Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter. Please let me know what you think.
Summary - Ten years after the defeat of Voldemort, the BWL comes to Hogwarts. It's a time of great anticipation. But there is another boy there, scorned for the crimes of his parents. Harry Potter plans to survive in the magical world, but who are the people watching out for him? What really happened to Lord Voldemort?
Xxxx
Harry Potter, aged 7, had already come to the conclusion life was unfair.
As he lifted his head covered with untidy raven black hair which his uncle hated so much and never missed the opportunity to demand he comb it, slowly as he took in the Dursley family. Marge Dursley (in his mind, Harry had never considered her to be his aunt, and he had long since stopped seeing Vernon or Petunia as the same thing) was here, and she was already being given more wine than she should have done; Harry mentally cringed as he took in the amount of wine, already counting and guesstimating how many ticks of the woman's control over her mouth she would lose.
If there was one thing he had easily learnt in the five years he'd been here, especially whenever Marge turned up, it was whenever she drank, she lost control over her mouth, and her ability to hold in her drink was awful. The Dursleys were laughing and talking, occasionally glancing at the television set standing close to the dining table. Dudley tolerated his aunt's presence and he was always well paid for every single hug and sloppy kiss he got from her.
Knowing he would have to once more get out of the house and steal food from other homes later since he would be given nothing but scraps once more, Harry returned his attention back to his work, his mind half on the job he was doing and the other half on his experiments on his magic. He didn't know why he believed the strange powers he had were magic, but what else could it be? Harry had spent the last 7 years - 7 horrible, bloody years with the Dursleys, and he hated every moment of it.
He hated the fact he had been left here with few clues about his life prior to being sent to the Dursleys, and he hated how he suspected the Dursleys knew more about it than what they let on, but what he hated the most was how they expected him to take their lies, their abuse and just accept it all hands down.
To say he hated the Dursleys was an understatement. It was impossible to live with the Dursleys and not hate them. He had lived with them for 7 years and he had no memory of what his life was like prior to living here. He had no idea what his parents were like, or what they had done, but he had heard nothing but lies told about himself, so he was positive they were lying about his parents as well. In any case, the story of the car crash was a confusing one for him. Whenever he stretched his mind back, Harry remembered lights that didn't seem like they belonged to a car.
When he had been 5, Harry had experienced being starved for the first time. Vernon (he refused to see him as an uncle) had been planning for it for some time but he had needed to wait until Harry was old enough. When he had been 5, Harry had been shut off in the stupid cupboard under the stairs for uninterrupted weeks with no food, and so without any choice, he had stolen some money from Vernon's wallet and from Dudley's bedroom and he had gone out and gotten himself some food. At first, he had felt sickened by what he had done, but as time passed he had found a kind of enjoyment at the thrill of taking money that wasn't his.
And yet…
Harry had a strange guardian angel. Or, rather two guardian angels. When he had been younger, he had received presents which had appeared out of nowhere in his cupboard. They always appeared at the end of July, and at Christmas; he had so many of them that eventually, he'd had to find a place to hide them in Dudley's second bedroom. Dudley was a pig, whose only true talent was to destroy everything he got his hands on. Hiding his things in there was not difficult, although making sure they were safe was.
They were…strange, but as time passed while he tried to hide them, which had become increasingly hard for him to do until he'd had no choice but to hide them there.
The strange thing about these presents was it was clear they came from two different sources; one was signed with a piece of paper stamped in a dog's pawprint, and the second load of presents were never signed or marked. There were no cards and no clues for him to figure out who and where they came from.
But one thing he did know was magic was real.
It had all begun when he was much younger. Harry had quickly discovered whenever he was angry or frightened, then strange things would happen around him and they could not be explained. When Dudley and his gang had chased him around the school, Harry had needed to be taken down a ladder because he had somehow ended up on a rooftop. His hair would regrow overnight after his aunt, frustrated by the lack of progress from the barbers who'd tried for ages to cut it off ended up leaving the barbershop looking much as he had before, took a pair of scissors and cut his hair all off rendering him bald…only for him to grow it all back. Sometimes at school, someone would snatch something away from him, only for it to come straight back. Once a gang of bullies, not his cousins' gang of bullies, had tried chasing him across the playground, only to freeze like statues which gave him the chance to escape.
Harry had worked out quickly that those events were down to him, and once he had worked out that his emotions were the key to making his powers work, he had begun experimenting, but one of the more dramatic and terrifying events he had experienced was when a bully startled him and chased him out into a road…only to nearly be hit by an oncoming car. As the car sped towards him, Harry had frozen up and he had waited for the crash….only to suddenly find himself on the other side of the road, having moved at least 10 feet away! If that wasn't magic, then Harry would be hard-pressed to think of what was, but it made no difference. The event reminded him strongly of the incident with the roof, and he was fortunate none of his uncle or aunt's friends had seen the event, or even heard of it, but Harry realised he had teleported; he remembered feeling like he had been pushed into a tube, and he had been thinking of duplicating the same process, but because he had no idea how it worked and how he had read The Fly short story, of a scientist whose molecules mixed with a fly, mutating him, Harry was reluctant to try that again.
Using books, comics, TV and movies as inspiration to see just how far his powers could be taken, Harry developed his powers. He had discovered he could lift things, create balls of light and balls of fire, could also turn his magic into tentacles that had tremendous strength and resilience, and inspired by Spider-Man, Harry had learnt how to scale walls and climb like a spider without falling, and he had learnt how to fly like Superman.
But one of his favourite powers was inspired by Star Wars, another was he had discovered the ability to move through shadows. He'd been badly beaten once, and he had been in his cupboard…and then he had slipped out of the shadows into the living room. Harry didn't know how it was triggered the first time, but when it happened the first time it was simple for him to do it again and again, and as he had practiced slipping through the shadows, he had learnt how to travel further out, and now he could move from his cupboard to anywhere in the house, to the rest of the town, and even beyond as long as there were shadows around him.
Harry had noticed something about his magic, it always seemed to work with his mind and he had come to realise what he was capable of doing was really powerful. But because of his powers, Harry couldn't help but ask several important questions. Was he alone? Were there others who could do what he could do in some way? If so, where were they? How many were they? What were the limits of his powers? Sadly he didn't have any clues to answer those questions.
But as he had experimented with his powers, Harry had come to the realisation that he didn't have any true reason to stay with the Dursleys.
"Boy, take my plate away! Boy!"
Harry realised Vernon was calling for him, jabbing a purple finger the size of a sausage at him and at his empty plate.
Harry didn't bother replying, he went over quietly, ignoring the look on Vernon's face as he picked everything up. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry caught sight of Marge's eye on him, and he felt his heart sink.
"I feel sorry for you, Petunia," Marge slurred as she patted Petunia's flat hand with her fat one. "Having to have such a runt in your home. What did you say the boy's parents did?"
Harry stiffened.
"Er, they didn't work, my sister was a whore and she disappointed our parents," Petunia said in a voice filled with sorrow that Harry knew was fake. "And the boy's father was an unemployed drunk."
"Ah!" Marge waved her hand carelessly sounding like someone who had just been given the answer to a mystery. "That explains it. Bad blood. That boy is a runt."
Harry put the plate slowly on the counter and glared at Marge, but the obese woman and the rest of the family didn't notice. The air began to crackle as he felt his emotions get the better of him.
"I see it all the time with dogs," Marge went on. "There's always a bitch who isn't right. That's what the boy's mother was."
Is…is she comparing me to a dog? My mother? Harry thought to himself. He didn't really think much about his parents, but he wasn't going to take insults like this.
Harry's anger began to grow. He put down everything in his hands and glared at the Dursleys. The air began to crackle with his magic.
Marge went on, unaware of the danger around herself. "If there's something wrong with the bitch, then there's something wrong with the pup!"
Marge's insult and Dudley's stupid laughter at what he was watching on the TV, snapped Harry's temper. Calling upon his hatred, as Emperor Palpatine from Return of the Jedi preached when Luke and Darth Vader fought on the second Death Star, Harry found it hard to resist his anger, and he lashed out.
The Dursleys didn't see it coming. One moment they were eating and drinking, and the next minute they were suddenly screaming as brilliant blue-purple lightning struck them with the force of a rushing intercity train. The lightning burned their skin, striking their nerves with pure electrical force.
Harry kept them under the lightning for a moment longer and then stopped. "A dog, am I?" He asked mockingly after giving the Dursleys a chance to recover their wits after the lightning attack before he picked up one of the knives and he transfigured it into a large knife that he was just about able to lift in his hands. "Do I look like a dog?" He grinned cruelly as the Dursleys realised what he had done.
"B-Boy put that knife down!" Vernon ordered as he tried to regain control of the situation, but the sight of the knife being changed into a bigger knife and being under the lightning had been terrifying.
For the rest of the Dursleys, it was like a nightmare, especially for Petunia. She had never thought of the dangers of abusing the boy, but now she was looking at the way he stood, seeing the way he held himself and seeing the feral jutting of his jaw, she was scared. But the most terrifying thing about the boy at this moment was his emerald green eyes; they were glowing like an emerald volcano buried underneath a thin sheet of Arctic ice in a blizzard.
For the first time ever, Petunia regretted the decision to abuse Harry, and now she and her family might pay the price for it.
"No, why should I? Why should I go back to being a slave?" Harry uttered the word with mocking disgust.
"A slave? How dare you! We give you a home, food, clothes, and this is how you repay us-!" Suddenly Vernon began to choke as his mouth was shoved open viciously and his tongue was being pulled out, making him gag and make horrible sounds.
"You like your tongue, don't ya?" Harry smirked savagely. "How would you feel about it being pulled out?"
Vernon couldn't help himself. He fell to the ground, gagging as an unseen hand pulled his tongue out with a strength he could not hope to match.
Harry's voice darkened as he turned to Petunia, ignoring Vernon's gagging. "Now, I know you know more about my past than you're letting on. Well, it's time for you to tell me the truth, and it's time to do it now; I saw the fear on your face and the recognition. You know what I am, don't you? You're going to tell me, but let me make this really clear to you; if you say the word freak, I will maim your husband. For life. Now, tell me the truth."
Petunia swallowed as she looked down at her husband before looking back into her nephew's eyes. "Y-you're a wizard. Magic exists," she said, looking like she was a moment from getting sick. Suddenly, as if a dam had been cracked open, she ranted, "you're like your freak of a mother. She was a witch. She went around with that horrible Snape boy, who taught her about her powers and when she received her letter to that-that school, my mother and father were so proud. We had a witch in the family, isn't it wonderful? I was the only one to see her for what she was, a freak!"
Petunia took a deep breath - the only reason Harry didn't react to the use of the word freak was that she had answered his question. And besides, it was obvious she had been holding this in for a long time.
"And then she met that Potter, and then the pair of them were forced to go on the run, and we were lumbered with you-!"
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, MY PARENTS WERE FORCED TO GO ON THE RUN?!" Harry shrieked as his magic exploded outwards. The whole house shook under the explosion; the walls and the ceiling were cracked, and the back door shattered and the frames of one of the windows buckled and the glass cracked. "I knew you were lying about the car crash, but what do you mean about my parents being on the run?" He said in a low guttural tone.
"I don't know-!" Petunia whimpered as she took in the destruction of her home, her beautiful home.
Harry's jaw clenched. "I don't believe you."
"It's the truth!"
Harry decided it was time to reveal what else he could do with his powers. Reaching out with his magic, he wrapped it around his aunt and squeezed, wishing she told him the truth. "Do you know why my parents are on the run?"
"She's just told you, she doesn't know-!" Marge snapped, trying to hide her fear through bravado.
"No. You were left on our doorstep with a letter saying your parents were wanted for serious crimes, but it didn't explain what happened," Petunia said in a detached voice. For the first time, the Dursleys realised something was wrong. Petunia was standing more rigidly than before, and her expression was blank.
"Pet?" Vernon whimpered as he got off the ground, massaging his jaw. Harry had let him go a moment ago, realising that it was no longer necessary to hold him down, and so with a scared look at his nephew - oh, how he wished he wasn't related to the brat! - he stood up and looked at his wife. "Pet, what's wrong?"
"Shut up. She's under my control. I am making her tell the truth," Harry said.
Deep down Harry had a feeling the Dursleys had a medieval view of magic, and anything unusual. And they reacted fearfully towards it. But he wasn't going to try to change their views. They were too deep-rooted and besides the Dursleys were immensely stupid.
Harry turned his attention back to Petunia. "You said a school before? My mother went there, yes?"
"Yes."
"What's the school called?"
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"How long were my parents there for?"
"Seven years."
"Interesting," Harry commented, wondering if the final two years had some kind of importance that magical people felt necessary for two extra years. Wait… magical… "This school, is it part of a world of magic, hidden from the non-magical world?"
Petunia was unable to keep the answer in. "Yes. The magical world is hidden."
"A whole world of magic," Harry whispered to himself, lost in his own thoughts for a moment before he looked back at Petunia when he realised his lack of practice might make her throw off the truth tentacle. "Do you know how to get into the magical world?"
Petunia was unable to stop the word from leaving her mouth. "Yes."
"Do you know where the entrances are?"
"Yes."
Harry nodded, pleased with himself for thinking that, despite his aunt's hatred of magic and of his mother, she had that much knowledge at least. But he quickly realised he couldn't just ask for an address, or directions - Petunia had likely not bothered to get the right location but she was unlikely to have looked at the street names as well. "Good," he said. "You're going to take me there."
"No, she's not!" Vernon snapped. "You won't be going to that freak world! I will not have you becoming a freak-!"
"Oh, shut up! What's it got to do with you? I don't belong here. I belong with other wizards and witches, people who are higher on the evolutionary ladder than you, stunted, pathetic creatures," Harry spat in contempt. "You're so finite, it's pathetic. You're like a blind man, trying to tell a child how useless painting is."
Vernon suddenly screamed as his leg suddenly twisted, and he collapsed to the ground, whimpering and crying from the agony.
"Vernon!" Petunia screamed, and she rushed to her husband, Harry's control over her was gone. As she examined her husband's leg she was horrified when she saw the leg was twisted and bleeding as the bone and the skin was unable to cope with the injury. She whimpered as she stared at Harry in fear. The expression on his face left her in no doubt he would be displeased if she refused what he wanted.
"You are going to take me to the magical world, Aunty dearest. And you're going to do it tonight. I am not letting you give me directions; you might lie to me and when I get back, then you would have left. No, you're taking me."
It was a logical line of reasoning in his mind. The Dursleys were not above lying and Petunia would likely see she could lose him and save her family at the same time; well, he was giving her a chance to do it, but on his terms.
"No," Petunia shook her head in fearful defiance. Oh, she tried to be brave, but it didn't work.
"Oh yes, because Dudley will be coming with us," Harry grinned maliciously as he began choking his cousin, and he spoke up before his aunt could scream at him to stop. "If you are lying, and I will know, I will kill him. Well, what's it going to be?"