after the second full moon. With a name like that what did he expect?
(We attacked a teacher. We attacked a teacher.)
(Just Snape Mione.) Freak is out to play.
Dementors by the lake. Circling. They take part of Sirius's soul. Freak wonders abstractly what would the effects of that be. Harry goes into full on panic mode. Thirteen is young for death.
(Nobody is too young to die.)
Waking in the hospital wing is disorientating. Especially with Dumbledore's eyes twinkling above him.
Timeturners and what the hell Mione? later, they watch dementors descend on their unconscious bodies.
Young for death but unafraid.
(I call myself Freak.) Keep the words as casual as possible before performing the impossible.
She kisses him. Because she can.
Dumbledore's wise old man act puts Harry in awe and Freak snorts in disgust.
(If he knew half as much as he pretended he would recognize there was no savior. The Greater Good makes Dumbledore blind.)
Fourth year. This will be the year Freak doesn't spend the last week in the hospital. That's the goal. Funny story really.
They are good at magic. Bred for it. It is a pity Freak deemed them unworthy of saving. Magic is truly extraordinary.
Fourteen and laughing. Harry sleeping in the far corner of their mind. Mione hitting Ron every time he calls her anything but Hermione.
Until Halloween.
Champion.
There are scars on his back. Multiple overlaid scars, the impression of broken wings. He never once dared to show Mione and no one else is high enough in his regard to be shown them willingly.
The dragon adds another scar to his ever-growing collection.
Freak crushes Harry. Ruthlessly because Harry is Freaks creation, from a name he didn't even recognize as his own.
(The silence following the teacher calling Potter, Harry is deafening in the absolute change implied in it.)
Harry does not have the skills or the will to survive what's to come. (You haven't even begun.) So as they learn to kill Freak only gets stronger and Harry only gets weaker.
Mione accompanies him to the Yule Ball. Afterwards they take the bottle of firewhiskey they bought from the twins and drink by the common room fire, curling on the couch, trashed, and so beautifully young. Freak never had a childhood and Mione always was acutely aware of how she didn't quite fit.
In the maze. Freak lets Cedric take the cup simultaneously. (Still a Hogwarts champion.)
He regrets that. (Kill the spare.)
(There is always a choice.)
(Most of the time there are no good ones.)
He lets Harry (a distant dream of normality) go in a graveyard, surrounded by Death Eaters, because the very idea of being normal (average) is laughable.
Freak runs because that is what he's good at, Voldemort's offer echoing.
On the tower, they sit bare feet skimming air, as they once did on the lake. Mione talks to fill the silence, magic, mudblood, and the ice cream her dad bought her to console her because she still doesn't fit. Didn't fit until a troll tries to kill her and Freak saves her. (She doesn't need to say the words.)
He offers to kill Nott for her. (Neither does he.)
He knows that fifth year will be the end. (Nothing ever ends.)
That summer before he gets isolated at the Dursleys he draws her aside. Whispers because he knows they're being watched (and because she shivers slightly at his breath on her neck).
(Find another school)
The tentative reaching out to Riddle hurts.
At Grimmauld Place she sighs quiet against his cheek in the first hug she throws at him (Australia)
Later (Why?)
(English speaking, good schools, huge country. Lots of space.)
He can't stand being confined since he's learned to fly. She remembered. He thinks this is what family is.
They go back to Hogwarts because it's home. Even just for a while longer. He flies and she combs the stacks tracing the spines of books that have become familiar friends. They walk by the lake and roam the castle after curfew. They drink tea with Hagrid, spar verbally with Malfoy, venture in the forbidden forest, climbing massive fallen trees. He shows her the Chamber of Secrets and they seek out the Shrieking Shack for the simplistic J+L graffiti craved on walls.
It's peaceful. Until Umbridge and detention. He tells her to leave. (Another scar to add to the collection.).
A week's head start they agreed. The school's students whisper. And the school hums sad and slow because Hogwarts knows.
A week. Ginny throws herself at him. Ron invites him to play chess for the first time in years. And Luna and Neville quietly pack their things.
He walks out of Hogwarts. Away from home. Trunk floating behind him. The note he tacks to the notice board over educational degree number 26 says You can go fuck your Greater Good.
The letter he sends to the Daily Prophet is longer, more detailed and tells them exactly what he thinks of adults who rely on an abused child to save them. (It concludes with the same line.)
Riddle can't figure out how Freak got there which makes the offhand crucio not unexpected.
(The offer still stands.)
(Yes. Australia.)
Freak asks Riddle if he believes it. Light, dark, power.
(Yes)
A day later he's standing outside a two-story house whitewashed, with a red door, a tree with a hammock underneath. Three blocks from the ocean, and ten miles from open plains.
He has the key to the house across the street in his pocket and Hedwig circles overhead.
Knock.
(It's just magic. Which tastes like sunset on the breath, inhale just a little bit for no fear of death.)
That's where the wizarding world went wrong.
Thanks to Xelan, almac1991 and Nothorse for reviewing. Kudos to the people who catch the childhood rhyme, Buffy reference or song lyrics.