SUMMERY: A sixteen year old Harry Potter is cursed with dreams of alternate lives he might have lived, had he made choices for himself. When he is then given the chance to start his life over and give it another go, he seizes the opportunity. Harry...may or may not have thought this through.

Rating: T (...at the moment. May go higher as Harry gets older.)

Warnings: Violence. Mental and emotional abuse. Emotional manipulation. Characters with flexible morals. A Harry encouraged from a young age to think independently and form his own opinions. Other magical schools. Demons and magical creature culture. Pureblood politics. Verbal Sparing. Possesed diaries. Cunning criminals. Time travel.

AN: I have gotten questions about Lady. All I will tell you is to pay close attention to how she acts and with whom.

-PSEUDONYMOUS

You tried to make me think

That the blame was all on me

With the pain you put me through

And now I know that it's not me it's you

Hadrian's head jerked to the left. He kept his face blank, eyes hard, just as Lady taught him. Turning he offered his other cheek to his uncle defiantly. This resulted in a hard punch, knocking him back against the sink. The dishes rattled and clanked. Soap sloshed out. He fell to one knee, hands in tight fists, teeth clenched, turning the pain into controlled rage.

Just as Lady taught him.

Green eyes look up through black fringe and watched his uncle, impassively, who appeared un-nerved and walked away, leaving his nephew on the kitchen floor. Hadrian nodded once to himself and stood. Using the soapy water in the sink he wiped the blood from his face, rinsed it out the dirty dish rag and finished washing his relatives dishes. From the dinner he wasn't invited to. The dinner he was never invited to.

There was a time, once, in his life Hadrian thought someone would rescue him. Someone would remember him and come looking. His younger self would stay up late at night, staring in the darkness under the stairs and imagine what his unnamed rescuer would be like. What they would do to his relatives in outrage at his treatment. And then, of course, they would take him far away and he would pretend the years with his relatives never happened. He was perhaps far too hopeful and idealistic for his own good.

No such person ever came.

Masked heroes in crimson capes didn't exist in real life. No one cared if you were tired. No one cared if you were hurting. Because no one cared to look. And if they did, if they did see. Bruises or tears or flickers of fears. What did it matter? They had their own lives and their own worries. Too much of their own hurt to bother trying to shoulder someone elses. Even if that someone else was child. Even if they lived down the street or perhaps next door. Even if they saw it again each day. No one was going to save you.

You had to save yourself.

When his cousin pushed him around, teased him, insulted his parents or chased him down the street with his group of thugs. When his uncle yelled in his face, knocked him to the ground or threw him in his cupboard. When aunt belittled him and his mother or made certain he saw how much better Dudley was treated them himself. Made certain he saw just how unwanted he was. He stood up straight, or held himself up as straight as he could as the case often was, taking whatever came at him. He cataloged the event, gathered the pain and locked it up in a box. Lady told him it would make him stronger, if he remembered what they did. If he remembered the pain. If remembered what he survived.

So he did.

She was waiting for him when he got there, his mentor and only friend, looking as out-of-place as one could in the muggle park. The last remnants of sunlight faded in the distance and sounds of the upper middle class neighborhood fadded with it..

Muggles.

The first time Lady used that term Hadrian asked what it meant, she called them, with an odd, amused smile, 'Convenient ever-present human shields'. He still hadn't decided whether she was kidding. In fact he never really knew when she was joking, even if she snickered afterward. Lady was the sort of person who always seemed to mean a least a little of what she said. Even if it was something as unimportant as a conversation arguing the superiority of purple versus blue which seemed to be more popular. Apparently it hadn't always been that way. He couldn't tell anyone most of the conversation, however, as he hadn't understood most of it himself. That was another about Lady, she often made him feel stupid.

The old, cracked swing creaked ominously and partially rusted chains rippled as it swung slightly in the wind. Hadrian took a seat, bravely in his mind, and kicked his feet.

"What are we learning today?" He asked, after a long while of silence.

A thin glass bottle came into his line of sight. Hadrian glared at the peach liquid inside for he hated the colour and everything else there was to hate about it. But he still took it and drank it. Hadrian shuddered and made a face.

"I know say this every time...but that tastes horrible."

Lady took it back and bopped him over the head. "Deal with it."

Hadrian wasn't sure what, exactly, was in the strange concoction but after he took it his bruises always faded and the aches always dulled. After experiencing having it forced down his throat he became more obliging toward the whole ordeal.

It did taste horrible. Sugar did nothing to change that.

He tried.

"You asked me to give you the necessary tools to defend yourself in my absence. I shall do so. Listen. There is no defense without an offense. You need to get rid of any notions you may have of peaceful comprises. Not to say such events won't occur, when I finished with you you ought to be able to make them happen in most instances readily. Preparing for the moments when carefully chosen words and body language fail you is useful and necessary."

Lady paced in front of the swing set, slowly, long legs striding, small hands swinging.

"There will be times where ending a conflict quickly and without physical confrontation will not be an option. In those instances you must be ready to do one of three things. Fight back. Flee. Perish. Adapt, Migrate or Die. These are your choices. If you attempt to flee, are unsuccessful, and then refuse to fight back you are making the choice to die. You are sentencing yourself to death. Will it be a quick death? A long, painful one..." Lady shrugged, "but die you shall. The sort of people who endanger those like you and I will not hold back in light of your age. They. Do. Not. Care. Repeat that in your mind each night before you sleep. Write it on the back of your hand. Remember it. Expect it."

Hadrian swallowed. If he hadn't been rather terrified by her speech he might have suggested teaching to her as an alternate occupation. As it was his fingers clenched around the chains of his swing painfully and his heart thudded against his chest.

"Your instruction begins now."