Author's Note: This story is not going to be for the faint of heart. It will discuss child abuse, PTSD, and the healing process. It's not a swashbuckling tale or a romantic tale (although I haven't ruled out romance at some point); it is instead a story about the process of healing after being gaslit and assaulted. It won't follow a linear timeline and the characters are going to make progress, slide backward and start over again. There is nothing wrong in reading the first few chapters, and deciding the story isn't for you. I wish you luck in finding something more to your taste. I am not going to change my plan for the story. I am also not going to put a warning on every chapter, but for those chapters that are particularly hard to read I promise to alert you.

This story is dedicated to my youngest, who was abused and gas lighted by a partner, suffered great emotional abuse at their hands and who is coming back from it day by day. While I will always feel I failed in my basic duty to provide a safe life for them, I am in awe of how they have reshaped their life.

Broken Boys

Prologues

26 December 1966

It was dark. It was darker than the boy had ever known it to be. Usually there was some light that seeped down through the floorboards or under the door, but he wouldn't put it past his father to have cast a spell to make sure he was lost in the inky abyss. It didn't take long for that scratching sound to start. He knew what it was, rats. He hated rats. He hated the little bites they made on his skin and how they could become infected. If his father hadn't seen them, Nanny Calliope could heal them, but if his father saw…well, the infections would go on and on because his father liked to see him suffer.

If he was lucky, his cousin would come along and heal him. She was wonderful and he'd dreamed about marrying her but never told anyone about it. In his family you did marry your cousins, like they were some royal family from the Victorian era. The boy began singing a tune quietly, loud enough to keep the rats' sounds at bay but soft enough so that no one in the party above would know where he was. No, the adults didn't want to think about him. He was the naughty boy.

He wasn't sure how long he was down there when the door finally did open. He prayed it was his mother; although if father was about, she wouldn't help him. If his father had left the house, then he might be whisked off to his room on the highest level of the house where nanny would have whatever food she could bring and where she'd have Muggle plasters and antiseptic to clean up his bites. Nanny Calli, his something-cousin Calliope, was a squib Squib – a person who should have been born with magic but wasn't – and while most squibs Squibs disappeared in his family, Calliope was allowed to live, but became first a maid to him and his brother at age eleven and then two years later, their nanny. When he was nine, he would get his tutor and begin to learn about magic. For now, though, he had Nanny Calli, and she was nicer than anyone else in the house.

When the boy lifted his head, he knew it wasn't his mother, or Nanny Calli, or even his little brother. No, it was father, and worse, his eldest cousin was with him.

"Come, boy," his father's voice rattled. Father's voice had once been smooth, or at least that's what he'd been told by his mother, but now it sounded like there was a pouch of gravel his voice travelled through. It was loud too. The boy thought his father spoke like the deep tuba of the brass band that played in the pavilion in the middle of the park on the square in Diagon Alley. Oh, there was a Muggle band that sometimes played on summer days in the gazebo. The magical band was far superior, in his opinion. Then again, everything magical was superior to Muggle things. Being a wizard or witch put you as an elite in the United Kingdom.

The boy rose, slowly, took a deep breath and then began to walk to the stairs. He'd climbed two when his cousin had hurled something at him. He ducked, and he heard it crash into the wall behind him. China hitting brick had a particular high-pitched explosion of shards in its tinkling sound, but as it fell to the floor there was also a splodgy thwap to it. It was his dinner. Another of his mother's favourite dishes had been destroyed. Father did that on purpose.

"Guess you won't have anything to eat tonight," his cousin evilly twittered. He didn't understand how this girl was the older sister of his beloved other cousin. They were like night and day. This girl was darkness and spite while the other was sweetness and light. He loved Andromeda.

Then he felt it.

His father started with the hexes. First there was a Boil Hex on his left leg. The limb buckled but the boy stayed silent. Make noise, show pain and it would get worse much quicker. Next was a Cutting Curse to his arm. It wasn't deep, father couldn't make the cuts too deep or the boy would need medical care and then questions would be asked. There could never be questions.

Then his father used his favourite, a hex he'd designed himself that made the recipient very near sightednear-sighted. It made climbing the stairs difficult, but the boy had learned how to climb the stairs without falling and, more importantly, how to do it without reaching for the railings. If he reached, his father would turn the rail into a snake which would bite him.

"Uncle, please let me try," Bellatrix begged, and her Uncle Orion gave her the wand.

"Crucio," she intoned, and Sirius felt pain everywhere. He buckled and fell to the stairs. He had tried to stay quiet, but the scream ripped from somewhere in the depths of his gut and soared out without any conscious thought. Bella couldn't hold the curse for long, but it was bad enough.

"Well, well," Uncle Orion purred, "You're coming along quite nicely. I'm not going to ask where a fourth year learned that spell, but let the person know I am proud of them." Bella looked up at him and smiled in the most cloyingly scary way. Sirius and Andromeda had already talked about how she was sure Bella had been touched by the Black madness. Members of their family often lost touch with reality and became dreadfully mean.

"Get up, boy, before I let her curse you again."

2 August 1986

It was hot in his little cupboard under the stairs. The rest of the house had windows that would open and let the refreshing breeze in. He didn't have any windows. The boy knew he'd soiled himself again. He'd lost track of how long he'd been here, but he'd counted two lunches, two dinners and three breakfasts, so it had been a long time. He tummy rumbled, but he was used to it.

The little boy was still confused about what he'd done wrong. He'd learned in school that his birthday was the thirty-first of July, so he'd drawn himself a picture of a cake. He wasn't expecting a real one, or even any presents. Freaks didn't get gifts. He just wanted his picture. Unfortunately, his cousin Dudley found it and took it to his father and – well, Harry had been in his cupboard for a very long time.

He considered himself lucky though. Dudley had just had his birthday and he'd been given some books as presents. Harry wasn't sure that his cousin could read, so when Dudley put the books in the garbage bins on Harry's birthday, Harry retrieved them and hid them under his mattress. There was one about trains and another about birds and the third was about something called dinosaurs that lived a long, long, long time ago. Where there was enough light that came through the slats Harry could sit with the books and think about what other places were like. Did other little boys live in cupboards or were they lucky and had a room for their beds and another for their toys.

Harry sometimes felt very lonely, and when he did, he would reach behind the loose board next to the door and pull out the baby blanket he hid there. His Aunt had told him it was what he was wrapped in when he'd been dropped on their doorstep, the worst unwanted package ever. Harry thought his mummy must have wrapped him up in it, so he hugged it very tightly. He sometimes thought he remembered his mummy and daddy, a woman with a warm smile and red hair and his daddy who had glasses and hair that looked like he'd pulled it, so it stood straight up. Then he thought that it was stupid because he'd only been a baby when they died in an accident.

Harry dreamed of what it would have been like to have grown up with his parents. They would have let him eat what they had, and he'd be allowed to sit at the table. He'd have his own bed with sheets and a blanket without a hole. He bet his mummy would read to him, and his daddy would have taught him all sorts of cool things, especially about dinosaurs. They'd have a big black dog that Harry could have rode ridden like a horse, and he'd have uncles and aunts that came to visit with suitcases containing sweets and presents for good boys,. which we would have been for his mummy and daddy. Not a freak who didn't deserve anything.

Harry heard his uncle's chair scrape across the linoleum floor of the kitchen and wondered if it would be like yesterday when Uncle Vernon just yelled through the slats, or if would be –

Harry didn't get a chance to finish his thoughts as he was yanked from his cupboard by one arm, which made his elbow go floppy again. Suddenly he was face to face with his uncle and Harry was scared.

"You stink, you freak!"

Harry knew to keep quiet.

"We took you in and what do you do? You expect a birthday celebration!"

"I didn't expect anything, sir," Harry muttered, trying to keep from passing out due to the pain in his elbow.

"I didn't expect anything," Vernon mocked in a falsetto voice. "I'll teach you to expect things. You are not our son. You are a freak who we tolerate. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Harry meekly replied, and the boy was dropped on the floor. He went to cradle his arm, and rather than see he heard his uncle's belt unspooling from the belt loops. His tee-shirt was lifted so it covered his head. Harry lost track after six, the pain was just too much, and he passed out.

It was dark when he awoke, his back stuck to his mattress and his arm still dangling like a limp noodle. He figured everyone was asleep, as he couldn't hear anything from upstairs.

Surprisingly, the door to his cupboard opened and a lady helped him out. She was dressed in a very funny dress and carried a stick which had a light at the tip.

"I'm Emme Vance, I knew your mum and dad. Dumbledore sent me to take care of you and heal you up." She worked quickly, healing the wounds on his back, and then putting his dislocated elbow back into place. "I wish I could take you from here, but we're just not allowed. Know that we love you. Here, drink this down and when you wake up, you'll feel all better." Harry drank down the Dreamless Sleep potion and when he was out, she cast a spell that would make him forget she'd ever been there.

"His back looked like filet fish, Dumbledore," Emme said to the man who met her on the front walk. "And this was the fifth dislocation of that elbow, and I don't care that it's normal for small children to get Nursemaid elbows, so many of them isn't good."

"Harry must stay with his family for his protection. When he enters the magical world, all will be forgotten," the old man lilted. "One more thing, Miss Vance," he said quietly. "Confundus."