Authors Note: I do not own Harry Potter

Review response: yeah, they look similar, considering that purebloods are all interrelated there's bound to be some connection. The Katie one I explained with shared ancestry. Fay just has black hair and is small. That's the only physical connection they have.

A slight warning as well. This chapter may seem a little... depressing.

All he was able to do was stare at the walls. It was no longer a room, it was a prison cell that refused anything other than his total obeisance. He had been trapped in here for the last several weeks, with no escape possible. The gentle trill of Hedwig was the only company he had, and yet even then she was stuck in the same position he was.

His relatives appeared to have not taken the fact that someone had given him any sort of positive treatment to heart, and as such, had thrown him into his cousin's second bedroom and bolted it shut from the outside.

He had traded life under the stairs to one that was both better and worse.

It would be a good day if food was pushed into the cat flap that had been installed at the base of his door, and even then that was a rare occurrence. He would go for days without food, any form of energy would be gone in a matter of moments as he consumed the disgusting gruel that inhabited the cracked dishes he would be given. There wouldn't be any utensils to be able to eat it properly, so he would descend to a base animalistic form as he ate.

They would let him out once a day specifically to wash and use the toilet, claiming that they did not want the "house to reek even more than the filth that was already there."

The moment that they had returned to the house, Vernon had grabbed him by the hair. "Now, freak," the man hissed when he had pulled him away from prying neighbours. "Your Aunt has told me about the rules of you freaks. No magic outside of your... school. So that means none of your freakishness is allowed. None of it!"

He had forced Harry back out to the car to get his things, drag them inside, and lock them all away, his eyes dead as his body fell into the old routine it had thought forgotten. His wand, trunk, broom. Everything was locked away. Only Hedwig was allowed to be kept if only to keep things quiet.

"If it were up to me, boy, then I would break every bone in your body just so you couldn't return. You will be in that room, and I have made sure that you will stay there. While you are under this roof, then it is my rules you obey, not some freakish shit! That bloody owl will remain in its cage or so help me, we'll be having roast bird for dinner."

"But, my friends."

Vernon let out a derogatory laugh, a tittering Petunia and guffawing Dudley in the background observing. "What friends? Who would want to be friends with you? You. Have. No. One." Each word was punctuated with growing anger.

His uncle was fuming at the gall his nephew had to believe that he even remotely believed that he was normal. Friends? He took the boy in, ruining their lives because his scum for parents had to go off and die? This freak deserved everything he got. "I tried so hard to make you normal. But you are nothing more than a freak. Upstairs. Now!" Harry did not move quick enough for his liking, so with a roar, he swung his fist, the side of his knuckles slamming into his face, repaired glasses shattering once more.

Harry ran up the stairs, hiding himself away as he sat as far away from the door as he could, salty tears dropping onto Hedwig's feathers mournfully.

He was ignored for a week. A week in total isolation as he wept and wept and wept. Until all his tears dried up.

"I'm sorry girl," he would beg the forgiveness of his owl, who only seemed to be sad for him and not herself. "I wish we didn't have to be here. That you could roam free. But I deserve this. No one has even written to me." For the thousandth time, he would check the slightly opened window, unable to move any further due to the metal bars welded to the frame. Owls may not be able to get in, but they could definitely squeeze letters in. He had also seen no evidence of any attempt to deliver any.

"No one. Maybe it was all a joke." If he had the capacity to, he would have wept further, but in his house, he had long known to hide the tears in this place. 'I'm alright being alone.'

The shadows were consuming him, and there was no one here to be able to reign them in. There was no magic to save him, in fact, it appeared apparent to him that maybe it was all a dream. Some sort of hallucination and he had made it all up in some failed cry for help.

Yet... he would look at his scar on his hand. A large, ugly jagged cut taking up his left palm. He remembered being told that there could be some consequences of the dark magic that forced its way onto his body. He dragged the memory to the surface, trying to use something, anything, even the bidden recollection of something that connoted a terrible event in his mind being the focus to retain his sanity.

The scar was his reminder that what he had experienced wasn't something he made up. That that loneliness in the shadows of the underschool had been his journey.

There had been times when he wondered if the accidental magic he had done before could help him. Though, no matter how much he sought to bring that feeling of oneness with that part of himself out, he could never find it. It was as if he had been conditioned to never use 'that freakishness!' in this place. He recalled when his broken wrist had miraculously healed one morning. That may have been the last time he could remember doing it. There had been no more breaking of bones after that. But he still remembered the dark of the cupboard, and of the eternal hunger. That was the last time he had screamed in Privet Drive.

Now, weeks after he had returned, he knew, simply knew that he was going to be here forever and that he deserved it. His dreams had been full of warmth, of spectacular feats, of people caring. And every time he awoke he wished to return to that land of the unawake.

No, they had forgotten him. His birthday had come and gone, and when he got not even a simple 'Happy Birthday', he knew.

Then Dobby came.

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Harry didn't quite know what to make of the little thing that was peering down at him from atop his bed. It looked like someone who had never seen a goblin before was given half the information by someone who had only been told a general gist of the information.

"Harry Potter," the thing squeaked.

"I think I'm finally done." His face was blank. Hedwig hooted in agreement.

There was a silence that became steadily more awkward as time ticked on. The thing just stared at him expectedly while Harry watched the interloper intently.

"Um, Mr Harry Potter sir. I is Dobby and I need to tell you something."

"You're a Dobby?"

"No, sir, I is a House Elf. Dobby is my name."

Harry frowned. He was not happy with this situation. Why could he not be left in peace? "Why are you here?" The question was asked with a tired stiffness. Harry was too weary and there was no fight left in him now.

"Dobby must tell Harry Potter that he is not to return to Hogwarts." Silence answered him. "Dobby must not let Harry Potter go back, if he does, then terrible things will happen. Terrible things will happen to Harry Potter and Dobby will not let it be."

"They don't want me back. Why would they want me back? None of them care."

"Dobby is... sorry, sir. Dobby did not realise that he would hurt Harry Potter so." Harry's eyes widened as the House Elf pulled out a stack of letters from inside the pillowcase he was wearing as clothing. "Dobby thought that if Harry Potter's friends did not write him then he would not want to go back."

Harry stretched out his arm, feeling the weight of the parchment as it caused his hands to drop them all to the floor. He did not realise that his body could get any weaker than it already was. He raised his hands to cover his face and begun to shake.

"Dobby is truly sorry, sir. Dobby did not mean to make Harry Potter hurt more. I is letting you talk to friends. But Harry Potter must agree to not return to Hogwarts. There is to be danger there, and the defeater of He-who-must-not-be-named must be allowed to survive."

When Harry did not appear to be able to consider a response, Dobby raised his arm, snapping his finger, vanishing as if he was never there.

Harry took hold of one of the larger letters, his name written in emerald ink on the front of the envelope. 'Katie'. He would recognise her handwriting anywhere. This one felt thick as if it was full to the brim with parchment inside. He looked around him, counting out the different styles of his name, noting that Katie's particular style was the most abundant.

With rising hope, something he had deemed abandoned, he tore open the envelope to pull out what had been sent to him. Stopping himself, he nodded to Hedwig and began to sort out the letters into some idea of organisation.

Each one, when read chronologically, told a story of his friends getting more and more worried. After he had finished reading each one, he had painstakingly attempted to create a perfect response to each one, detailing exactly the reason why he had been incommunicado.

He left out how his relatives were treating him, the shame of what was happening, mixed with an inherent belief that nobody could (would) help him anyway. He told them of the House Elf Dobby stealing his letters and warning him about a danger coming to Hogwarts.

He also hesitantly wrote out a letter to Professor Dumbledore; it was not a letter to let him worry about the minor details of his technical imprisonment, but instead a detailed account of Dobby warning him of a threat to the school.

The letters from Katie were saved until last.

While Neville and Fay were his best friends, and he knew that he needed that relationship with them, Katie was something so different from that. Dumbledore had said that it was love that gave him strength, and as he read her words to him, he questioned if this was it in material form. Every letter he had possessed this to some degree, but none of them would ever affect him as it would coming from her.

The first one he read was just a normal, everyday correspondence letter; he read the second one and it appeared as though she was attempting to convey her annoyance to him. The next one seemed angry. Then, after that, he could almost taste her worry. The words that swam before him were no longer benefited by Katie's immaculate way of writing. It was rushed, frenzied. Harry's throat tightened as a thickness developed. This was the reason for leaving hers until last.

He moved his finger over every word, memorising each line as he curled in under himself, trying to use the moonlight to see the words that brought life to each page.

He read and reread each letter on each page, forcing them into memory when the light of a new day floated in through his window.

He rummaged around the room. Though it was almost bare of his own belongings, the amount of stuff that his cousin Dudley had in his 'spare bedroom' was immense. He located a brand new pen in the wardrobe, as well as a completely unused notebook and began his response.

The others he wrote to with whatever he could find, and whatever he could use; the response to Katie had to be perfect. He wrote and re-worded everything he could – each syllable sounded out in his head. There was no way that he was going to let her know what was occurring in Privet Drive. There was no way he was going to have her worry about him when he still did not believe he truly deserved it.

It took the whole night and into the next morning, but the words had flowed out of him eventually, and he had drafted his response. He could only hope that she, and the others, could forgive him.

He knew that he had to wait for each individual person to send another letter to him, though he found himself praying that they would deem him worthy of an actual response.

For years, Harry had no one but himself. The personal hell he had endured and survived in this place had made him weak, not strong, this he knew. He had read and heard stories of those who possessed the strength of will to endure much, much worse and come out more powerful for it. He knew he was not one of those people.

After so many years he had given up on ever being the normal that his Aunt and Uncle wanted him to be. He had endured the spite and disdain of Petunia as she worked him to the bone to make their lives so easy. The bully of a cousin he had would use him so as to vent all frustration and natural revulsion he had on him. But it was his Uncle that he feared. It was an emotion that he had tried so hard to remove from his being, but was so unable to do so. The pain that he would withstand because of him, both physical and mental, was immense.

Harry Potter was weak, but he was being shown that it was okay to be so. It had started with Hagrid. A keeper of keys indeed, for he was the one who had found the prison door key, and brought him out into the real world. And it was, to say the least, magical.

Hogwarts never seemed real. It was too perfect. Though there were some downward graces inside its walls, he nevertheless relished in its beauty. Never had he felt so human, so alive, as he did when he used his wand or flew on his broom. He felt as though he was king of the world, and each one of those he held dear were the ones who lifted him up.

As he beheld each letter for each person, he reminisced on how every one of them made him feel so whole. The shadows rescinded around him in that spare bedroom, and not just because of the light of day. He forgot as if the last few weeks ever existed, wondering with a gale of innocent laughter he knew that things would keep getting better. He had to carry on as he understood his place in the world. He thought back on the lives of his parents and their sacrifice. He thought of the professors who would look at his with pride, who would tell him how much like James and Lily he was. And he would think back on the times he had with those who had made him feel the way he did right then and there.

He would get through this. He would make it beyond this hiccough, and on September 1st, through thick or thin, he would be boarding that great red train back to his true home.

Author's Notes

So ends the first chapter of book 2. To be honest, I want to blast through this book as quickly as I can, but fret not, there will be enough content to fill 10 chapters worth of Harry's second year. I've got a couple of good things planned to make it a bit more... interesting than canon Chamber of Secrets. I will actually do something I enjoy reading about; it won't be that whole 'I am Harry Potter, heir of Merlin' crap, but it will be something I could totally see as a possibility only because of a single character in canon. That's all I'm going to leave you with until about 3 chapters after this one.

I will say this though, the whole thing with Katie Bell just kind of developed from out of nowhere. It really was not my intention to let it get so far as this, but then I realised that Harry needs an anchor to his humanity. So I made her just that. Kind of sweet really.

You will have also noticed that things have changed from canon experiences. This is mostly due to how this Harry's life differs from what most expect.

It was really hard to try to get into the head of what someone like Harry would experience. So many different things coming together to create just a small window into it. But I didn't want to go too far so as to damage him even further. The beginning is just to show what this Harry is working with so that there is justification for why he acts as he does sometimes. Though, you have to burn out the illness to get the body better. That's all I'm going to say on this matter because that's like venturing into spoiler territory, and I want to keep everything that comes beyond complete guesswork.

So any guesses to what will happen remain just guesses. Each chapter will be the puzzle piece for the puzzle as a whole.

So yeah, very small chapter compared to the others, but it's just a prologue really for book 2.

Next Chapter: Escape and Diagon

Stay safe

KhaosOnion