Title: Lusus Naturae

Chapter: Chapter Two

Rating: T for Teen?

Warnings: I'm an adult now. Beware.

A/N: I was 17 when I wrote Chapter One. I am now much older than that. Enjoy Chapter Two.

It was a rather unremarkable pendant hung from a dainty silver chain. Quite unbreakable, Headmaster Dumbledore had assured Harry. He was more consumed by the thought of what his uncle might say about the 'freak' wearing a girly necklace. He accepted it with a sour reluctance.

Madame Pomfrey and Professor Snape were at hand to oversee the proceedings, standing demurely to the side as they watched the effects of the glamour settle into place. Harry couldn't say that he felt it, but he saw it take hold.

The backs of his hands - which moments ago had been covered in white flakes of dry skin - were back to a healthy flushed appearance. If anything they looked more plump than usual. The hair on his arms was no longer patchy and bald, but fine and laid smooth. Gauging the reactions of his elders, he assumed the glamour had worked elsewhere.

"The eyes," Snape said softly to Dumbledore.

The Headmaster agreed with a hum as he pointed his bone-colored wand between Harry's eyebrows. A look of concentration passed the old wizard's wrinkled face and quickly changed to one of short-lived frustration.

"It will have to do," Dumbledore replied. "Whatever ails him has more control than we believed."

I'm right here, Harry thought angrily. He was all too accustomed to adults speaking about him as if he wasn't present in the room and it did nothing to improve his mood.

"They'll notice," he grumbled, knowing it wouldn't make a difference.

The Headmaster patted his knee beneath the sheets and Harry fought to contain the instinctual flinch produced by the action. "Your Aunt and Uncle will understand, I'm certain."

Fat chance, Harry wordlessly replied with a glare down at his too fat fingers.

"You will need to keep up your potion regime, Mr. Potter. I've packed them here," Madame Pomfrey said, gesturing towards his Hogwarts trunk, which had been moved to the foot of his bed in the hospital wing. "You remember the order, yes? Red, then purple, then green."

"Yes," Harry replied, head remaining bowed.

"Potter," Snape addressed him.

Harry looked up. The Professor had his wand out, levitating a hand mirror towards him from across the room. Harry was hesitant to look, and it seemed Professor Dumbledore was equally against the implication as he moved to intercept the floating object.

"Let him see," Snape commanded. "It will be a shock otherwise."

Harry grabbed the mirror from the air when it reached him and held it in front of his face. What stared back at him was certainly not his own reflection. His eyes were grey, almost white in the right light, as if the color had been drained from his irises. He looked like a blind muggle. Not to mention his cheeks were rounder and his hair flatter than it ever had been. He prodded the end of his too soft nose with a finger and found that, though the glamour moved to accommodate the poking, his finger relayed a rather unnatural sense of pushing too far to find the cartilage below.

"It will take time to grow accustomed to it," Snape warned. "This is only a temporary solution."

Temporary until they could find a cure. Harry had endured a month of deterioration from the unknown sickness plaguing him and for every day that passed he was offered at least a dozen promises that they would fix him. Yet, here they were, kicking him out with a necklace and another false promise.

Harry set down the mirror. Wordlessly, he pulled back the blankets and slid from the bed. It didn't matter what he thought or what he wanted or even what he begged for. Every day he spent in the Hospital Wing he had pleaded with them to keep him there, and they had made it clear that was not an option regardless of how he expected his muggle relatives to take the news. The compromise was making him look like he wasn't dying, and Harry was fairly certain that's what was happening to him. He took solace in the fact that when he died he could laugh at them all from the afterlife knowing he had been right. He was certain his Uncle would actually kill him if he went back to Surrey like this.

His Aunt and Uncle had been warned of their arrival ahead of time, Dumbledore told him as the pair stood on the front steps of Number 4, Privet Drive. Clearly they hadn't been given a chance to respond, or they would have refused to have a wizard deliver their freak nephew to their front door in broad daylight. Harry had gone so far as to request Professor Snape, of all people, drop him off, but had been refused. His hope had been to terrify them, as opposed to infuriate them which is what Dumbledore clearly aimed to do in his mustard yellow robes.

True fear sparked to life in his brittle body at the sound of Vernon Dursely's thudding footfalls from the other side of the door. Sickly sweet saliva flooded his mouth and Harry swallowed thickly as the door swung open and the overweight figure of his Uncle came into view.

"Mr. Dursley," Dumbledore greeted warmly.

Vernon Dursely did not return the gesture. "Get inside, boy," he managed through gritted teeth.

Harry began hefting his trunk up the steps. When the trunk became significantly lighter, Harry realized with horror that it was Dumbledore's doing. His head swung around to find the Headmaster's wand out, pointed at him. Vernon spluttered and Harry winced, making quick work of dragging the trunk across the threshhold.

"This letter will explain everything, my good sir," Dumbledore stated, extending a sealed envelope to the red-faced man. Dumbfounded, Vernon took the letter and promptly closed the door in the freak's face.

Harry took advantage of his Uncle's temporary shock and made haste in getting his trunk up to his room. He hardly noticed the locks added to the outside of the disused bedroom. Once inside with the door closed, Harry broke down into tears.

The thunderous footsteps of his Uncle climbing the stairs shook the house to its very foundations. Harry covered his mouth to contain the panicked rasp of his breaths as he listened.

"You'll stay in there, boy," Vernon warned him through the door. "You'll not come out, do you hear me?"

Each of the man's words were punctuated with the clicking and sliding of locks. Harry could see the added hardware now, lining the edge of the door with keyholes from the inside. He took a tentative step towards the door as the last of them slid into place and his Uncle retreated to the ground floor of the house.

He was truly alone then. This was not like the infirmary where Madame Pomfrey or Professor Snape were near enough to hear him cry. No one in this house would care if they did hear. He pushed his trunk to one corner of the room, ripped off the stupid necklace, and threw himself onto the dust-covered duvet on the lumpy mattress in the corner of the room.

Thus began the most miserable summer of Harry Potter's short life, and possibly the last.

Expectations were set rather quickly once his Aunt returned home. She had taken Dudley out with his friend Piers to avoid traumatizing her perfect boy with the taint of whatever freaks came to drop off her nephew. The Dursleys were very clear about their expectations of Harry - outlandish and cruel though they may be - and this summer was no different. The only difference came to Harry's chores, which he was surprised to find were not on Petunia's list.

It would seem the Headmaster had told them Harry was ill and required bed rest. Unfortunately, the Dursleys decided to take that request to an extreme. Harry was not expected to complete chores around the house because he was not allowed 'around' the house at all. In fact, he was not to leave his room. His aunt would bring him his meals - when she remembered - and at that time he would be let out to use the loo, but at all other times he was locked in his room. Were it not for his aunt's lapses in memory, Harry might have preferred this outcome to his last summer.

The first time his relatives forgot about him was barely two days after he returned to Privet Drive. As a result of the mess he made, Harry was supplied with a bucket for emergencies. Petunia was clear about the fact that she did not have time to wait on him hand and foot and should he need to use the bucket, cleaning it would be his responsibility. After the incident, it took another day and a half for his Aunt to remember to feed him. It was a comfort to know they were afraid of catching whatever 'freak disease' he was infected with, so at least he was safe from their hands.

By the third week of this treatment, Harry was certain he would accidentally kill the woman. The revelation that he might be able to came through the bars covering his bedroom window. A sparrow had made a nest in the gap between the panes and the metal bars over the spring and came back throughout the day to roost and sing with its mate. It was the only source of entertainment for Harry in the small room aside from his schoolbooks - which had been read front to back multiple times in the interim.

It had been two days since his last meal, which had been a mostly empty box of stale cereal that he rationed as far as he could. Harry was watching the sparrow weave white fur of some kind into the intricate design of its nest with rapt attention. It was almost hypnotizing to watch. The small creature was so methodical. He wasn't sure of his intentions at the time, but Harry had eventually moved to open the window. As he did so, the bird panicked and tried to fly away, but in its hurry had hit the bars and rebounded into the room. What happened next was purely instinctual.

The bird flew around the small bedroom, bumping into walls and crying out as it bounced off the corners, struggling to find its way out. In the confines of the room the noise was a racket that Harry knew would draw the attentions of the Dursleys if any of them were home. In his own panic, Harry had tried to help the bird out by chasing it towards the window. After numerous tries the bird conceded and came to land on Harry's bed, exhausted. One look into the creature's eyes and it dropped dead right there on his bedspread. He barely had time to register what had happened as he heard footsteps hustling up the stairs. Only later did he realize what he had done and what he could do.

Harry nearly made it to the start of the new school year without another incident - very nearly. Around the time he was certain his school letter should have arrived, Petunia had another lapse. By the time she deigned to answer his pleading at the door, which had turned frantic, Harry had forgone the enchanted necklace altogether, having felt particularly strangled by the glamour's effect.

His aunt opened the door, witnessed Harry in what was now his true form, and screamed bloody murder. Harry was lying in his own filth in front of her. Whatever strength he had to move or to speak had fled him. Clutched in his hand was the petrified corpse of the sparrow. He managed to blink at the woman.

Petunia Dursley dropped dead away to the floor and never rose again.