Waking up in a warm bed, Harry's first thought was overwhelmed by pure panic.
It had happened again.
Sometimes, when he was hurt or just generally in a foul mood after something the Dursley's had done to him, strange things would happen.
When he was little, it'd been simple things: a book he wanted to read would float down to him from a too high shelf, juice or cookies would appear on his plate from their respective containers.
As he grew, and his treatment by the Dursley's worsened, it became more noticeable. Petunia would cut his hair in a maliciously ugly style for school the next day: in the morning, it had grown back.
The first time they'd made him sleep outside, he'd woken up in the spare bedroom, wrapped tightly in one of Dudley's old quilts.
He'd been young enough and stupid enough to think his family had brought him inside; the weather had gotten pretty cold, after all, considering it was late August.
When he'd emerged from the bedroom, smiling and well rested, it'd caused pandemonium.
He'd been locked in the cupboard under the stairs for five days. No food, no water, just a snarled statement that Vernon would 'beat the weirdness out of you if I have to' and a cold reminder that he lived with his relatives out of the goodness of their hearts.
"You will be normal, by God," Petunia snapped. "Or I will not have you in my house!"
He'd made a conscious effort since then to steer clear of performing acts of 'accidental weirdness' as he termed them, reminding himself that any comfort he might get from them paled in comparison to the grief that was undoubtedly sure to follow.
But here he was, in a nice warm bed, feeling far cleaner than he should, and unbelievably well rested.
Knowing that it was a Saturday and that the Dursley's usually didn't get up until later, he frantically groped for his glasses, deciding that if he hurried, he could make it outside and dirty himself up a bit before any of them woke up and found out what had happened.
As much as Harry despised his relatives, living with them was preferred over living with a foster family.
He remembered this one family, two boys and a girl, who'd been living with a foster family for a little over a year.
The girl, Anna, had been a cynical young thing, all scowling lines and cold, dead eyes. Harry had always wondered why she was so unhappy: she had a family that wanted her. In his eyes, there was nothing better.
He'd made the mistake of asking her one day.
She'd shown him the bruises. All of her bruises.
He'd been horrified; he was no stranger to a beating, Vernon had made sure of that, but until that moment, he hadn't been aware that there were worse ways to hurt a person. Harry had been grateful that he wasn't a girl, lest Vernon find worse ways to punish him.
Two weeks later, one of the boys, Peter, killed himself in front of the whole school.
Anna's knowing look, shot his way, quickly followed by the expected tears of a grieving sister, opened Harry's eyes to a whole other depravity of man.
He didn't want to go to a foster home, ever. So he played by Petunia and Vernon's rules, knowing that as far as bad things went, he could have gotten a lot worse.
He frowned now, unable to find his glasses before deciding he must have taken them off outside somewhere: stupid. Last time, Piers, one of the neighborhood bullies and Dudley's best friend, had smashed them.
Vernon had grudgingly bought him new lenses, but he'd paid for them with a broken rib and a threat that, next time, Vernon would make him use the shattered lenses, muttering something about glass in the eyes.
Slipping from the bed and placing his feet on the floor, careful lest he step on any of the many toys Dudley always left lying around, he blinked in surprise as, even with blurry eyes, he was able to make out the floor, clean and completely bare.
And wood paneled. None of the rooms in the Dursley home were wood paneled; Harry had cleaned all of them often enough to know this for a fact.
Getting cautiously to his feet, he took in the well lit room with faulty vision, coming to one undeniable conclusion: he was most definitely not in the Dursley's home. It'd never been this…inviting.
Despite the peaceful surroundings, Harry was panicking: he'd seen news stories often enough to understand the statistics of kidnapped children. Worse, he knew that aside from the Dursley's, hardly anybody recognized his existence, and the chance of them reporting him missing was slim to none.
What if he had been kidnapped by one of those bad men, the one's who liked to torture little boys? What if he hurt him, like Peter had been hurt? What if he killed him?
Harry was so caught up in his own panicking, he didn't realize someone was coming until he heard the footsteps enter the room.
His head jerked up and he flinched back, fully prepared to run God knows where, but like hell was he going to let them hurt him without a fight; they weren't the Dursley's, he didn't owe them anything. He could, and he would, battle them with his last breath, if it came to that.
But instead of a fully grown man-monster, he found himself staring, or rather, squinting, at a youthful face.
"Hi," the other boy chirruped with a cheerful wave. "My name's Jake. What's yours?"
Harry sat at the breakfast table, a first for him. Ever since he could remembered he either ate over the kitchen sink or in his cupboard, never sitting at a table, with other people.
The boy, Jake, was chattering happily away with Harry, pausing every once in a while to wait for Harry to say something, then continuing blithely on when it became apparent Harry wasn't about to break his silence anytime soon.
Jake was okay, Harry decided. Aside from talking too much, but then again, Harry wasn't exactly a master conversationalist and Jake appeared to being doing the best he could with what he had.
It was the adults that had Harry nervous; there were three of them at the table, two men and a woman, and several more spread throughout the house, all of them, save for the three at the table, eyeing him like he was an ax murderer or something.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Jake's question interrupted Harry's careful scrutiny of his surroundings and he turned to blink at the other boy.
"Do what?" He asked, speaking for the first time, outside of giving the other boy his name.
"Squint," Jake demonstrated Harry's expression, but the boy could barely recognize it through his blurry vision.
"He needs glasses," one of the men spoke. Harry turned his attention back to him, struggling not to squint and failing.
Squinting didn't do him much good, but he could differentiate between the men now. The one who had spoke had longer hair than the other, darker too. And his face was a bit more narrow.
It was the oddly fond tone of voice the man had spoken with that had Harry really curious.
"How did you know that?" Harry asked, the words escaping before he could stop them.
Stupid. Like it wasn't obvious.
"Aside from the squinting?" The other man was chuckling. "It kind of runs in the family."
Family?
Harry froze, stiffened, and stared.
He had family?
He'd thought the Dursley's were the only family he had left; Petunia had spat that at him on more than one occasion, like the very fact was an affront to her sensibilities.
"I thought the Dursley's were the only family I had left," Harry ventured after a moments of silence when it became apparent they were waiting for his response.
"Not hardly," came the derisive snort from the second man. "But considering her prejudices, I'm not surprised she didn't tell you about us."
"Us?"
"Hi Harry," Daniel Evans smiled down at his nephew, feeling such a fierce rush of happiness he was surprised the whole room didn't light up. "I'm your Uncle Daniel."
"And I'm your cousin, Jake," Jake broke in, reaching over and grabbing Harry's hand, shaking it with childlike enthusiasm.
"And I'm your godfather, Sirius."
"Seriously?" The pun slipped pasts Harry's lips, again before he could stop it, and he cringed, expecting a beating, only to evoke roaring laughter in response.
"He's definitely Jame's son," Sirius chortled. "Thank God. I was worried he'd be another Lily."
"And what's so bad about that?" Daniel broke in, affronted on behalf of his deceased sibling. "Lily was a wonderful person."
"Lily was a stick in the mud," Sirius shot back, his words tempered by his jocular tone. "I think that's why James loved her so much. She was incorruptible."
"And there was nothing James loved more than corrupting people. Some of the stunts he talked people into…"
It was a powerful thing to Harry, hearing his parents talked about with love and affection rather than derision and disdain.
He wanted to hear more. But first…
"Do you know where my glasses are?"
Turns out Sirius hadn't picked them up when he'd brought him here.
"No problem," Sirius had stated with a cheerful pat on his back, which Harry struggled not to wince from. He still had bruises from Dudley's last beating.
"We'll just get Ameros to whip you up a pair."
Harry, not having much exposure to the outside world, was nevertheless fairly certain you couldn't 'whip up' a pair of glasses, by a lifetime of knowing better than to backtalk adults had him keeping his mouth quite firmly shut.
Ameros, it turned out, was not one of the many adults scattered throughout the kitchen a dining room.
He held court in a basement room, filled with cauldrons and bubbling brews and it was so like a scene from those horror movies he used to watch from behind the couch during Dudley's annual Halloween Horror festival, Harry's skin prickled with fear.
"So this is the Alal," the blur called Ameros leaned towards him and Harry instinctively backed away.
Daniel watched his nephew shrink away from yet another person and just barely kept his urge to growl in check. Having endured years of abuse at Petunia's hands, he knew enough to recognize the signs of a child who really didn't want to be around someone.
The fact that Harry had had this reaction to everyone in the house, save for Jake, had his hackles rising.
Looking over and meeting Sirius's gaze, he was unsurprised to see vengeance swimming in their depths, the set of his mouth and expression on his face making it clear that there was no way in hell the Dursley's were going to escape unscathed from this mess.
"This will only take a moment," Ameros plowed on in the background, bustling around his labs. In her corner, Vapula rose silently to assist him, prompting a startled Harry to jump, not having realized there was another person in the room.
"Can you fix his eyes?" Daniel asked, a ripple of unease going through him. If the boy couldn't recognize that someone was in the room without his glasses, there were in trouble. All it would take was one well placed push or one well aimed spell and he'd be vulnerable.
"Maybe," Ameros stated, peering over at Harry. "Nearsighted, are you?"
Isn't it obvious?
"Yes, Sir." Though he wanted to be a smartass, Harry had learned to keep some thoughts and opinions to himself. So far, this family was definitely preferable to the Dursley's, but the sheer amount of adults surrounding him still made Harry a little nervous.
"Hmmm…"
Ameros disappeared into a side room, and Vapula was engrossed in her work, leaving Daniel and Sirius alone with the two boys.
Well, relatively alone.
Tamiel, the ever hovering presence, lurked in the doorway, prepared to throw herself in the way in defense against the Alal that couldn't see past his nose without squinting.
"So…" Daniel trailed off, at a loss of what to say to his seven year old nephew who he'd never seen before.
Eight years ago a lot of shit hit the proverbial fan, Lily, James, and Harry being just one piece of the ever growing puzzle.
Before the prophecy had even been spoken, there'd already been trouble in the Evans's family.
For years, aside from having a witch and wizard in the family, Daniel had always assumed their family was the epitome of normal.
Until he turned sixteen, Lily twenty. That was the year their father died. That was the year Leah Nigishdu, his childhood friend, became more.
That was the year everything changed.
In a little over twelve months, both Harry and Jake would be born, prophecies would come into play, over five millennia of careful planning and watching come to fruit.
The fruit, of course, standing in front of him now.
Watching Harry peer around the room, his emerald green eyes taking in the room with unabashed curiosity, reminding him so much of Lily he felt his heart lurch.
A slight noise next to him had him turning to find Sirius staring at Harry with such a raw look of longing he felt like an interloper just watching.
Looking over and meeting Daniel's gaze, Sirius reaffirmed with his eyes what he'd promised with blood so many years ago; he'd do anything, anything to protect this family, his family, from those who would seek to destroy them.
It was a solemn promise Daniel echoed in kind; he'd die to protect his son. The fact that he would also die to protect his nephew was a given; blood called to blood. Even though he hadn't known him before today, Harry was family, and you protected your family.
It was one of the biggest lessons he'd learned in his life, driven home by Lily and Leah's deaths.
Family was everything.
"Here we go," Ameros bustled back into the room, carrying yet another bubbling potion, this one a bright, neon yellow that looked more at home in a strip club than a potions vial.
Not that Daniel had ever been to one of those places.
Though, the look on Tamiel's face when Sirius had dragged them in there had been priceless.
And so worth it.
"Now, I can't fix your eyes outright," Ameros spoke directly to Harry, like the rest of them weren't even in the room. "But I can start a gradually realignment of your optical nerve and effect repairs to damaged sections of your cornea and lens and you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
Harry was staring up at Ameros with a sort of rapt fascination you got when you had no idea what was going on beyond the fact that it, whatever it was, was extraordinary in nature.
Ameros's ramblings had that effect on all of them.
"He's going to fix your eyes," Jake translated for all of them. "But it's going to take time."
"How much time?" Harry asked because, a) he was genuinely curious, and b) it was logical to assume that if this was going to take time, they were going to keep him around for a while.
"Oh, a couple of years," Ameros waved a hand. "I could do it all at once, but you'd be in a surprisingly large amount of pain for quite some time afterwards. Death would be a possibility."
Alrighty, then. Harry was more than happy to wait a couple of years.
"He's still going to need some glasses, then," Daniel put in, just in case Ameros, who had tendency to get a little more obsessed with the potions than the products, had forgotten.
"I know," Ameros replied, producing a pair of black frames fitted with lenses, discreetly handed to him by Vapula.
So that was what she had been working on.
Daniel had been fairly certain neither of them had said anything to the other, but that was the odd couple that was Ameros and Vapula. They were a mystery unto themselves.
"Just swallow this down, put these on, and you're good to go."
He was a little overwhelming, with his cheerful words and somewhat jerky movements. He reminded Harry strongly of the mad scientist with the heart of gold types, which is why he found himself putting the rim of the oddly shaped glass to his lips and drinking without properly considering things first.
The second the taste hit his tongue, he backtracked and gagged.
"Jesus," Daniel was moving, grabbing the vial and thrusting it back at Ameros before grabbing the boy.
Pounding his back to clear his passageways, Daniel froze when the boy let out a pained whimper.
"Harry?" Sirius was moving, kneeling next to the boy, hands hovering as Harry struggled to smooth out his expression.
"I'm fine," Harry snapped, his voice sharp.
"Yeah, cause normal people whimper like that all the time." It was an astute observation, especially coming from a seven year old.
Having a good idea where the bruises had come from, Daniel was sorely tempted to send his son into another room while he tended to his nephew, but judging from the fierce expression on Jake's face, getting him to leave the room would take an act of God…or at the very least, action on the part of the Nephalim, all of whom would rather chew off their arms and legs than harm a hair on the boys head.
"We can help you," Jake continued on, smiling gamely at the suspicious look Harry sent his way. "Really."
Greater people than Harry had crumpled under that earnest stare. The poor kid didn't stand a chance.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Harry was repeating five minutes later, anxiously taking in the closed off expressions of the adults surrounding him and correctly interpreting their silence as bad. The only thing he had wrong was the source. He thought they were angry at him.
Given the kind of life he'd undoubtedly been raised in thus far, Daniel really wasn't all that surprised.
What would surprise him is if any of the Dursley's lived to see their next birthdays.
"We can't kill them," Daniel stated, partially as a reaffirmation of that fact to himself, but mostly as a reminder to Sirius, who was looking like he'd gladly rip one of them, any of them, apart if given the opportunity.
Harry's back was a mess of bruises, centered around his upper shoulders. There was also several hand shaped bruises decorating his upper arms.
Vernon Dursley's only saving grace was the fact that the hands were too small to be his.
His son, on the other hand…
What was the worst, though, was his ribs. Daniel could count
Every.
Single.
One.
This kind of malnourishment didn't just happen overnight.
"Aside from today, when's the last time you had a full meal? Meat and potatoes, the whole shebang," Daniel hastily added when Harry got that look in his eye, the same one Lily used to get when she was about to tell him her version of the truth.
Harry remained stubbornly silent on the matter, leaving Daniel to assume the worst.
"Right, then. Ameros?"
"Nutritional supplements," Ameros nodded his understanding. "Bruise-Be-Gone, probably some calcium additives. And that arm," Ameros reached for Harry's wrist, blinking when the boy instinctively shied away from his grip.
"It should only take a few spells and maybe a potion to fix," Ameros continued, frowning now, turning his attention to Daniel, completely missing the dumbfounded look of shock on Harry's face.
"Spells?" The hoarse whisper had them all pausing in their exchanging of dark, meaningful looks, to look down at the shell shocked boy.
"Didn't the Dursley's tell you?" Sirius blinked down at the boy. "You're a wizard."
Harry scoffed, feeling more at home on this kind of ground. He knew when someone was mocking him; he had years of experience.
"Wizards don't exist."
Sirius and Daniel exchanged an amused look while Jake grinned widely next to him.
Boy was Harry in for one hell of a surprise.
"I'm a wizard." It was the seventeenth time in the past ten minutes Harry had repeated that same phrase to himself and it still didn't feel real.
Daniel couldn't really share the sentiment; Lily had been the first in their family to get the letter and she was four years older than him.
Though Daniel had been assured that magic usually ran in families, he'd seen Petunia not get a letter and assumed that he wasn't either.
When that had come, however, he hadn't been quite as shocked as one who'd never heard of the wizarding world and its realities would have been.
Sirius was no help; as a pureblood, he'd been aware of his magic since birth. Jake, too, had been raised with an advanced, for his age, knowledge of the magics.
So, basically, none of them could accurately sympathize with his dumbfounded expression.
We could really use you right about now, Lils.
God, he missed her.
"Will you drink the potions now?" Ameros, who'd been watching from the background, set the array of bottles he'd carted up with him in front of the boy, somewhat agitated by the thought of his work going to waste.
"Do they taste any better?" Harry shot back, immediately clapping a hand over his mouth and cringing backwards.
Daniel didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
He decided to take Harry's unexpected bought of sarcasm as a good sign, since it made it obvious the Dursley's hadn't beat the spirit out of the boy, because, really, crying wouldn't change things and was, all in all, a completely useless activity.
Reaching up to rub his eyes, he smiled faintly as he caught sight of Sirius doing the same thing next to him.
"Unfortunately, no," Ameros stated, not amused in the least as he plopped the potions vials down in front of him. "Drink."
Harry looked like he'd rather chew off his own hand, and, in a fit of sympathy, Daniel gave him some magical aid.
"Demo Sapor."
Harry blinked as Daniel waved his hand at him.
"You won't taste it now," Daniel stated by way of explanation as the boy peered somewhat suspiciously at him.
Harry continued to stare at him with that expression as he picked up the first vial and put it to his lips.
Much to his surprise, he swallowed it down without so much as a single bad taste. The other four quickly followed, ending with the vision enhancement potion.
"You might want to eat something before I remove the spell," Daniel recommended as Harry sat there, marveling at the empty vials in front of him. Another curious eyed stared met that statement and Daniel found himself grinning wider.
"I can get rid of the taste, but once I remove the spell, you have to deal with the aftertaste, which, I'm fairly certain, is about as pleasant as the actual potion. There're some chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen."
Jake was out of his chair and racing into the kitchen before he'd finished the statement, Harry following after a brief hesitation but with no less enthusiasm.
"Definitely James's son," Sirius chuckled next to him.
"I don't know," Daniel replied with a faint smirk. "Lily always did have quite a sweet tooth. You remember the Pumpkin Pie incident in your fifth year?"
Sirius's smile immediately dropped.
"That wasn't funny." Daniel was already laughing hysterically, Sirius's current expression so mimicking his original reaction it brought Daniel back.
He'd been a first year, awed by the sheer opulence before him. It'd been the annual Halloween feast and, in an effort to stave off the inevitable sugar rush, the amount of sugary treats had been somewhat limited.
When Lily had grabbed the last piece of Pumpkin Pie loaded with whipped cream, Sirius, who was like the freaking bottomless pit, had decided he'd much rather have the pie occupying his stomach, rather than hers.
He was sneaky, Daniel would give him that, but with years of desert stealing experience under his belt against the female in question, Daniel predicted the exact moment Sirius would get caught.
And get caught he did. Red handed, red faced, red everywhere.
He stood out like a freaking beacon. And the best part was none of the teachers would help him, and not even the Ravenclaw's could figure out the countercurse.
Lily had let him stew in his own juices for the weekend and only changed him back to his original color after a bribe of Honeyduke's best chocolate and the understanding that if he ever touched Lily's dessert again, she'd do it again and leave him like that.
"God, I miss her." Daniel's smile lost its humor, taking on a more wistful quality as he, too, reminisced on a woman who was taken way before her time.
"Ameros wants to fit Harry for his glasses," Tamiel spoke, breaking the moment from her position in the doorway.
"And your timing is wonderful, as always," Daniel murmured quietly, but not quietly enough that she couldn't hear.
Her expression gave nothing away as he brushed past and headed into the kitchen to collect the boys.
"You really suck at this 'getting people to like you' thing," Sirius noted, his tone oddly amicable.
"Who says I want people to like me?" Tamiel replied, angling her body out the door, pausing right before her exit. "Besides, what makes you think you're any better?"
Sirius swore he saw the vaguest hint of a smile on the harpy's face as she exited and scowled accordingly.
What absolutely infuriated him was the fact that, as far as comebacks went, it had been surprisingly on the mark.
A/N: Ah...well, this is kind of awkward, but I'm experiencing a temporary bought of writer's impotence...with everything. I've been working on it all day today and I think it's just due to too much stress so don't abandon hope completely for an update...just don't hold your breath. Seriously. You'll probably die before I update.