Chapter One: The First Seven Years: Part 1

Aunt Petunia had ordered Rose up the stairs, taking her to a dusty room full of clutter and empty metal bookshelves. Off to the side was a bed, the kind that Rose had moved to when she first got her bedroom.

Rose missed her room – she missed the pink walls and the purple drapes with twinkling stars and the glowing crystal night-light shaped like a unicorn that Daddy had gotten her when she first got her own room. She missed how it would prance around and bleat to the tune of 'On the Way to Baba Yaga's House.' Most of all, she missed Mummy and Daddy; they would never have left her all alone like this, Mummy wouldn't have made her carry Harry all by herself, or threaten to leave him in the cupboard if she didn't, or glare at her like she was an ugly bug...

"Shut up and stop whining and crying, you stupid girl," Aunt Petunia snapped, dumping Mr. Purfesser's bag on the ground with a whump. "This is where you'll sleep."

Rose looked around at the barren white carpet and the ugly walls that looked like sick – she didn't see another bed. "Where'll Harry sleep?"

"Here." Aunt Petunia turned to leave. "Dinner's at six. Don't be late, or you'll get nothing!"

"Wait! Harry hasn't got a bed!"

Aunt Petunia turned back and glared down at her. "He'll get a bed when he's big enough to need one!" she snarled.

"But he had a bed back home!"

"I don't care! You'll make do with what I give you! The both of you are lucky I don't toss you back out on the street." Aunt Petunia took hold of the door handle. "Keep the smaller brat quiet – if he wakes up my son, he won't get breakfast." And then she slammed the door behind her.

Rose sat a sleepy Harry down on the pillow of the bed with his blanket (which he continued to chew on and soak with spit), and she curled up on the floor with her knees to her chin. She choked back her cries, and tried to sob as quietly as she could.

~RP~

Aunt Petunia didn't pay Harry any attention at all, except when he needed a bath or his nappy changed – and that was only because Rose was too small to do it herself. Whenever Rose tried to tell her Harry was hungry or sleepy or upset or wanted his toys, Aunt Petunia would scoff and tell her to take care of it herself, she had better things to do. Such "better things" seemed to mainly include doing all those things for Baby Dudley instead. At every opportunity, Aunt Petunia would coo over the little blond screaming nightmare, and Harry and Rose had to stay up in their room and be quiet at all times, unless there was something Aunt Petunia wanted Rose to do.

Uncle Vernon wouldn't help her at all either – Rose had hoped he'd be nicer than Aunt Petunia, but when she met him the following morning after first coming to the house, he greeted her with a hot and angry glare that made her feel smaller than ever. She was too scared to ask him for anything after that.

A week into living in her new home, Rose was still crying herself to sleep at night. She tried to sleep on the floor when she did this – her crying woke Harry up, and then he started crying, and he didn't know not to be loud.

She missed Mummy and Daddy so much she hurt – Harry was just a baby and didn't know they were gone, so she had to miss them for him, too. She missed magic; Aunt Petunia had taken all their magic toys and burned them, so Rose was crying for Mr. Who, her hooting plush owl, as well. She'd even taken away the little red train she'd gotten last Christmas from the nice old man they'd stayed with (she hadn't been able to say his name properly, and now she'd forgotten what it was). Now there was no more magic left, and she wasn't allowed to talk about it at all, or she'd miss a meal.

Rose had tried to cry and throw a tantrum at first – Mummy and Daddy had never made her miss dinner, and never locked her in her room! But Uncle Vernon had stood up, and threatened to beat her into the ground, and then Aunt Petunia slapped her and told her to go to her room. Rose, having never been slapped before in her life, obeyed in stunned silence. It had left the side of her face all red, and it hurt for hours afterward.

(Rose had still snuck out, though - Aunt Petunia had taken Uncle Vernon to the kitchen after, and shouted at him.

"They're my sister's brats, I'll punish them how I see fit! You don't get to lay one finger on them!" Rose thought they might've thrown things at each other, later, but she'd run away again when Uncle Vernon started yelling, his voice shaking the walls like booming thunder. As she'd cowered in her room, desperately shushing Harry as he cried, Rose thought she might've heard Dudley crying in the distance too.)

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, Rose had finally decided, were ugly, mean, and nasty, and they were the worst people she'd ever, ever known. She and Harry were all alone – all they had was each other in this horrible house.

And having come to that conclusion a week after coming to live on Privet Drive, Rose climbed into bed with Harry, and hugged her baby brother close, determined not to cry. Harry was worse off, whether he knew it or not, and he needed her.

~RP~

Months passed. Rose grew a little, and Aunt Petunia reluctantly bought new clothes for her. Rose didn't get to pick anything, but she was beginning to expect these things from her aunt. Nonetheless, the clothes were very plain, ugly, and itchy, and Rose felt miserable in them.

As she grew, so did Aunt Petunia's list of chores. She was set to drying dishes as Aunt Petunia washed them, and if she dropped one, she was dragged by her ear to wait in the cupboard under the stairs until bedtime, with no meals. Rose also weeded the garden with her, swept and scrubbed the kitchen floor, picked up after Dudley when he threw his toys, brought Uncle Vernon his newspapers, mail, and tea, gathered trash from all the rooms and the Dursleys' cars, set the table, brought in the milk, stacked the dirty dishes for Aunt Petunia to wash – and all this all the while she was looking after Harry, because Aunt Petunia refused to pay more the bare minimum amount of attention to him, and Merlin, Rose had never known that her little brother needed so, so much.

So Rose also learned how to feed him spoonfuls of mushy baby food (and how to clean up when he made a mess, so she would still be allowed to feed him later), and how to keep him out of the way while she was working. This got more difficult, as Harry was getting bigger and starting to crawl a lot, and Rose was trying her best to continue Mummy and Daddy's walking lessons up in their room, to very little success. Whenever she could, Rose put him up in Dudley's high chair whenever the other baby wasn't in it, and that kept Harry from tumbling into buckets of dirty mop water.

Then Dudley turned three, and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon invited all of his classmates from nursery school and all of Uncle Vernon's friends from work and all the neighbors and all the neighbors' children, made a big cake with big sparkling candles in it, and pudding and trifle and all the things one could possibly expect from a child's dream birthday. Dudley got very excited, of course, running up and down the halls with shrieks of laughter.

After Rose helped Aunt Petunia clean for company and set everything up, she was told to take her brother with her to their room, stay upstairs, be quiet, and pretend they didn't exist.

It was boring, and awful of them to do, especially since Rose also had to clean up after a party she hadn't been allowed to attend. (There hadn't even been any cake left!) But Rose had known her parents, and her other aunties and uncles (whose names and faces she barely remembered, but she missed them anyway) and she knew that this Aunt and this Uncle were the worst people ever and would tell Harry as much while she (tried to) read to him from the sole Muggle picture book Mummy had kept to read to them (Goodnight Moon), and the only one of theirs saved from Aunt Petunia's magic purge. Rose couldn't actually read, and also couldn't quite remember how it went, and probably mixed some of it up with her Beedle stories, but Harry was a baby and he wouldn't know the difference. It seemed to work better than just shushing him, anyway.

Before Rose even knew it, it was May the tenth, and that meant it was her birthday, and she was turning FIVE. There was no way they were going to celebrate it the way they had Dudley's third, but she was cautiously optimistic that there might at least be cake.

But there was no such luck. Rose came down the stairs that morning to find that Uncle Vernon hadn't even known it was her birthday, and Aunt Petunia's present, wrapped in newspaper and twine, was a patched, worn old denim jacket far too big for her. Aunt Petunia insisted irritably that she would grow into it, and she wouldn't need another jacket for years now, but wearing it was like trying to swim in a pair of Uncle Vernon's jeans. Aunt Petunia had called her an ungrateful brat when she took it off.

Otherwise, the day was like any other. With no cake to be had, Rose had taken upstairs a spare piece of paper and sadly drawn a birthday cake with five lit candles on it.

She tried to blow them out, like Daddy had been able to do with a picture he'd drawn for his own birthday, but she couldn't, and Rose cried for a while, thinking Aunt Petunia must have taken away her own magic as well.

A few more short months passed, and then it was July the thirty-first! (Rose could count up to fifty, and she was very proud of this.) That meant Harry was turning two years old, and having seen what their family had done for her birthday, Rose wanted to do better. Harry was her baby brother, and the cutest, and therefore the best baby in the world, and if anyone deserved a big birthday bash with cake and presents and trifle, it was him.

So, after the chores were done for the morning, and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had settled down to watch telly in the lounge, Rose crept downstairs to the kitchen.

She tried to be as quiet as possible – if she was caught, it'd be the cupboard or worse. She got out a big bowl, a spoon, all the white powders in the pantry, butter and eggs. Rose only ever remembered seeing her mummy use magic to make cakes, but she knew you didn't need it to make a cake, and she was going to try.

After tying a dish towel round her middle like an apron, she got a stool to stand on, and got to work on the counter. Rose wasn't sure how much of each white powder she needed, so to be safe she poured as much as possible from each container while not using all of it.

She thought she remembered Mummy using three eggs, so she tried to crack each one softly, but they just wouldn't open without making noise, so Rose ended up putting them in the bowl with the powder and crushing them with the spoon. Seeing the pieces in the bowl and realizing her mistake, she tried to pick out as many fragments of the shell as possible, but there were just so many of them! Rose moved on to the butter, as she supposed it couldn't hurt much if there was some left in (perhaps it dissolved?).

The butter was actually the hardest – it was straight from the fridge, and Rose couldn't mash it no matter how hard she pressed with the spoon. In the end, she had to assume that it was just supposed to be like that, and tried to move on to the next step: mixing.

Rose wasn't sure how long she would need to mix – it looked nothing like the creamy, appetizing batter that Mummy had always poured into the tin at the end, and more like a damp, lumpy pile of white dust.

Rose gasped in realization, and then she sneezed, as she had inhaled some of the powder. Cream! Mummy had used milk! She hopped off the stool to go get it.

Unfortunately, the sneeze was louder than she had accounted for. As Rose opened the door to the fridge again, she found herself being suddenly yanked backward by the neck of her shirt.

"What the hell are you doing?" Aunt Petunia hissed, grabbing her arm by her wrist.

"Let go of me, it hurts!" Rose cried.

Aunt Petunia, still clutching Rose's arm, whirled around, taking in the mess that the five-year-old had made, her face as white as a sheet. She grabbed both of the little girl's arms and snarled in her face, "You will never, ever speak of this, understand? You are going to clean this mess up, and then you are going straight in the cupboard until after supper."

"But-"

"But nothing! I don't care what you thought you were doing, you are never going to do it again! Now throw out whatever you've put in that bowl, and for God's sake, don't bloody cry about it!"

Aunt Petunia made her scrape what would've been Harry's birthday cake into the bin, ignoring her niece's tear-stained face, and dragged her into the cupboard, slamming the door. Rose was left angrily sobbing to herself in the dark.

~RP~

A few weeks after that incident, Aunt Petunia had dragged her to the kitchen by her ear. "If you want to cook, you're going to damn well learn how to do it without destroying my kitchen!" she had told Rose, and then had begun making a roast, forcing the girl to watch and pay attention to each and every step. Aunt Petunia made Rose repeat the recipe back to her every other step, and pinched her arm hard whenever Rose got it wrong, telling her to start over.

Aunt Petunia did the same thing the next day, and the next, and next, and at the end of each meal, she would make Rose repeat the process of that day's dinner, and yesterday's. Rose supposed that this was supposed to teach her to cook, but her aunt had told her she wasn't allowed to cook on her own until she was tall enough to reach the stove. She was grumpy about being made to stick with something so useless and boring, but if it meant she could bake Harry a birthday cake one day, Rose supposed she could bear it.

Months flew by. September came and went.

The weather grew colder, and colder, and colder, and the sky grew darker, and darker, and darker as the days shortened.

In mid-October, Rose started to cry at night again. She wasn't sure why, and no matter what she did, she found that she just couldn't stop. So, she learned to cry quietly, hot tears streaming down her cheeks as she gulped down her wails, under the covers and in the moments away from Aunt Petunia she could steal now and then.

Two-year-old Harry, who had mastered walking, and was learning more words and looking around much more at his surroundings, would touch her face at night and ask, "Rosie?" with a concerned expression on his chubby little face, and she would try to smile, though she sometimes struggled to remember how.

Day by day, her tears increased, with a strange mixture of sadness and fear that Rose couldn't understand, had never known before. As Halloween decorations took over Privet Drive and the shops around Surrey that Aunt Petunia dragged her to, she began to have nightmares.

The first time she remembered one, she finally realized why.

In the dream, she was stuck in the cupboard under the stairs, only outside the cupboard, through the vent slats, she didn't see the inside of Aunt Petunia's house, but Harry's nursery, back home. She could see Mummy's legs, and hear Harry cooing above her as the door to the nursery opened with a bang.

Rose knew who it was. She knew what was going to happen. But she couldn't do anything, because Mummy had told her she had to be quiet, and had to be still.

All she could do was sit in the cupboard, so, so scared, and watch Mummy slump to the floor, blocking her view (dead now, she was dead) and hear the man's steps as he came closer and closer to the crib -

And that was when she had started awake, crying and shaking.

Last year, she had looked out the window curiously at all the children outside in costumes, and asked Daddy why they were wearing those things. He had told her that they were going around in costumes, from house to house, and people were giving them candy. Rose had immediately wanted to go out and do that, of course, but Daddy had gently told her that she couldn't, that it was very dangerous, and someone bad would see her and hurt her. Maybe in a few years, she could.

Rose had thrown a tantrum, and run up to sulk in her room, until Mummy had come up and lured her out with the promise of candy in the lounge, even if she couldn't go out and trick-or-treat. She couldn't even remember what they did in the lounge, what games they had played, what candy they had eaten. Just that soon after, the door had crashed open, Daddy had yelled, Mummy had clutched her close, picked her and Harry up, and run upstairs.

Daddy was gone, Mummy was gone, and now she was little, and alone, and hiding scared, trapped.

She had Harry, of course, but she didn't really have him. He had her. Rose had no one.

Halloween came. As the sun set, Rose watched the trick-or-treaters outside from her window, then drew the curtains closed.

Aunt Petunia had gone out with Dudley. Harry was asleep already, and Rose didn't move, didn't tear her gaze away from the door, didn't dare speak, even to herself. She didn't sleep that night.

Nothing awful happened. She didn't die, she didn't lose Harry. The sun rose, and she almost screamed when Aunt Petunia banged on the door that morning, calling for her to wake the hell up, but Rose survived, and didn't lose what little left she had.

~RP~

Her first Christmas at Privet Drive wasn't as bad as Rose was expecting.

Somehow, it wasn't as horrible as last year's; that new, too-quiet Christmas without her Mummy and Daddy, and at a stranger's house as well. However, hearing Aunt Petunia tell Dudley that a man called Father Christmas was going to give him presents for being such a good boy this year made her want to scream – how could she lie to her own kid like that?

Rose knew her aunt was lying, because magic people didn't have Father Christmas – Mummy and Daddy had told her that mummies and daddies gave their kids lots of presents on Christmas because they were little and they loved them lots, and they'd never lied, like a stupid mean bully, and told her a man was breaking into the house while she slept.

That thought had made her feel a little sick, when she overheard Aunt Petunia describe it.

She and Harry would get no presents from 'Father Christmas' of course, because they had been 'very bad children.' Rose knew perfectly well she had been nothing but good all year, aside from the one tantrum she'd thrown, and she tried to tell Aunt Petunia that that wasn't fair, but all that had gotten her was being called ungrateful again.

Well, Rose wasn't grateful. And maybe that made her a bad little girl, but she couldn't imagine how being out on the street was any worse than living in this house.

It was this thought that gave her a startling inspiration, one winter night as she was drifting off to sleep. Harry wasn't old enough to run away just yet, but once he was able to walk and talk, they could leave this place! They could go far, far away, just the two of them, and be happy somewhere else. They wouldn't have to live with mean Aunt Petunia and scary Uncle Vernon – they could find one of their other aunts or uncles (Rose wasn't entirely sure how many of them there had been anymore). They could have magic back!

These plans were forgotten as soon as she awoke the next morning, losing all form and detail, but the seed of the idea remained, buried deep in her dreams, growing roots.

~RP~

That Christmas morning, Dudley woke up his parents (and Rose and Harry in the next room) with gleeful screaming. Harry had learned to be quiet, but his face still scrunched up like he was about to cry.

He needed new clothes, Rose thought as Dudley rocketed downstairs ahead of them. She'd been trying to tell Aunt Petunia for months, he'd gotten much too big for his old ones – he was wearing her shirts these days, as swamped in the fabric as she was in the denim jacket. Despite how much was being kept from him that Dudley was getting, Rose's heart swelled with pride as he held her hand going downstairs. Her little brother had grown so much! He was walking, running even, talking sometimes, and he had even just learned to use the potty!

(Aunt Petunia had taught her to potty-train him. The nappies she bought for Harry were cheap, and they fell apart quickly, so he couldn't wear them for long. Uncle Vernon had complained about the smell, and roared at Aunt Petunia about the cost of the nappies. He'd broken three plates against the wall when he had first done the numbers – the next day, Aunt Petunia had taken Rose aside, told her to watch her while she was potty-training Dudley, and then do the same with her brother.)

Harry had learned quickly, and soon he didn't need to wear nappies anymore! He was so good, he was so much better than Dudley! How dare Aunt Petunia say he isn't! Rose thought.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, she hugged him tight. Harry looked up at her through his soft, shaggy hair inquiringly, and Rose shook her head and kissed him on the forehead as she sat him down, and went into the kitchen for another of Aunt Petunia's cooking lessons, which had now extended to lunch and breakfast.

Dudley didn't even bother waiting for breakfast - he tore open his presents with impatient fervor, not even sparing a moment to marvel over one before moving on to the next. There were robots, trains, plastic soldiers, blocks, tinker toys, and nearly a hundred other things that Rose couldn't name. When the robot had moved, she had quietly gasped. Dudley got magic toys, and they didn't? That was so stupid and not fair!

(A few weeks later, it ran out of batteries, and for some reason, Rose felt a little silly for being so jealous.)

Off to the side, as far away from the Christmas tree as they could get, were two newspaper-wrapped packages, which Aunt Petunia kicked towards them when she saw Rose and Harry standing in the doorway.

"Well?" she demanded, and Rose hurriedly opened one.

Inside, she recognized some of Dudley's old clothes, from when he was the same size as Harry. Shirts, trousers, pants, socks and even a pair of shoes. They were worn, but still wearable.

"That's for the boy," Aunt Petunia said. "I'm not getting him anything new. After this, he can make do with your old things." She glared down at Rose.

By now, Rose knew what Aunt Petunia wanted to hear. "Thank you so much, Aunt Petunia." She tapped her little brother's shoulder, and anxiously brought him closer, handing him his 'new' clothes. "Harry, tell Aunt Petunia thank you." She could hate Rose as much as she liked, but Rose didn't want her to be as mean to Harry as she was to her.

Harry looked up at a space slightly to the left of Aunt Petunia, smiled toothily and said, "Thanks, Auntie!"

Aunt Petunia stiffened as he did this, and quickly looked away from him. Rose started opening the smaller one, which she supposed must be for her.

For Christmas, Rose got a pair of corduroy trousers a size too large, and an ugly, rusty green safety pin that it looked like she could spear a small apple on. "Thanks, Aunt Petunia," Rose said dully, and Aunt Petunia had hmphed, but then at least ignored her, and turned away to watch Dudley again.

Rose quietly took Harry back up to their room while the Dursleys merrily opened Christmas crackers downstairs. It was difficult, trying to teach him to put the clothes on, but they managed. Dudley's clothes were still a little big for him, but they fit better than Rose's shirts.

Rose wished that she could give Harry a present, too. Something more special than just clothes. Next year, she promised him in her head. Next year, she would make Christmas better.

~RP~

The next day was Boxing Day, a day that Rose had never heard of and didn't understand. When she had asked what Boxing Day was, all that had earned her was a scoff from Aunt Petunia and a harrumph from Uncle Vernon, and no explanation. So far as she could tell, all Boxing Day meant was that Uncle Vernon's sister Marge was coming for dinner.

'Aunt' Marge looked almost exactly like Uncle Vernon if he was a girl. Rose didn't see why she had to call the woman 'Aunt,' since she was Uncle Vernon's sister, and Uncle Vernon was barely her uncle by being married to Aunt Petunia. Rose would far rather have called her 'Madam Walrus,' or failing that, 'Miss Dursley.' But asking if she could call 'Aunt' Marge 'Miss Dursley' meant that she got her ear twisted by Aunt Petunia, who said she "needed to pay Marge proper respect!"

Once she had come in, finished cooing over Dudley, and settled down in the lounge, Uncle Vernon had waved his hand in Rose's direction, introducing her as "that niece of Petunia's I told you about," and Aunt Marge had given her exactly the same glare that Uncle Vernon had given her when she first got to Privet Drive. Clearly, this was yet another grown-up who wouldn't be her friend.

Uncle Vernon had immediately begun complaining. "They're a useless waste of money, the both of them. Don't know why Petunia couldn't have just handed them off on Welfare – I shouldn't have to spend my own hard-earned salary on brats who aren't even my own children."

Aunt Petunia served the tea as Rose put a tray of biscuits on the table. "The girl's some use at least," she confided in Marge as though Rose wasn't even there. "Saves me time around the house, when I can set her at something she won't turn upside-down."

Rose knew better than to say anything, but she could at least clench her fists behind her back. Her eyes felt very hot, and she wanted nothing more than to run away, but Aunt Petunia's glare told her to stay, or else.

As the conversation between the adults moved on to Aunt Marge's new interest in breeding pit bulls (whatever those were), Dudley, from his seat on Uncle Vernon's lap and unseen by everyone else, was oddly quiet, looking from Aunt Marge, to Petunia, to Rose in the corner, to his mother, to Aunt Marge, to his mother again, to Rose struggling not to cry in the corner again. A connection was already forming in his little toddler mind, and he didn't even know yet what it meant.