Holy smokes you guys it's another chapter! Inspiration just hit me in the face and I couldn't stop typing. It's a bit shorter than the other ones, but Harry gets to do stuff in it so that's new.

Enjoy


Harry was not sure which was more horrifying. The fact that his abusive relatives made him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs, or the fact that he would have to grow up in the 1980's. Clearly someone up there must have hated him.

According to the Dursleys, four years old was clearly the normal age to start putting your no good, burden of a nephew to work, because that is exactly what they did. Harry was now expected to keep the house clean to his Aunt Petunia's ridiculous standards, maintain the garden, cook their food, and all while he slept under the stairs. He never liked Cinderella; he was even less thrilled to suffer her plight.

Although if he ever mentioned a story like Cinderella to the adult Dursleys they would throw an absolute fit. Anything considered remotely fantastic or out of the ordinary made them absolutely furious with Harry. No, the Dursleys were content to stay in their own bubble of "normal". Woe to anyone who tries to invade it.

Harry just thought they were boring.

And horrible parents.

Their son Dudley, who was the same age as Harry was an awful, spoiled child, who resembled a whale wearing a blonde wig more than he did a kid. He was also a cruel bully that fancied Harry as his favorite victim. After all, Harry was only a scrawny four-year-old now with no one to tell on him. It was perfect.

Which was why Harry was currently running away from his fat cousin and his friends who had just invented a new game called Harry- Hunting. It was a stupid game in Harry's opinion. He was so much faster than Dudley's friends it was hardly a challenge. At least for a little while, then his stamina would run out and they would be waiting.

Not for the first time since Harry had stepped through the veil had he wished he could just become invisible. His powers weren't gone; no he could still feel his ghostly core as sure as he could when he was Danny Fenton, but it felt… different somehow and he was having a ridiculously hard time accessing it. For now though he would only experience his powers in little accidents and spurts that he hadn't had since THE accident. But at least he could explain away those little issues. He had years of practice.

His magic though? Not as easy to explain away, and his relatives kept a sharp eye out for any of that freakishness. It had only happened once so far when he made one of Dudley's new videogames explode, but Uncle Vernon had been absolutely furious when he saw it and locked Harry up in his Cupboard for three whole days. He got water and the bare minimum of food but that was it. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were absolutely determined to keep their house magic free.

Harry didn't really want to think about being locked in the closet now as he had more important things to worry about. Like the fact that, while he was hiding behind a tree, he felt a sudden surge in his ghost core. Before he lost control and Harry ended up phasing into the ground or something, he quickly and desperately grasped tightly on to the feeling for what had to have been the first time in this lifetime. He instantly recognized the sensation as something akin to an old friend he hadn't seen in the longest time. And Harry had every intention of getting reacquainted.

Almost instantly the black haired boy faded out of view and he was free to breathe easy. He could hear the other boys catch up but that didn't matter now that they couldn't exactly see him. Soon enough his pig of a cousin and his two goons were standing in front of the same tree Harry was hiding at.

"Where'd the little freak go?" Dudley demanded. His eyes searched the yard for what he would no longer be able to see.

"I saw the runt come this way, I swear," Piers defended himself. Harry held back a snort, Peirs was almost as scrawny as he was and the only thing that probably made him bigger was probably a healthy diet that Harry was denied.

Dennis didn't say anything, instead he just started to strafe around the area where the three bullies in training had last seen their quarry. Was he sniffing the air? The scarred boy blinked owlishly at the brown haired boy, who actually looked in his direction and started to reach toward Harry. What on earth…?

Brushing aside Dennis' super nose for another time, Harry desperately grasped at his ghostly side once more and was overjoyed to have it respond for a second time. No sooner had Dennis reached Harry's chest did his meaty little hand go right through it and touch the tree behind him instead.

Harry grinned like a maniac. He was back, baby!

Dennis on the other hand was sporting an uncomprehending expression on his Neanderthal-child face.

"I could'a swore…" The green eyed boy might have found it cute if the boy in question wasn't so disappointed that he couldn't beat up another child.

"Dennis?" Dudley called, "quit lookin' at the tree. He's obviously not in it. Let's go look somewhere else."

"Yeah!" Peirs cheered way too enthusiastically, "then we can hit him twice as hard for all the trouble he's giving us!"

"Yeah," Dudley seemed over the moon at the idea. Harry on the other hand had heard enough and was ready for some sweet payback.

The raven-haired boy swiftly got to work. He discreetly got on all fours and made his way over to Dudley's feet, or more specifically his shoelaces. With all the stealth of an unwanted child he undid the knots on both shoes and then retied them both together in a very new and confusing way that he was sure would take his dimwitted cousin forever to figure out. He did the same for his two other tormentors and inconspicuously rose off the grass.

Harry then walked his invisible self across the yard and behind the siding of his house, or maybe his neighbors; they all looked the same to him. From there he dropped the invisibility and intangibility and peeked out to see his cousin and his friends still conspiring on what to do once they caught him. The boy didn't hold back his smirk.

"Hey Dud! How can you do any of that when you're too big to make it across the yard without falling over your own meaty feet!" Normally Harry would feel awful for making jokes about someone's weight, but he knew for a fact that Dudley could have slimmed down at least fifty pounds if he had laid off at least one extra serving at every meal he attended. Also the whole beating him up thing.

Dudley got all red in the face and started to approach that purple that Uncle Vernon was infamous for, but couldn't quite pull it off yet. He let out something between an enraged roar and a squeal, which was evidently a signal to charge because all three did so in unison.

Or at least they tried to anyway. Peirs was the first to go down and he was at least able to brace his fall with his elbows, but that didn't stop him from smashing his chin on the grass slightly. Dennis tumbled on his side, so his shoulder took the brunt of the blow along with his hip. Dudley however fell straight on his face and stomach and got a mouth full of grass and dirt.

Harry might have felt a little bad for doing this to children, but their parents obviously weren't going to teach them manners, so he would have to improvise.

Harry couldn't resist calling out, "Great idea Dudley! You would probably move so much faster if you decided to roll! You might even catch me, but I don't think your friends need to do it too though," He grinned slyly.

Dudley stared at his cousin stupidly for a moment before his features morphed into a mask of pure rage. He even tried to get up to chase the scrawny boy again before falling over again. The dense kid actually tried it two more times before his friends had managed to bring his attention to the intricate knot on his shoes. He looked at his feet before getting even more angry and turning to yell at his freaky cousin only to find him gone.


Harry Hunting turned into Dudley Haunting after that; not that Dudley actually knew that. For reasons completely unrelated to shoelaces, the boys would trip over absolutely nothing. Branches would smack them in the face (not too hard they were children after all), non-fragile objects (Harry was no vandal) would fall from tall surfaces and let right next to the boys, scaring the crud out of them.

Harry would appear every so often and let the boys chase after him, only to vanish a short while later and creepy things would start happening again. For the first time in what felt like forever, Harry was having more fun than his cruel cousin.

This unfortunately could not last as Harry was called in to make dinner. The scarred boy inwardly railed against the fact that his four year old reincarnation could make a better pork roast than Danny Fenton ever could. That kind of stuff just wasn't right. He sent a glare over to his relatives who were all sitting at the dinner table like being waited on by a child under five was completely normal. His Uncle Vernon saw his glare and sent one right back.

"Something wrong boy?"

"A violation child labor laws," Harry answered.

"We don't pay you," his Aunt Petunia sneered.

"Slavery then," Harry amended.

"You're earning your keep, you little freak," Vernon growled out, "It's bad enough that we have to feed another mouth and clothe another child. The least you could do is show some gratitude."

Harry actually snorted. Normally he just kept his head down and tuned out his uncle's ridiculous attempts at destroying his self worth. He was no Penelope Spectra, and Harry almost wished he were sometimes just so he could look at something pleasant while being lectured if nothing else. Today however, he was feeling restless.

It probably had something to do with the fact that he could access his ghost side for the first time in years. It felt like a huge chunk of his soul had finally started returning his calls, and he was the desperate boyfriend. He felt alive again, as ironic as that was, and that left him filled with energy he didn't even know he had.

That being said; what he told Uncle Vernon next probably wasn't very smart, but it felt so good.

"Please, you feed Dudley enough food for two boys and still have enough to starve me, while keeping a fully stocked fridge. It's not like you go out of your way to clothe me either, you just give me Dudley's hand-me-downs," Vernon was his famous purple color by now, while Petunia was working her mouth into a frenzy trying to find her voice. Harry didn't stop though, or maybe he couldn't, "Not to mention that completely empty bedroom that I could use, but noooo, I sleep with spiders under the stairs. If you really gave me my keep for all the work I do around here I would have Dudley's bedroom since he does nothing, while I do everything. You know what? Here's what I think of your generosity!"

With that Harry pulled the pork he was cooking out of the oven and threw it on the floor. He stepped in it for good measure. He might have been grinning a little too wide and laughing just a bit too loud, but god if it didn't feel good.

He felt the Elder Dursley male rip him up from the meat he had been joyfully kicking and throw him into the living room. The small boy re-arraigned himself into a crouching position that gave him multiple opportunities of both flight and fight. The stance would have been lost on all but most veteran hand-to-hand combatants. Dursley was not included in that select few, so he advanced on his battle ready nephew none the wiser.

Fortunately for Vernon Harry had started to come down from his little adrenaline high and realized that his Uncle was not someone he could fight and have any kind of satisfying victory. Flipping his Uncle flat on his face may seem like it would be fun at the moment, but it would probably terrify the rest of his family, who were already afraid of him enough to treat him the way the do now. He really didn't want to imagine the hell they'd give him if he actually hurt one of them. No matter how much the man probably deserved it.

So against all better judgment, Harry sighed and relaxed his shoulders just as His Uncle furiously gripped them. Vernon shook the boy in a painful hold.

"YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE FREAK! WHO SAID YOU COULD TALK BACK TO YOUR BETTERS!" The man obviously wasn't thinking clearly as he didn't even bother to hide his opinions now, "THAT LITTLE CUPBOARD IS ALL YOU DESERVE! YOU'RE LUCKY TO HAVE SPIDERS FOR FRIENDS AS THEY'D BE THE ONLY THINGS ON EARTH WHO'D WANT TO BE NEAR A BRAT LIKE YOU! YOU STAY IN THAT CUPBOARD UNTIL YOU'VE LEARNED RESPECT," or at least when the man felt better about himself again. That could be a while.

And with that, Vernon threw his nephew into the tiny closet that the boy called a bedroom and locked the door shut.


The Dursleys had never beaten Harry before. They weren't exactly careful in their handling, but they never intentionally struck him for the sake of his suffering either. Sometimes Harry wishes they did though. Physical pain was something that he was able to handle even without his healing factor helping him along. Being bullied at school as Danny Fenton had given him a high pain tolerance that only increased when he became Phantom. He could shrug off a fallen building; a punch from someone as pathetic as Vernon would be less than child's play.

No, the Dursleys had never beaten Harry before. In his opinion what they did was so much worse.

They isolated him. They locked him up in a small cupboard and left him all alone for what could be days at a time. The loneliness was crushing and the lack of space was suffocating. He had a light, thankfully but that was really the only other thing in the area besides his bed, which was certainly no pillow-top (Harry wasn't sure if the 80's had pillow tops, but that wasn't the point). He could take Vernon's screaming and Petunia's insults. He could take Dudley's stupid games that usually ended with him being held down and kicked. The one thing that had ever tested Harry's resolve though was being locked up.

He honestly wasn't sure whether it would be worse for him, as he was part ghost and therefore part free roaming spirit, or if it would be worse for a normal child. Even if it were easier on the child, he would never switch places. This was a fate he wouldn't wish on anyone.

He could have told social services about the Dursleys. Unlike most abused children, the scarred boy knew that what his relatives were doing was totally illegal and would land them at least several years in prison. Vernon wasn't fooling anyone with his little burden lectures. In fact, having a four-year-old tell him that he was violating several laws at the dinner table probably unnerved him. Which meant that Harry was going to spend even more time in the closet. Joy…

He wouldn't tell on them though. He absolutely should have and went against his moral being to let anyone get away from the justice they so truly deserved. After all, Harry thought, what if the child they were forced to raise was an actual child and not someone who knew better than to take what they said to heart. The kid would have been a mess, his confidence would have been nonexistent, his body wouldn't heal anywhere near as quickly or as nicely as Harry's did, the "don't ask questions rule" would have stunted his education greatly and left him as a doormat for other bullies besides Dudley later in life. Harry shuddered violently. The only good thing about him living with these monsters was that it meant some other poor soul would be forced to.

It was horrible thoughts like that, which made him stare longingly at the police station when they drove past it. The Dursley's only saving grace was the fact that they were Harry's one and only connection to the world of magic. Witches and wizards left him on their porch, so he knew that they knew at least something about it, despite their vehement denial and rejection of anything considered strange and unusual. In fact, the way they passionately clutched to what they considered to be normal just incriminated them more.

If Harry were to expose them for the cruel monsters that they truly were, then Harry would likely end up in a foster home with no way of ever finding out about that magical society that his parents had been part of. He would never find out where they were buried or who even survived that stupid war. He would never figure out how to control these new powers that he had seemed to inherit from his late mum and dad and Harry refused to stumble around adolescence, desperately trying to control new abilities when there was a whole community that could probably help him.

Eventually one of them would drop a clue about his parents and how he could contact at least one of their old friends and then he would pounce.

For now he would let the Dursleys get away with whatever they wanted, he could be patient.

*Wow, Vernon really lost it there. To be fair, his nephew was massacring that poor roast with a Joker grin and you don't let any child get away with that. You also don't call them freaks either, buuuuut…..

*Harry also doesn't know everything about the Wizarding world, so he would have no idea that Hogwarts would be able to find him anywhere. Everything he learned was from conversations he heard from the adults around him. Excuse him if his knowledge is a bit spotty.

*Reviews both fuel my passion for writing and give me ideas. I'm not lying when I say reviews drive me to pump out chapters faster.

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