Before you start reading, I just wanted to say a few things. The last time I posted was almost a year ago and there are reasons for this. The most important among them are personal and to a lesser degree, professional, but another relevant reason is the fact that I am not very comfortable with the style I have been using when writing this fic. I am not used to write in first person, and the almost "stream of consciousness" style I have employed so far is not ideal to write long fics like the one I have in mind. Still, I made up my mind and thought "what the hell, let's continue and see where it goes". And therefore here I am.

This chapter is kind of a filler, actually. Nothing relevant happens plot-wise, but I still thought it to be interesting since it delves in Harry's personality and his relationship with the Dursleys. The most controversial thing in this Chapter are Harry's thoughts on the neglect he suffered during his first life. It may offend some of you, or maybe you will agree with his point of view, I'm not really sure, but before you decide to tear me a new one you ought to know this: Harry's inner musings are actually inspired by a real person's experience. One of my friends' parents died when they were a child, so they were put under the "care" of their grandparents and suffered a great deal of neglect. We talked about what happened to them and how they were able to overcome the memories, what they thought was the worst that could have happened, and what they told me is fundamentally what I tried to write in this Chapter. You may not agree, or maybe you will, but this comes from a first hand story and as much as I would love for you to give me your own point of view on the matter, do so in a civil manner. Please.

And before I forget, there are swear words in here, and I thought it reason enough to change the rating of this story to Mature, just to be safe.


The next few months went by without much progress in my plans. I visited Walburga a number of times since our first meeting, and even though we had already outlined various ways of getting Sirius out of Azkaban, none of those plans could be put in motion until the Malfoy patriarch passed away and the family had had a reasonable time to mourn his death. To be honest with myself, there was no real need for Abraxas to die for us to enact our plans, yet I had come to care enough about the Malfoys that I didn't want to cut short the little time Abraxas had left to be with his family. Giving Lucius a task he would feel obligated to do, like getting Sirius out of prison, would make him spend more time at the Ministry and less time at home.

Then again, I could safely admit to myself that that was not the only reason I had for waiting, since I needed Lucius to use his connections and political talents with well balanced cunning. A distracted faux pas, one single mistake made by telling the wrong person about my godfather's incarceration without a trial and Sirius could have his soul sucked in attempt to cover it all up. That was definitely not something I wanted, and if I had to wait for Lucius to not be concerned and distracted by his father's dying state in order for things to go like I wished, that's what I would have to do.

Of course, that didn't mean that I liked waiting all that much, but other things could be accomplished in the meantime, and my amount of self-imposed little tasks helped fighting the dullness of the neighbourhood known as Privet Drive.

With the heavy load of reading material I had brought back from that eventful Saturday in Diagon Alley, I had no time left for the quietness of the place to bore me. I spent the days reading and studying every book I had obtained, gathering as much information as possible and training my wandless magic until I no longer needed to mentally recite the incantations, letting it act on instincts.

My days started early on with meditation in order to perfect my Occlumency shields and organize my thoughts, an activity that was followed by cooking breakfast while the Dursleys were still asleep. I would then go alone to school like the good kid I was, going straight to the solitude the local library offered me until closing time.

On weekends I had all the time to myself. I would either lock myself in my bedroom or go to the library to read until dinner, making a quick break for lunch in between. I was pretty satisfied with this newfound routine and the thoughtful solitude I could immerse myself in when in my bedroom. None of the Dursleys bothered me during that time, especially with all the anti-muggles and notice-me-not charms I daily casted on my door. As soon as they came to investigate my whereabouts, they suddenly remembered something urgent they had to do who knows where and left me to enjoy the quietness of my solitude.

At first there had been some problems since Petunia, who was not as stupid as she made herself to be, quickly noticed that I was never on sight. The few times she had actually remembered me and went to check my whereabouts, she promptly forgot her intentions and had the sudden urge to be somewhere else.

She actually confronted me one morning, waking up at a ridiculous early hour to disclose what I was up to. She hadn't seen me for a week by then. What followed was a short yet terribly awkward silence, at least for me, where I tried to come up with a credible excuse about what I did during the day and why she couldn't enter my room. I had to come up on the spot with a good enough reason as to why I, a seven year old kid, never seemed to be at home, but despite the ability to think on my feet I had been gifted with, I could not come up with a good enough excuse to give her.

Here I was, thinking myself so clever with my power and plans just to be outsmarted by Petunia Dursley of all people.

What did children my age do when not at home? But more importantly, what did normal kids do that could explain my prolonged absence from Dursley household? The library could not always be used as an excuse, and no matter how well they had accepted my studious tendencies I could not constantly justify my absence with an ever growing desire for literature. That was just not the way things worked at Privet Drive. I tried to remember then what my own childhood had consisted of when I was at school, and before I could stop myself the words came out of my mouth.

"I run", I told my horse of an aunt, and from the way she stopped glaring at me I knew she had not expected that.

Her eyes narrowed just a little bit, enough to express her scepticism at my seemingly random answer. "What do you mean you run?"

Think, Harry, damnit!

"I… I run with the older boys. At school. Sometimes." Way to go, Potter, I thought to myself.

"That is still not an acceptable answer, boy! Why would you need to run with the older boys?"

And wasn't that a good question. There was no decent explanation for my supposed behaviour, and I sheepishly looked at the floor while biting my lips. There had to be a reasonable activity that involved children running around through the school grounds, I just had to remember it!

"Well?", Petunia asked with a sneer clear on her face. "I want that answer now, brat, unless you are lying to me…"

Fuck it.

"I want to join the track team!", I blurted out.

"What?"

"I want to join the track team. When I'm older." That was a good excuse as any other. "The older boys go running after school sometimes. They do competitions, like real competitions, with medals and stuff, and they told me that when I'm older I can join the team!"

Petunia regarded me with a small amount of surprise and a larger dose of suspicion, but even she had to admit that my excuse was believable. Well, somewhat believable. It was not strange for younger kids to try to imitate the cool boys at school, after all, or at least that was what I was trying to tell myself.

She kept looking at me, waiting for me to break under her gaze and admit that I was lying, but I had endured worse stares throughout my life and knew how to keep undaunted under her pitiful attempt.

"Very well", she finally said, but then she added "I will talk to your teacher to see if it's alright for you to spend so much time with those boys", and I took those words as the warning they were, since I had no doubt in my mind that Petunia could and would go to my school just to confirm what I told her. That could be troublesome, but not enough to worry about. Some small mind magic and her intentions would soon be forgotten.

Now that the small matter of my absence had been dealt with, the second part of her interrogation began. It was even more difficult to answer than the first, for what could I tell this suspicious woman to explain why she was literally incapable of coming near my room? It took some time to calm her down and convince her that no, aunt Petunia, nothing out of the ordinary was taking place, that certainly no kind of freakish magic was involved but, much to my amusement, I had to use magic for her to believe me and stop asking questions. A silent Confundus did the trick nicely.

Still, from that day onwards I made an effort to be seen at least once a day by the Dursleys, usually at dinner. Sometimes the whole situation around the kitchen table felt surreal to me. My mind had decades ago associated the place with totally different feelings than the ones I was experiencing now.

Privet Drive as a whole had many connotations for me, and none of them were happy ones. Each time I walked its streets I remembered those times the neighbours had looked at me with distrust, checking if their wallets were still in their pockets because, everybody be careful, the local criminal was just a few steps away. The fact that I had been six years old, in the literal sense of the word, when the rumors started to spread was not minded by any of them.

When in school I sometimes still watched over my shoulder, expecting Dudley and his gang to come up to me and start Harry-hunting again. And each time I passed by the cupboard under the stairs I could not help but be reminded of the small, scared and terribly lonely child I had once been, wondering why my parents hadn't taken me with them when they died, leaving me instead in this little piece of hell where the only thing I felt was a hole inside of my chest.

While it was true that the Dursleys had never actually abused me in a physical way, with the exception of those couple of times Petunia had hit me in the head with her frying pan, I sometimes felt that the neglect with which they treated me had been worse. I wasn't in any way in need of being hurt by Vernon's meaty fists, mind you, but I could not help but wonder if suffering physical aggression could have woken inside of me some desire to fight back. Would I have grown up with a keener sense of self preservation, I often wondered, or would I have been even more broken than I had ended up being?

Being neglected, even as heavily as was my case, only succeeded in making me feel an insignificant child unworthy of love with a deep need to prove myself worthy of the care I so craved, even though I thought myself undeserving of that same love I so seeked.

One cannot predict what could have happened if my treatment at the Dursley's hand had included physical punishment, but I sometimes thought that I would have prefered an occasional broken bone but a healthy amount of self respect and fighting spirit rather than the emotional mess I had become after being ignored and forgotten in my cupboard for ten years of my life. In the end, even the insults the Dursleys had directed at me hadn't riled me up nor had they incited my anger, for I had come to believe that they were right, that it was my fault if they did not care for me, that if I only were not a freak and just another normal boy, I would finally deserve respect.

That kind of mentality followed me through all my years in Hogwarts and beyond, up until my adulthood when I finally came to accept myself and saw my treatment at the Dursleys for what it had been: not a well deserved loathing, but the irrational hate of narrow minded people who feared what they could not understand, and were too dependant of what society would think of them. In Petunia's case, it would not be strange to add an unresolved dose of jealousy to the amount of issues she had.

Still, it had all happened such a long time ago for me that being here again, in Privet Drive, felt almost like a novel experience to me. The memories of what my life had been in here felt so far away that, when I sat down with the Dursleys to have something as ordinary as dinner, I sometimes forgot how they had treated me all those decades ago.

I was tempted at times to simply ignore the memories in face of the almost care the Dursleys bestowed upon me now. Life with them was almost easy now, with me tutoring Dudley and Petunia occasionally asking about my wellbeing. Even Vernon treated me, even if not with the same love as his own son, at least with the deference he usually saved for Dudley's friends.

For Merlin's sake, I even got to have some clothes of my own instead of my fat cousin's hand-me-down's!

All in all, this time around I could be considered a somewhat healthy boy in possession of the correctly graduated glasses, new clothes my own size and an acceptable room where I could disappear into whenever I so desired. Had I been an actual seven year old kid, I would have almost felt at home even if a little less loved when compared to Dudley. My emotional baggage, at least, would have been significantly smaller.

The problem, though, was that neither was I that young anymore nor had my childhood been anything but miserable.

I wanted to hate the Dursleys for how they had made me suffer no matter how civil they were acting towards me now, I really did, but I could not gather that old resentment that had been my companion for decades anymore. I had experienced worse things during my more than sixty years of existence, and there were matters way more important to which direct my attention and energy.

Living with them was tolerable and temporary, so a part of me wanted to ignore the past and settle with planning to change that which I could actually do something about. At least for now, I always reminded myself, for even though my heart did not seek revenge like it had before, and despite the vast amount of time that had come to pass since I actually cared about this undesired part of my family, the truth was that somewhere deep inside I still longed for them to be punished.

It was because of this mindset of mine that no matter how bearable our relationship was and regardless of my healed childhood traumas, I did certainly not enjoy those evenings in which, out of necessity, I was required to socialize with my relatives.

The understanding I had now with them did not make up for their terrible table manners, which were almost on pair with those of Ronald Weasley. I watched silently as they ate their dinner, which I was fortunately not forced to cook this time around, and felt my appetite gradually disappear.

It was a hideous scene, yet it was outstanding how the two other males on the table behaved just like the pigs they physically resembled.

Petunia, on the other hand, ate with a learned and somewhat forced elegance that made one think she were in presence of the high English aristocracy instead of her own family. The contrast was so strong I really wondered how she could endure it. One would think Petunia would demand her husband and son the same restraint and manners she expected from herself, but alas, that did not seem to be the case.

Dinner for the Dursleys was just as much about eating as it was about Vernon's rambling while Petunia nodded in encouragement while Dudley watched Tv. As much as it disgusted me, I was unable to tear my eyes away from Vernon's face as he told his wife about the ongoings at his office while food was still in his mouth. Some pieces of barely chewed steak were stuck at the corners of his lips, barely by his moustache. He looked like the human version a walrus. I shivered at the thought and the movement seemed to attract Vernon's attention.

"Are you not going to finish it, boy?" I was never 'Harry' for Vernon, but the moniker still lacked the venom with which he had said it in the past.

"I'm not very hungry, uncle Vernon", I said and out of habit I took my plate and passed it for him to eat my share.

"Harry is keeping his eating on check, dear. He wants to enter the track team when he is older", she said in an attempt to appease her husband while her hand came to rest on his beefy forearm, trying to sooth him with a caress.

"The track team? That is full of shirtlifters." He locked his small, beady eyes with mine, as if by glance alone I could be sufficiently intimidated to never look at any man again. "I hope you are not one of those freaks, boy."

Of course I was. Partially, at least, but that bigoted idiot I had for an uncle did not deserve that kind of information. Instead I frowned slightly, with the appropriate amount of confusion that could be expected from an ignorant child.

"What is a shirtlifter?", I asked, purposely deaf to the curtness of his voice.

"A freak of nature, that's what they are." Vernon's fist hit the table with enough force to make the tableware rattle and the glasses come close to tipping over. "They are perverts the lot of them, flaunting their freakishness for everyone to see. They should be all put down like..."

"Vernon!" Petunia exclaimed. "He is too young to know about such things! And he can't possibly be one of those, what with having you as his role model, darling", she added in a futile attempt to divert the conversation to safer topics.

I really did not know why she tried. One would think she should know how her own husband's moods worked.

"Well, I don't know" Vernon grumbled under his breath. "With his blood he could be anything."

The silence that fell was only interrupted by the sound of the telly, and the tension could be cut with a butter knife. No one knew what to say. Vernon kept on eating the dinner on my plate while Petunia took a sip of water, probably wishing it was something stronger.

I kept my gaze firmly on my lap, knowing that any word or reaction on my part would be taken as a trigger for the situation to escalate. It wasn't actually that hard for me to reign on my famous temper, for after decades of hearing a variety of insults and accusations directed at me I had come to learn how to ignore any kind of provocation. But even then, a mild sliver of irritation could not be kept at bay from my thoughts.

Vernon's obvious insinuations about my sexuality were not insulting, no matter his opinion about homosexuals, and the occasional slur against my parents had stopped bothering me as much as it did in my youth. After all, worse words had been directed at me than the ill-constructed opinions of a narrow minded pig with too strong attachments to his own distorted moral code.

In a rational way, I knew his assessments were at the bottom of my very long list of problems, and challenging Vernon in any way just to prove my parent's worthiness to him was a completely pointless and risky endeavour, but the clear inkling of annoyance I felt could not be ignored. I wanted, at the very least, to give him the driest of retorts with a not so subtle insult to accompany it, just for my own peace of mind, but self control had been drilled into my manners and so I kept my unassuming and subdued facade.

The time would come for me to let all my repressed anger loose, and precipitating that event would be futile and unnecessary. Being forced to bear with the current circumstances was discouraging, but when confronted with the possible outcomes I could not deny the advantages of patience.