A/N:

I super appreciate the guest reviews and all the follows and faves. Here is the next chapter, I hope everyone is doing well. I know the story is moving a little slowly, but I'm just getting a feel for my Harry and seeing how he evolves organically.

As the Christmas holidays approached there came an increase in tedious chores, and a slightly improved mood within the Dursley household. Harry had been skilfully avoiding trouble at school, largely thanks to his Darkling's. There hadn't been any more incidents like the one with Piers, he'd given them a stern talking to about boundaries and what would draw too much attention. They'd made grumbling noises but agreed to his terms. No drawing blood, and nothing that would intentionally cause visible injury. It wasn't because he necessarily cared about the welfare of other students or because he felt bad about hurting Dudley or his gang, he was protecting himself. The gang of bullies would not hesitate to try to blame Harry for any injuries, and then he'd be in trouble with the teachers, and the teachers would call the Dursley's. That was Very Not Good.

The Darkling's were helpful, scouting ahead so Harry had safe routes between classes or good places to hide during the breaks. They'd been testing how far the swarm could travel, and the distance at which in an individual could venture before feeling the strain of separation. Together as a swarm they could move quite far before the bond grew painfully taut, giving Harry a dull thudding headache. The Darkling's could move as far as the other side of the school. Individually, their range was much shorter, a classroom or two down the hall. A single Darkling had to maintain its connection with both Harry and the larger horde, limiting their range considerably. It was still useful to send out small groups which acted as an early warning system or as pathfinders.

The mental bond strengthened with time and practice. Although words could not be shared between them, impressions and emotions assaulted Harry with increasing frequency, giving him flashes of vision or conveying to him a particularly potent emotion. Harry wondered if he ever accidentally sent them fragments of his own mind. The visions he got from the Darkling's revealed that the ones with the glowing green eyes had incredibly sharp eyesight. They could see the texture of the grass and leaves, perceive the most minute of movements, and lived in a world of perpetual light, every colour radiant and bright with a life of its own. Nothing at all like his own dull and blurred-at-the-edges fuzzy experience of the world. Where he saw drab greys, muted browns and dead concrete, they saw a world of luminescence teeming with life where the connections between all living organisms were tangible threads tying them back to Mother Nature. Such wonderful visions filled him with awe and a sting of envy. How he wished that he could see the world in such a way for himself.

Dudley and his gang had the inevitable effect of marring a perfectly fine day, and avoiding the gang was a convenient excuse to exercise his new abilities. Like a game, it increased in difficulty as the boys got more and more frustrated with how he kept slipping away from them with ease. It was endlessly amusing watching them set ineffectual traps and sit in wait, only for Harry to never turn up and fall victim. They would wait and they would laugh, but as the minutes passed their boredom would grow. The angrier they became, the harder they would try to ensnare him. But for once in his life Harry was a step ahead. Maybe he would even try setting his own little traps, give them a taste of their own medicine. The thoughts of doing so initiated a sort of giddy anticipation.

The end of the school day was the most dangerous time for Harry. He would need to get back to Privet Drive, a sort of safe zone because the boys would never dare to do something in front of the neighbours, or, god forbid, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Harry's goal at the end of each day was to get to the house safely without the gang catching up to him. What used to be a frightening and anxiety inducing undertaking became a delightful game. The most direct path back to the house was the most perilous, and he wasn't dumb enough to take it. He did however occasionally start his journey on that path to lure the boys into a chase. On more than one occasion he had taken an overly circuitous route, or climbed up into tree or into a hedge to evade the gang as they looked for him. Other times he'd deliberately led them in circles or allowed them to catch glimpses of him disappearing into woodland, where they would follow and unavoidably become hopelessly lost while Harry giggled and was lead back to safety by Hummingbird.

He'd had a few close calls, when Dudley or Piers had been practically at his heels, but the Darkling's protected him, guiding him to a safe place and hindering his pursuers with malicious glee. He knew the gang was getting injured, but that was accidentally. It wasn't the Darkling's fault if the boys scraped their knees and palms when they tripped over something. When Finley had broken his arm after an awkward tumble, Harry hadn't reprimanded his small friends. After all his little pseudo snakes, spiders, and worms hadn't intended to break Finley's arm, it was just bad luck. Or so he told himself.

Aunt Petunia liked to have her home perfectly organised, every single aspect of each room carefully designed to project an aura of a normal upper-middle class family. A façade to hide the existence of their delinquent nephew, and to make people comfortable and think that the Dursley's were a well-adjusted, friendly, and normal family that did not keep a small child locked in a cupboard. Harry, of course, knew that the Dursley's were not normal. Every one of his instincts screamed at him that what he was experiencing was not right. After all, they treated Dudley completely differently, lavishing the boy in gifts and praise, twisting his flaws into virtues to be proud of. Where Harry was worked like a slave, Dudley was treated like a prince and never once had done a single chore or suffered true hardship. Not getting to eat ice-cream for breakfast was not a hardship in Harry's mind.

By the time Harry was done with his daily clean-up after dinner, he was exhausted and tired from the long day. All day he worked on the laundry list of housework set by Aunt Petunia who was incredibly imaginative, always coming up with some new and difficult mind-numbingly boring task to complete. While his physical body went through the motion of whatever he was doing, polishing silver or repainting doors, he would send out his Darkling's as far from the house as possible, each time a little bit further down the road and escalating the difficulty of each trip with progressively complicated instructions. As satisfying as it was when they achieved something new or broke a previously set record, it left him feeling a little drained and tired. The deep-seated feeling of satisfaction that bloomed in his chest made it worth it though.

Every night he was thankful for his companions, their gentle encouragement and motivation was invaluable to him, filling him with a heartfelt warmth that he often imagined was a lot like how Dudley felt whenever his parents praised him or showered him with love. The Darkling's were becoming like family to him, protecting him and guiding his learning and his skills. Undeterred by their inability to speak, they assisted him with all his lessons at school, reassuring his efforts to better learn to read and chasing away thoughts of worthlessness that so often creeped up on him on dark nights after a thorough berating from Uncle Vernon for some error, imagined or otherwise.

The Dursley's could try as hard as they liked to degrade him and ruin his life, but his will to succeed was growing with each day. He would be better than them, and he would not let them dictate his future. With the Darkling's by his side, nothing was impossible.

As was common occurrence approaching Christmas, The Dursley's went to attend dinner parties with friends and work associates, leaving him in the hands of his babysitter Mrs. Figg. His Uncle didn't trust Harry not to burn down the house or blow it up, and Harry supposed that his Uncle was probably being fairly reasonable because the idea of setting the house on fire was one that passed through his mind on a regular basis.

Uncle Vernon had dropped him off at Mrs. Figgs in the late afternoon, with gruff order of "Behave!" before stomping back to his car in his ill-fitting suit. Aunt Petunia had spent the whole afternoon trying the squeeze Dudley into a suit matching the one Vernon wore, and the boy was now sitting uncomfortably in the back seat of the car. He had whined and thrown a tantrum, not wanting to go to another dinner party, but Aunt Petunia had put her foot down and stood for none of the usual dramatics, shocking Dudley into stunned compliance. His demands were never ignored. The result was a red-faced Dudley stuffed in a tight suit looking uncannily similar to an overstuffed sausage. Harry made sure to send Dudley a smile and a mocking wave as the car drove away down the rapidly darkening street.

"Come on in Harry, would you like some dinner and a cup of tea?" Mrs. Figg asked kindly. She was an older woman who smelled of cabbages, as did the the rest of her house. She also had a lot of cats. Mrs. Figg was dressed in a warm knitted sweater, long knitted skirt, and dark woollen knitted stockings. Harry thought that she had probably knitted the entire outfit herself, but she had chosen a rather unflattering light brown yarn which, as a result of having so many cats, was interspersed with clumps of cat hair. Her grey hair was tied back in a sloppy bun, and she wore large horn-rimmed glasses. She was the quintessential kindly old cat lady, and Harry couldn't help but have a small measure of fondness toward her.

"Yes, I'd like that v-very much." Harry mumbled quietly in reply with only the smallest of stutters. He was always careful with his words around adults. All he had to do was have one little slip up, and it would get mentioned offhandedly to Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia, and he'd be in deep trouble. He made it a rule to not talk about how he was treated by his relatives, and definitely not about anything freakish. The anxiety made him nervous around people that weren't his relatives, and gave the impression that he was very shy. He wondered how his teachers reconciled his shy behaviour with his tendency for being a "trouble making delinquent" according to his Uncle. Maybe he just looked guilty or shifty to them. There was no other explanation that he could think of.

Stepping into the warm house, Harry followed Mrs. Figg to her small kitchen. The creamy room was cosy and worn, a place that felt lived-in with its slight clutter and aged appliances. Mrs. Figg was stirring something in a large pot on her stove, a strong smell of cabbage emanating from the pot and infusing the air.

"Would you be a dear, Harry, and slice some bread, please?" She asked pleasantly, glancing at him only briefly. He didn't reply, moving to complete the request. Having been babysat enough times in the last few years he was comfortable in Mrs. Figgs home and helped her with serving dinner almost every time he came over.

Finding a loaf of rye bread, he cut four slices and pulled out a plate from a cupboard below the counter. He carried it to the small dining table next to kitchen and placed in the middle, sitting down and waiting for Mrs. Figg to give him something else to do. He watched as she ladled some soup into two bowls and brought one over to Harry, where she placed it in front of him, the spoon clinking as it shifted against the edge of the bowl. She placed the other bowl at her own place at the table, manoeuvring herself into the peachy upholstered dining chair.

Harry politely waited for Mrs. Figg to begin her meal, and dug in with gusto, rarely having the opportunity to eat a meal that was actually hot and not just lukewarm. The soup was something that the Dursley's would never eat, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. It was a foreign dish, he could smell and taste the obvious sauerkraut, and went on to identify potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and bacon, but other shapes remained a mystery to him. They ate their meal in comfortable silence, and Harry mopped up the remains if soup in his bowl with his left-over bread, leaving him pleasantly full and a little sleepy.

Mrs. Figg smiled at him and gathered the dishes for hand washing in the sink.

"D-do you need help? W-with the dishes?" He asked, not wanting to seem rude or ungrateful as the Dursley's frequently told him he was.

"Don't you worry deary, why don't you go sit and watch some television for a bit?" Mrs. Figg offered kindly, rolling up her sleeves and turning the tap on.

Harry nodded his reply and slipped away into the living room where the television was turned on, tuned to a news channel. He sat himself gingerly on the edge of the sofa and reached for the remote which was obscured by a large garish orange knitting project that overflowed on the dark and battered coffee table. Flicking through the channels he found a movie that looked vaguely interesting and turned the volume up to audible levels.

His presence in the room did not go unnoticed by its regular tenants, several large and very fluffy cats who's eyes gleamed with intelligence. As they regarded Harry from afar, his Darkling's became curious, emerging from where they were safely ensconced and tucked away in his clothing and hair. He was immediately distracted from the film on tv, watching with rapt attention to see how the Darkling's would react to the clowder of cats. The cats, unlike humans, were aware of the Darklings's, and followed their movements unblinkingly. A grey cat with short thick fur and bright blue eyes was staring at the inky blobs, predatory intent clear in its eyes. Its body shifted into a crouch readying for a pounce, pupils dilating and whiskers twitching in anticipation.

As the Darkling's flittered and wriggled, it leapt forward! The swarm squealed and screamed at the sudden attack, and Harry flinched, heart in his throat fearing the worst. The swarm calmed and cleared, returning him to his senses. The grey cat was rolling on the floor, batting at the Darkling's with its paws. The Darkling's were unharmed and entertaining themselves by teasing the cat with their quick movements and fluid escapes.

The mischievous joy was infectious, and the Darkling's spread themselves around the room to investigate the rest of the feline sentries. The younger more playful cats were engaged in games of cat and mouse with some of the Darkling's enjoying the thrill of riding the animals as if they were mounts. The lazier Darkling's gravitated to the older sleepier cats, where they burrowed into soft fur or received a rough grooming from sand-papery tongues.

Happiness and innocent joy filtered through the bond to Harry and he relaxed into the couch, closing his eyes to concentrate on the feelings he so rarely experienced first-hand. He'd describe it as bitter-sweet, the everlasting tendrils of hatred for the Dursley's that lurked in the corners of his mind tainting the experience, but he resolutely smothered them.

Sinking into the soft pillows, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to fully bask in the bliss suffusing the mental bond. The sounds of Mrs. Figg washing the dishes and in the kitchen faded, the conversation between the characters in the movie became a indistinguishable buzz, and Harry slipped into a light doze, pleasantly floating in his mindscape.

He was awoken when Mrs. Figg joined him in the living room with a tray of tea and biscuits. The sky outside was pitch black, and Harry looked sleepily to an old grandfather-clock to find that over an hour had passed since he had first sat down.

Mrs. Figg bent over and used the tray to push her unfinished knitting project to the side. When the tray was firmly on the table, she gathered up the orange monstrosity, a large blanket based on its sheer size, and dumped it into a nearby armchair.

"Would you like that cup of tea now, deary?" she asked him as she sat down beside him.

Harry nodded and replied, "Yes please, Mrs. Figg."

"Sugar?" She asked, gripping a cube of white sugar in a pair of small tongs.

"Just one, th-thank you." Harry replied, a little flustered by the kind attention he was receiving. Mrs. Figg didn't appear to notice, and dropped the sugar cube into a porcelain tea cup decorated with delicate pink florals and dainty bright green vines. She added two cubes of sugar to her own cup, and poured tea from a matching teapot.

"Milk too?" she asked. Harry nodded and watched as she added a splash of milk to each teacup. He scooted forward to reach for his drink, and cautiously lifted the teacup, treating it as if were delicately spun glass. If he dropped it by accident, he'd surely end up in hot water with Mrs. Figg and she'd never agree to babysit him ever again.

He didn't say anything when he scalded his tongue on the hot tea, and abashedly blew on the liquid to cool it down to a reasonable temperature.

"Biscuit, dear?" Mrs. Figg inquired. Harry nodded and leaned forward to snatch a biscuit from the offered tray. He ducked his head and blushed at the sweet smile Mrs. Figg bestowed upon him. Nibbling on the biscuit as he waited for his tea to cool, the two of them settled in for an evening of television.

"My, they're quite energetic tonight, aren't they?" Mrs. Figg commented, interrupting the silence. She was watching her cats and appeared confused but humoured by their antics. Harry realised that the cats probably did look a bit silly pouncing on what would be invisible prey to anyone except himself. The Darkling's were still thoroughly enjoying themselves, good-naturedly taunting the felines or making themselves at home in their fluffy coats.

He didn't reply to her observation, and Mrs. Figg idly flicked between television channels as she sipped her tea. Eventually she settled on a cheesy and overdone tv game-show where she deliberated over the answers for trivia questions and grumbled about ignorant contestants.

Harry didn't find trivia especially interesting, and concentrated on slipping a few biscuits discreetly into his pockets. The Dursley's frequently punished him by withholding meals, sometimes leaving him for days at a time with barely anything to eat. Opportunities to sneak long-lasting foods like biscuits were few and far between, so he boldly took the initiative to smuggle a handful back to his cupboard.

After finishing his tea and munching on two biscuits, Harry found himself returning to his light doze, savouring the cosy atmosphere and the positivity flooding them mental connection with his demonic fairies.

The second time he was woken up, it was to Mrs. Figg gently patting his shoulder and calling his name softly.

"Your Aunt and Uncle will be arriving to pick you up soon, dear. I'll pack you some Christmas cake to take back with you." She said to him. Harry didn't have time to formulate his reply before she retreated to the kitchen. Preparing himself to leave, he gave the mental bond to his Darkling's a tug, sending them a request to return to him. They had ultimately worn out both themselves and the cats, and were now cosied up and sharing warmth with the fluffy beasts. Hearing his call, they leisurely stretched, oozing and trickling back to him to return to their favourite places on his person.

Mrs. Figg stepped back into the living room oblivious to the Darkling's that were crawling and floating around Harry. She was holding a clear Tupperware box with a large chunk of home-made Christmas fruitcake inside. She handed the box to Harry and moved to sit in her plush armchair, gathering the knitting into her arms with the intention of squeezing in a few more rows while they waited for the Dursley's.

Harry held onto the box, and disinterestedly watched the muted television which was set to a shopping channel. A gaudily dressed woman was showing off a ludicrously expensive ring while her sleazy male counterpart gesticulated wildly with a fake grin stretched across his orange tanned face.

When the Dursley's arrived ten minutes later, Harry clutched the Tupperware box silently lamenting the fact that he probably wouldn't end up having any of the cake. He was ushered into the car hastily, the Dursley's appearing to be very satisfied with their evening. Dudley was snoring in the back seat, drooling onto his chin and suit.

Upon returning home, Petunia snatched the Tupperware box from Harry, and he slipped into his cupboard without prompting, not wanting to draw the attention of the Dursley's who were content to ignore him.

A/N

Next chapter will be Harry's first Darkling Christmas, and then (finally) we'll get to the Hogwarts stage.

Please share your thoughts and critiques 😊

Minor edits 14-11-17