Rating: Strong T. Violence and various types of abuse are common themes in this fic. Nothing too graphic, though still be warned. The rating may change to M as the story progresses.

Little Destinies

Chapter I

Angry

June 8 1990

It all started with a little snake.

The sun was getting harsher by the hour. A back window of Number Four, Private drive was half-open and letting out the alluring scent of Aunt Petunia's oven-baked salmon. She was finished cooking because there was the banging and clanging of pans under the hiss of a running tap. Harry felt sweat glistening on his skin as he hunted for weeds among his aunt's geraniums. He knew he wouldn't get water if he didn't finish his job, and he also knew that he wouldn't get any salmon at all.

It was when he was wrestling with some particularly stubborn stinging nettles that he spotted it nestled in the geraniums — small and brown, decorated with some dull black dots along its lithe body. Harry blinked just to make sure it wasn't a deformed stick. His aunt and uncle often told him the unusual things he saw were a figment of his imagination.

He saw a lot of unusual things.

The snake raised and tilted its head, meeting his bespectacled eye, as if it was squaring him up, and Harry decided that dehydration was really getting to him. He wasn't even sure if snakes lived in England.

"If you're looking for some rats, you won't find any here. My aunt's crazy about cleaning," he said conversationally. The snake just tilted its head to the other side. "You probably won't find any next door, either — my neighbor's crazy about cats."

Harry dropped his attention back to the stinging nettles, frowning down at them. He started tugging at them more vigorously, when the snake spoke back. "Oh I'm not in need of any more rats. What I need now is a body."

"A body?" he repeated, frown deepening. He twisted the stinging nettles in the hopes that it may free up its roots from the bone dry soil. "Why would you need that, if you already have one?"

"This one's quite useless. No hands, no feet. It's too small for my enemies to fear. And I don't even have any venom in my fangs."

Gritting his teeth, Harry pulled up at the nettles north, south, east, west… His brow furrowed in curiosity. "What kind of enemies would a snake have?" His immediate guess was cats. Disrupting his thoughts, Aunt Petunia's shrill and fussy greeting shot out of the window, making him flinch. Dudley had returned from the park. Harry could only hope that he didn't bring any of his friends back with him.

"All sorts," the snake hissed vaguely.

Dropping the nettle leaves, he wiped some sweat from his brow with the back of his gloved hand. He contemplated the weed for a few seconds. Maybe it deserved to stay here, considering how much of a fight it was putting up. Harry looked back up at the geraniums. The snake had gotten much closer to him, its small body wound in three coils, its head moving from one side to the other as it looked up at him.

"My body's useless, too," Harry confessed.

"True," hummed the snake, "but what man lacks in physiology, he compensates for in mind."

Blinking down at the stinging nettle, he pondered. He wasn't sure that was true. Dudley still couldn't do his times tables. And if Harry had a mind he wouldn't keep messing things up.

"I hear eating pineapples is good for bruises." Harry's hand leapt to his cheek.

"We don't have pineapples," he lied.

If snakes could sneer, then that was what it would be doing. "Pity." It turned its body away from him, slithering through the geraniums. Just when Harry thought it would leave without a word, it hissed, "That's the difference between your kind and I, boy…"

Minutes passed after he watched it disappear into the bushes. The sound of Aunt Petunia fussing over Dudley carried over the garden, as well as the clinking of cutlery against glass. His stomach grumbled. He was now devastatingly aware of how much his fresh bruise hurt. It was his fault. He'd gotten in the way of the television during the evening show, after all.

A surge of something electric awoke inside him, and he glowered down at the stinging nettles. Within the next second, it erupted into withering flames.

He gasped and ran for the hose across the garden, under the kitchen window. Having to duck lest his aunt or cousin happen to look out, he grabbed the hose, winded its pristine tap and got ready to sprint back for a discreet extinguishing of the fire. As he looked up, however, he blinked at the unharmed geraniums bathing peacefully in the sun. He actually had to skim the garden a few times to remember which spot he'd been in.

It was the glittering ash in the dirt that caught his eye. The remains of the stinging nettles.

Harry was going to add this afternoon to the list of unusual things he wasn't supposed to talk about.

June 29 1990

Harry gripped onto the tree as if it were life itself and hoped he wouldn't fall asleep. His spectacles hung askew from his nose, so when he looked down at the garden, it was only a blur of dull green with a splash of a honey glow from the opened garden doors. The raucous laughter of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marge echoed in the night. Harry's eyes zeroed in at the foot of the tree, where the small blurry figure of Ripper barked and snarled, pawing furiously at the trunk. He wrapped his arms tighter around the tree.

"You could throw something at it, you know." Brows furrowed, Harry looked up; the same snake he'd met in the garden was hanging from some branches above him. His furrowed brows twisted.

"He still hasn't gotten over the fact that I stepped on his paw hours ago. I would just be fanning the flames." The snake's black tongue darted out into the air, but it said nothing. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"I admit I was curious about the boy who could speak the sacred language of Parseltongue — especially in a neighborhood like this."

Harry had no idea what that meant.

"I've been watching you for some time now."

That, he could understand. "Watching me?"

"Yes. Your family treats that thing down there better than you. Yet, you do nothing. Why?" Harry somberly looked down at the raging blur of Ripper.

"Do what?" he mumbled. "It's all my fault anyway. I keep making things go wrong."

The snake hissed in such a way that for a moment, Harry thought it was laughing at him. "So?"

He flinched when Aunt Marge finally bellowed out for her dog to come into the house. Ripper growled up the tree once more, turned tail, and padded towards the honey glow. Despite the fact that his head was swaying with exhaustion, Harry was going to give it some time before he felt it safe enough to climb back down. A rustling above him caught his attention.

The snake was gone.

July 9 1990

Staggering out into the garden, he glanced over his shoulder with wide eyes. Uncle Vernon hadn't followed him. He breathed a sigh of relief — then it caught on his throat.

"You're not setting foot into this house until our windows are spotless, do you hear me?" his uncle shouted from the living room. He reached for his bloody lip and winced. "And if there's any — any funny business, you'll live to regret it! I promise you that."

Harry had learned the hard way that Uncle Vernon never broke his promises.

He grabbed a bucket from the shed, along with some detergent, and dragged himself towards the hose. Peering longingly through the closed kitchen window at the fridge, he unwinded the tap of the hose. Water roared against metal as the dying sun tinged the window scarlet. Harry's eyes focused on the reflection of his face, scrawny, sunburned, with blood dribbling down his chin. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

When he dropped his eyes to the bucket to check the water level, a movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. His stare snapped towards the snake coiled on the tiles.

"Still watching me?" he muttered dully. "Haven't you got a new body to find?"

"I do. And I will. But for now, my curiosity has won." Harry scoffed. "You are bleeding."

He nodded, clenching his jaw. He felt tears prickle his eyes.

"What did you do this time?"

"I just…" He sighed shortly, running his hands through his already unruly hair. The water started overflowing the bucket. He ignored it. "I must've knocked the shelves over, somehow, I dunno, but they… they toppled sideways and all my aunt's ornaments went falling and my uncle said it was me…" Harry glanced at the snake, who seemed to be eyeing him thoughtfully.

"What were you feeling when the shelves fell?"

Harry paused, eyeing the snake quizzically. "I… uh…" They had been watching the news where a story appeared about a couple who died in a car crash. Aunt Petunia had made a scolding remark about drunk driving, but it was Uncle Vernon who decided to make a link between this couple and Harry's parents. "Angry."

"Good," hissed the snake, sounding pleased. Harry gave it a bemused look.

Then he turned off the tap, and the bucket was overflowing no more.