A/N: Not quite sure yet, but updates will probably be once every ten days or so. Also, this is quite a short chapter, but the next one is very long, so...

"ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴅ ꜱᴜꜰꜰᴇʀᴇᴅ. ɪ ᴋɴᴇᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴡʜᴇɴ ɪ ʟᴇꜰᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴏɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀᴜɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴜɴᴄʟᴇ'ꜱ ᴅᴏᴏʀꜱᴛᴇᴘ. ɪ ᴋɴᴇᴡ ɪ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴄᴏɴᴅᴇᴍɴɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ᴛᴇɴ ᴅᴀʀᴋ ᴀɴᴅ ᴅɪꜰꜰɪᴄᴜʟᴛ ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ."

Chapter Two: The Murder of Vernon Dursley

-Surrey, 1990-

In a neat, plain-looking house in Surrey, the news was blaring on the television.

A large, beefy man with a purple face was watching the television with a glassy stare. His name was Vernon Dursley; and he lived in this neat, plain-looking house with his wife, Petunia, a respectable stay-at-home mother whose favorite pastime was spying on the neighbors, and his ten-year-old son, Dudley, who was considered an absolute horror at school. But as far as Vernon and Petunia were concerned, he was an absolute angel.

There were two children huddled behind the sofa, but the Dursleys didn't consider them part of their perfect family.

The reason for this was because they were Petunia's late sister's children; or to be more exact, what that implied.

Lily Potter, née Evans had been most peculiar — or as Vernon and Petunia would put it, a freak. In fact, Petunia would like to pretend that Lily never even existed. She had never been to visit Lily's grave, and she had long thrown out everything that reminded her of Lily. Everything but the children.

What obsessively normal people like Vernon and Petunia called 'freakish' and 'peculiar,' was actually magic. Lily, her late husband, and her two children were all magical — witches and wizards.

Unfortunately for Harry and Ruby Potter, young witches and wizards have very poor control over their magic.

Just as Petunia and Dudley were about to leave the house for tea with the neighbors, Dudley, who never missed a chance to be cruel to his cousins, took the opportunity to lob his ball at Harry.

Harry flung his arms up to protect himself. The soccer ball stopped in midair, and though Harry tried to hold it back, an uncontrollable burst of magic sent the ball flying back towards Dudley.

He froze in fear. Petunia dragged Dudley out of the house as he squealed with glee, knowing that Harry was about to get punished.

The front door slammed shut.

"BOY!" roared Vernon. "HOW DARE YOU DO YOUR FREAKISHNESS IN MY HOUSE!"

"Girl!" he snapped. "Make some tea and get me some food!"

Ruby slowly got to her feet.

Bringing Vernon food meant leaving Harry. But arguing might make it worse.

She chose not to argue, but her chest tightened as she heard Vernon continue to rage at Harry.

Ruby winced, trying to shut off her feelings, and walked into the spotless kitchen.

Aunt Petunia liked neatness. She was a diligent housewife; something she said that Ruby would never be because no one would want to tolerate freaks like her and Harry.

This was something that she would tell Harry and Ruby while Uncle Vernon was at work and Dudley was upstairs playing video games. Aunt Petunia would pour vodka into her glass with shaking hands, and tell them how lucky they were to have a roof over their heads. If she'd had enough vodka, she would start rambling about their mother, too.

"She went off with that awful Potter boy, got herself pregnant with you two, and got herself killed," Aunt Petunia would say, sneering at them in disgust. "Your parents were freaks. Just like you."

"It was Lily this, and Lily that. My precious little sister. So smart, so pretty, so talented. I was the only one. The only one who saw through it. Oh, yes. I saw her for what she really was. A freak."

And then she'd lean towards Ruby, beckoning her to come closer so that she could rasp into her ear with alcohol-scented breath. Every time Ruby would obey, mostly out of curiosity rather than fear, waiting and hoping that Petunia would reveal something more about their mother. Did Lily have green eyes like Harry's, or brown eyes like hers? What did her laugh sound like? Did she love them, when they were babies?

Ruby seemed to remember their mother singing. Or at least, she felt some strange sense of familiarity when Petunia used to sing to Dudley.

But Petunia's response was always the same.

Her finger would wag up and down. Ruby could picture the trembling, salmon-colored nail. Petunia's eyes would take on that same, misty quality that they did when she would lock Harry and Ruby in the cupboard under the stairs.

The cupboard door would shut slowly, light disappearing inch-by-inch.

"I am doing this," Aunt Petunia would say as the last sliver of light was snuffed out into darkness, "because I love you."

"You're going to end up like her, do you know that? Do you want to end up like your mother?"

"You're sneaky," she'd say to Ruby, swirling the clear liquid in the glass, knocking it over and watching her mop up the spilled vodka before it ruined the varnish on the dining table. "I never liked sneaky children."

And then, Aunt Petunia would get up and hide the vodka before Vernon got home, tell Harry and Ruby to make dinner quickly, and start polishing the china or scrubbing the floor spotless.

Eight more years, Ruby thought. Maybe less. Six more years, and she and Harry would be able to work, able to leave.

But even six more years with the Dursleys, sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs and keeping their freakishness under control seemed like a lifetime of unbearable misery. She didn't know how much more Harry could take.

He barely spoke in school, giving one-word answers if pressed, never saying more than necessary, and sinking into the shadows.

And it all led back to Vernon.

Harry was Vernon's obsession as much as Ruby was Petunia's. Except Harry had it worse, because Vernon controlled everything in the house, hated anything out of the ordinary with a burning passion, and Harry had an unfortunate knack of making odd things happen around him — from turning their teacher's hair blue, appearing in places that he wasn't before, to making objects move in strange directions.

This couldn't go on any longer.

Ruby shook her head. She had been standing straight and staring at the wall.

Ruby set the kettle to boil, wincing at Vernon's shouts.

She heard Harry sobbing and Vernon screaming from the living room.

Then she heard a slap and a cry, and her chest tightened even more. Her resolve hardened. There was a solution to her and Harry's problems, and it was within reach.

When would she ever get this chance again?

Ruby hadn't exactly been planning to kill Vernon, but she couldn't deny that the thought of watching him die in some horrible, painful way lulled her to sleep when Harry's screams were haunting her. And the way to make her dream come true was in the baggy pockets of Dudley's hand-me-downs.

Monkshood was such an Aunt Petunia thing to grow. It was a tall, erect plant with sharp green leaves and ominous violet blooms that reminded Ruby of a knight's helmet. Apparently people used to believe that it cured werewolves; that's how it got its other name, wolfsbane.

A few days ago, when she and Harry had been sent out to weed the rosebushes, Ruby had stuck handfuls of the plant inside her pockets, taking care to avoid being stung by the fat bumblebees drinking from the stamens.

Aunt Petunia never handled the stuff directly. She complained that it made her hands tingle. Ruby's own hands had been numb for a while after handling the plant, and she'd had the worst headache imaginable. She could only imagine how potent the effects of eating it must be.

Ruby wrapped her hands in tissue paper, then clumsily cut the plant: stem, roots, and flowers. She swept it into the pot amongst the tea leaves. Her hands felt slightly numb.

She felt strangely calm and self-possessed as she poured boiling water into the teapot, and washed her hands in the sink. Her fingers only tingled slightly.

Her head felt empty. Everything felt cold and still, as if time had frozen.

Killing Vernon Dursley was the only thing on her mind.

Ruby waited for the tea to steep. The water slowly bloomed a deep red, but the monkshood was still noticeably purple. Luckily, Vernon never paid attention to detail.

When she came back into the living room with the tea, sugar and biscuits, Harry was curled up in a silent ball in the corner.

"Freak," spat Vernon. Ruby set the tea down in front of him. She stared serenely into his weak eyes for a second before remembering to look down. His moustache wobbled.

I hope I put enough wolfsbane in the tea to kill him.

I hope it's painful.

Murder is wrong.

Then why do I feel so calm?

Killing shouldn't make you feel calm.

Ruby took care to conceal her interest as she went to sit by Harry in the corner. He was still curled up.

He didn't look so good. She put a hand on his shoulder and he uncurled slightly. Cold fury cut through her as she realized he was bleeding. Harry winced and pulled himself into a sitting position beside her.

Ruby drew letters on his too-skinny arm.

It will all be over soon.

Harry looked at her, confused. Black smoke seemed to curl around him, protecting him, but when Ruby blinked, it was gone.

I'm going to kill him.

They went back to staring at the floor. Vernon was like a mad dog; staring provoked him.

Vernon slurped his tea. If he noticed the taste of monkshood, he said nothing.

"Girl!" he snapped, or at least tried to. His voice slurred. Vernon tried to stand, but he could not.

He tried to rage, but everything was sluggish and limp and refused to obey him. The beast was subdued. Vernon slumped and tumbled to the floor.

Harry rubbed his eyes and watched, spellbound as Vernon moved drunkenly, his head against the coffee table and his arms flopping uselessly. Aunt Petunia's horrid vase wobbled and broke, splintering over the bottle of peppermint humbugs. Water and cheap carnations spilled out.

The television blared. Harry and Ruby were frozen.

The sleep broke and Vernon stumbled to his feet. He loped menacingly towards Harry and Ruby, who had drawn further back into the corner. His eyes were beady and red, and his face looked grotesquely swollen and sweaty as he foamed at the mouth.

This wasn't supposed to happen!

Vernon was supposed to be dead.

The lamp toppled over, and the room darkened.

He pointed a meaty finger. "You fucking freaks. The both of you are useless just like your parents, and you'll meet an ugly end like them too. I'm putting an end to the freakishness in this house for good today! I'll wring both of your necks!"

He reached towards Harry first. The boy was frozen in shock as his crying sister tried in vain to pull him away. Vernon's hand tightened around his neck, and Harry whimpered. His hands half-heartedly went up to Vernon's hand around his throat, as if he was reluctant to stop the life from being squeezed out of him.

Everything started to go fuzzy and black. Vernon's yelling and Ruby's screaming faded into a warm, dark quietness.

Maybe dying wouldn't be so bad.

Vernon squeezed tighter, but he had never been a healthy man, and his heart could not withstand the poison long.

Harry toppled back against the floor as Vernon released him.

Why did he let go? Has he thought of some other, crueler way to kill me?

He shuddered at the thought.

Harry's eyes widened as his vision cleared.

Vernon twitched once, twice, three times, and then slumped to the living room floor with a sickening thump.

"Is he…" started Harry.

"Dead?"

Ruby's voice was barely more than a whisper.

Harry shifted closer, his hands trembling, half-afraid that Vernon would wake again, lash out, and kill them in some unimaginably cruel way.

But Harry was brave. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have survived this long. He steeled himself, and reached out to press his hand on Vernon's enormous neck.

The man had no pulse. His heart was still.

Vernon Dursley was dead.

Death shouldn't make you feel happy, thought Harry. But it did.

They were free.

"We need to leave, Harry."

Harry turned to her, still stunned. "Leave?"

Ruby was frantic, tugging at the ends of her hair and clothes.

"I killed him — we'll — we'll get in trouble, it's illegal! We have to leave now, before Aunt Petunia gets back."

Harry nodded, still staring in shock at Vernon's corpse.

"There's money. They keep money in the drawer. And coats, we should bring coats."

"Why? It's summer."

"We're leaving, Harry."

"Oh. What are we going to do? Maybe we could go to the police?"

"They'll find out what I did! Come on, Harry, we have to leave!"

Harry plucked up the courage to go into Vernon and Petunia's bedroom in search of something that their mother might have owned - a letter, a photograph, a diary. But there was nothing left except a nightmare that Ruby didn't share; a nightmare filled with screaming, long auburn hair and kind green eyes like his, lots of green light, and a sense of loss and despair.

Harry and Ruby left, dressed in winter coats with only what they could carry.

If they could, they would have erased the past nine years of their lives, starting with the day that they were found on the Dursleys' doorstep.

They walked down Privet Drive, hand-in-hand, between the neat hedges and prim rosebushes, and the house of their childhood disappeared around the corner.

Neither Ruby nor Harry looked back.

A few hundred miles away, a small book laid in the vault of Lucius Malfoy. It was an odd thing sticking out amongst the extravagant multitude of gold and jewels; leather-bound, creased, and water-damaged. It was the perfect place to hide such a thing. No robber would notice it as they scooped up solid gold by the handfuls.

If someone had been inside the vault, and perhaps happened to pick up the book, they would have discovered that the first of the yellowed pages bore a very faint inscription in pencil that read T.M. Riddle. All of the other pages were bare, as if T. M. Riddle had bought the book a very long time ago, written their name, and then forgotten all about it.

However, that was firstly, not true, and secondly, far from the most interesting thing about the book, and the fact that it had T. M. Riddle written in it was only part of the reason that it was in a high-security vault in a wizarding bank to begin with.

What was interesting, however, is that if someone opened the book, and put it to their ear, they might think that they heard a very faint scream of pure agony and grief and madness.

If they continued listening, they might think that at some point the screaming voice would creak and crack and stop and break down into sobs, like those of a child, and then start screaming all over again. Occasionally, if they listened long enough, there would be some periods of miserable whimpering, and then complete silence interspersed also.

The person would probably then put down the book, and like most sane people, decide that their mind is playing tricks on them, because no book, content of the Malfoy family vault or not, screams and sobs and whimpers.

But this particular book did.

You should put it back where you found it.

Better safe than sorry.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Chapter 3 will be out probably the first week of January, and it's quite long.