Harry Potter was cold…

There was a cold breeze coming in under the door to his cupboard, a cold breeze that penetrated his threadbare blanket and reached all the way into his chest and gripped his heart.

Shivering weakly, Harry curled up tighter, trying to bury himself even deeper beneath his pile of over-sized second hand clothing. It was his only hope of keeping the feeling in his limbs, he didn't want to have the wait the two - three weeks it normally took for the cold to finally leave his bones, so it meant that he needed to stay as warm as he could.

Jamming his fingers into his armpits as they started tingling, Harry tucked his toes up further, listening to the quiet humming of the small portable air cooler that Dudley had 'accidentally' left on and facing his cupboard. His Uncle and Aunt however had left it there intentionally, both of them having verbalized their annoyance of wasting the power, only to quieten down after Dudley told them he wanted to 'punish the freak'.

As a violent tremor wracked his body, Harry clamped his eyes shut and wished. He wished for something, for anything to happen to help him.

After the glass had vanished at the zoo and he'd been banished to his cupboard, Harry had had a lot of time to think. Glass didn't just vanish like that. And since his Uncle had pelted him across the back for using his 'freakishness' in public, it meant that Harry had apparently been responsible.

Magic…

It was the only explanation that Harry could think of. Strange things had always happened around him, from the substitute teacher's hair turning blue, to somehow 'jumping' from the ground up onto the school roof. And every time these strange things happened, Harry was always beaten for his freakishness and sent to his cupboard without food.

And while he was certain that most people wouldn't instantly assume 'Magic', there had to be a reason his Uncle would hit even Dudley for saying that word (Although Harry was also punished for Dudley saying 'Magic').

So if he was right. If he really had magical powers. Then why couldn't he use them to save himself? What good was having magic, if he couldn't use it to protect himself from his abusive (And yes, he knew he was abused. He was ten, not an idiot) relatives?

He knew what he'd do with his magic if he could get it to work. He'd open his cupboard door, sneak out of the house, and turn into a bird and fly away! He'd read an old fairy tale about a woman who could do that, unfortunately when he'd returned to the school library to try read it again, he'd found it missing and had never been able to find it since. But even if he couldn't do all that without practice, (Which Harry assumed he'd need a lot of), he'd be happy enough with his magic just turning off the cooler before he froze to death.

As the cold started to bother him less, Harry released that despite having all the blankets and clothes he owned piled on top of him, he was only getting colder and colder. It was already happening, he was going to get so cold that he'd sleep for a couple of days before waking up again, like his body was hibernating to protect itself.

And then suddenly, as if that revelation had been the tipping point, Harry could feel a strange energy beginning to hum in his chest.

His eyes snapping open as the humming began to move through his body, Harry rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of his cupboard, concentrating on the feeling of his magic… his magic… as it left goosebumps in its wake. He could still hear the humming of the cooler outside his cupboard, as instead of turning it off, Harry's magic instead focused its attention on heating him up and warming him from the inside out. Either that or the warmth flooding him was caused by the victorious sensation he could feel tugging at his lips, the knowledge that he'd been able to successfully tap into his magic - knowingly even if not intentionally - more than making up for being confined to his cupboard for the foreseeable future.

As he lay there, staring up at the ceiling with an almost painful grin on his face, Harry faltered as he noticed something else was happening. His cupboard was getting lighter, the darkness fading away - no… the darkness wasn't fading… it was moving.

Harry watched silently as the shadows of his cupboard 'crawled' along the walls and into the darkest corner, which looked like it was a living writhing mass of black, the rest of the cupboard 'losing' the darkness that plagued it. Either that or his eyes were somehow adapting to see perfectly in the night, as the light he could see slipping in through the cracks of his cupboard door seemed to burn his eyes painfully when he looked at it.

Stillness made Harry freeze, flinching away from the light and turning to face the huge mass of darkness as it started warping and bending. Suddenly the shadows lashed out, a long limb latching onto the cupboard shelf beside Harry's head, making him swallow nervously as he caught sight of the claws on the limb's hand the size of Harry's entire hand. Another arm reached out of the shadows, and Harry watched as something began to pull itself out of the black mass, long limbs being forced up to its body as it tried and failed to stretch out across the cupboard.

Slowly, the human-shaped shadow's head lowered down to hover in front of his own, tilting curiously as Harry got the impression it was waiting for something.

"Open the door," Harry ordered slowly, just knowing that the shadow was waiting for instructions. "Open the door and let me out."

The Shadow's head bowed low for a moment before the creature moved towards the door and liquidized, melting into a puddle of darkness that slipped out the cracks in the door and vanished. Harry sat there for a moment, the brief thought that he'd been left behind flickering through his mind, before the cupboard door let out an echoing 'click' as he heard the sound of the cooler turning off.

Reaching out, Harry pushed the door open, his eyes widening as he watched it swinging open at his touch. Not hesitating to climb out of his cupboard, Harry looked around for the Shadow for a moment, wondering absently if it would still be there or if it would vanish the moment it'd done what he'd ordered it to do.

Shaking it off as his stomach rumbled, Harry snuck into the kitchen and headed straight towards the pantry. He knew his Aunt and Uncle wouldn't think twice about the disappearance of some food, not when they all knew that Dudley liked to come downstairs for a midnight (And 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, etc) snack. And Dudley was too stupid to remember whether or not he'd come down to pig out, which meant that Harry could once again get away with preventing himself from starving under his relative's 'one meal a day' rule, like he had before he'd been caught and the lock had been installed on his cupboard door.

Opening the pantry, Harry froze as he stared at its interior, everything inside it black and white. Rubbing his eyes quickly, he looked around the kitchen, his mouth falling open in shock as he realised that almost everything he could see was in black and white. His eyes falling onto a patch of colour coming in from the hallway, Harry darted forward and peered down at the lamp he could see at the base of the stairs.

Moving forward, Harry faltered as he realised what was wrong with his eyes. It was the shadows… everywhere that wasn't lit up by the lamp was in black and and white. He was somehow able to see in the dark, able to see everything that would have been nearly pitch black before. Glancing towards his cupboard, Harry's suspicion was proven true as he noticed how bright it looked inside.

Turning back towards the kitchen, Harry froze as he came face to face with the Shadow, his breath hitching as its face hovered right in front of his own. Unlike the shadows cast by the lamp, the Shadow wasn't in black and white, instead looking as black as the interior of his cupboard had been. The two of them staring at each other silently for a moment, Harry jumped in shock as the Shadow was suddenly gone, making him spin around to see it crawling across the ceiling.

As he watched, the Shadow slipped down the wall and paused in front of the lamp, still looking like a mass of living darkness despite the light shining on it. Pulling a clawed hand back, Harry didn't have time to react before the sound of shattering glass filled the air, the Shadow destroying the light and plunging the room back into black and white darkness. The Shadow vanished as quickly as it had appeared again, and movement made Harry turn to stare as it pulled itself out of the dark grey pantry, tilting its head at him expectantly.

Snapping out of his shock, Harry quickly hurried to the pantry. He needed to at least grab something to eat before his Uncle came downstairs to investigate the noise. Reaching up for a box of crackers that was just out of his reach, Harry watched as the shadow of his hand (Which was the same pure black as the Shadow) stretched out to grab the crackers, lifting them up and bringing them back to his hand.

Looking between his hand and the shelf in shock, he reached out and concentrated on another box of crackers, watching as his shadow leapt to obey and snatched them off the shelf for him. Standing there for a moment as he wondered what kind of magic this was, Harry held the boxes to his chest and scurried back to his cupboard as he heard the sound of his Uncle's weight landing on the floor.

Quietly closing the door to his cupboard, the thought had barely crossed Harry's mind before he heard the lock sliding back into place, the Shadow melting through the cracks in the door and reforming in front of him as he hid the crackers.

Lying there quietly as he heard his Uncle heading down the hallway, Harry refused to pull his eyes from the Shadow's smooth face as it lay opposite him, staring back into his soul. This wasn't normal magic was it? Shouldn't he have a magic wand or something? And use it to turn people into toads and make things levitate? Instead of controlling the shadows? Or was that only something from stories? He'd heard of people called 'Elementals' in stories, people who could manipulate the elements, could he be one of those? No… he couldn't be… there was nothing 'element-y' in making glass vanish, or in teleporting, or in turning someone's hair blue.

But either way… it didn't matter to him what type of magic it was.

As far as Harry was concerned, all that mattered to him was the fact that he could do magic. And he could do it easily… he felt like he could wave his hand right then, and the shadows would obey his every thought.

The sound of Uncle Vernon cursing loudly, apparently having stepped on the shattered light, caught Harry's attention and made him shrink back. Magic or not… his Uncle and Aunt weren't going to accept any 'freakishness' from him, meaning that even though he had magic, it wasn't going to be of any use where it mattered.

Except…

Except if Dudley wanted something done, he demanded it, and if that didn't work then he threw a tantrum.

Harry wasn't the kind of ten year old who threw tantrums, that had been beaten out of him years ago. But if he has both his shadows and the Shadow to help him, maybe he could be the one to demand something this time? Uncle Vernon had always said, that if he wanted something done, then he would always have to do it himself. (He'd said it to Dudley, not to him. But it seemed like Harry was the only one who learnt anything from that).

So if Harry wanted the Dursleys to stop treating him like a freak and abusing him, then he'd simply have to make them. And his Uncle or Aunt wouldn't be able to stop him, because now he's got the power to make himself heard.

Things were about to change in the Dursley household.

And Harry couldn't wait…

Darken the Skies

Based off DZ2's Elemental Harry challenge.

I don't own Harry Potter.