From the first moment that he could remember Harry knew that he was different. He knew that he wasn’t like the other boys, the other kids, or even other people. He would watch as families on Privet drive would hug one another, how parents would kiss their children on the cheek before sending them off to school in the morning. He couldn’t imagine what that felt like. He’d asked Aunt Petunia for a kiss one day before school, she’d sneered and left him standing in front of the dismal grey school alone and red faced. Harry cleaned the house and cooked food, all the while aware that the families in Dudley’s programs never made the kids do all of those things.

Harry planted flowers and weeded. He mowed the law and watered. Every day he withdrew a little more into himself. At night as he lay awake on the thin worn camping cot that was his bed he wondered what had made him so different… so un-loveable.  Soon the underside of the stairs would fade and the land of dreams would overtake his overworked body.

In his dreams he was free. He was a bird riding currents of air over green countryside. All the people below him bustling about, kissing their children as they headed to school or cooking dinner together… all of them unaware that he glided overhead. Some nights he dreamed of his parents. He didn’t remember them or even know what they looked like, but he imagined them.

Sometimes they were skinny and tall like Aunt Petunia or heavy and short like Uncle Vernon… those dreams were always sent away with a shake of his head. No, the dreams that Harry valued most were the ones where he could see nothing at all. Where his father’s laughter echoed through the darkness of his mind and his mother repeated over and over again how she loved him.

It wasn’t hard to love them. They were his ever-present guardian angels. Usually those dreams came at the end of a particularly hard day, when his body ached so badly from the work and the casual slaps that he couldn’t help but cry. His parent’s voices always soothed him and in the morning when Aunt Petunia would slam her hands onto the cupboard door and scream for him to start breakfast he always felt a little better.

For many years Harry didn’t even know his parents names… or his own for that matter. Until he started school, he had truly though his name might be ‘Boy’ or ‘Freak.’ He finally worked up the nerve to ask Aunt Petunia about his mum and dad, he gotten enough out of her to know that his mum’s name was Lily and that they had died in a car crash. That was, Aunt Petunia said, where he got his scar.

Harry’s young mind really didn’t understand that faithful night, but he understood that his parents had been taken from him and it made a small piece in him come alive. Before that very moment, he had believed that perhaps his mother and father had never loved him that they thought he was a freak as well and had given him away. Now he knew, they had died… they had been taken from him… and that was enough for him… for now.

Harry was a smart child. Once he realized that he would never have any friends, because of his cousin Dudley, he spent his days reading everything that he could get his hands on. He read every fantasy and fiction book the school library had… he loved those books.

There in black and white was an escape. He could be a ships captain, an explorer in a distance time and place, a king, a solider, a traveler on an epic quest. He dreamed himself into Mordor with Sam and Frodo, aboard a mighty ship as they hunted the Great Whale… he dreamed himself to places he was sure he’d never see.

Harry’s voracious appetite for books for not sated. He read every book in the school library before long and every book that the librarian would let him check out from the real library. He read math books, scientific journals, essays about chemistry, and medical logs. When he read the world was stretched out before him. He could be anything, do anything. He knew all the answers in class, even if he had to hide that fact… he knew them.

Dudley’s old school books where carefully pilfered from the trash and stashed away in a corner of his cupboard for review. It was Harry’s only true escape.

            When Harry turned eleven things changed. He woke to the sound of Petunia at the cupboard door, as was his usual wake up in the mornings. He prepared breakfast for his Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin… nothing to make the day stand out. Until he went to get the mail. There in his hands… there was the first letter that he had ever received. He mind was a wash with color and sound, so stunned was he that he bypassed the safe haven of his cupboard and walked into the dinning room. His Uncle, who more often than not pretended that he didn’t exist, failed to notice him… failed to see the thick envelope clutched in his shaking hands, his cousin did not. Dudley lived for moments like these, moments where he could make Harry’s life a little harder.

‘Oh yes’ Harry though to himself as the letter was ripped away ‘that could have been handled better.’

Harry knew there was little time to get the letter back before his Uncle took it; his voice was falsely strong, as he demanded it be returned to him. Harry was so used to the conversational put downs that it almost didn’t hurt any more… it almost didn’t hurt when Vernon pointed out that no one would write to him.

The next few days where the oddest that Harry could remember and he had seen some odd things. Like the time he ended up on the roof of the school while hiding from his cousin, or turned his teachers hair blue… or his all time favorite… when he’d talked to that snake at the zoo, but this was something else. Letters began to enter the house in every fashion imaginable and then some that were beyond comprehension like inside their eggs.

The house was swarmed by letters and birds, owls of every shape and size perched on every surface available.  Harry thought they were amazing. He broke off little bits of his breakfast (a piece of dry toast) and fed it to the birds. He loved running his fingers across their malted plumage.  In his mind the birds and him were confidants… secret allies against Vernon the Oppressor, which he shortened to simply… The Oppressor.

As the stress in the house mounted Vernon grew more and more violent and angry. Thinking to himself… ‘Yes of course, your oppressorness.’ As he went about his chores made him laugh and smile despite his split lip and black eye.  

Finally the day came when it was all to much for the Oppressor… it was a Sunday and Harry was sure that for the rest of his lifetime Sunday would be his favorite day of the week. It started out normally… or as normally as it could since the day the first letter had arrived. His Uncle was twitchy and tense; Harry made sure to avoid his gaze as he made breakfast. Breakfast was a quiet ordeal, a quiet entirely egg free ordeal as Vernon had refused to buy any more eggs after they had cracked to revel nothing but letters for Harry. That morning with breakfast clean up, the family retired to the sitting room where Harry, with his perfect ‘No, really, I’m here by choice… I love doing this kind of thing’ smile on his face, served fresh baked cookies.

It was the noise the caught his attention first. It was like hundreds of wings beating against the inside of the fireplace. Harry glanced at the Dursley’s, they weren’t known for their skill in observation, but he was sure they must have heard something. It wasn’t until the first letter flew from the fireplace and smacked his Uncle straight in the face that they noticed what was happening… by then it was too late.  Harry felt the aim on that particular letter was rather brilliant.

Hundreds of letters, maybe thousands, streamed in to every surface of the house. Shooting out of the fireplace like mini torpedoes, pouring out of the formerly sealed mail slot, streaming in through windows and the vents for the air. Harry supposed that it was the most brilliant display he’d ever seen. He imagined fantastical ways to explain it all, but his heart beat out a single word against his ribs… ‘magic.’

For Harry it was cumulative proof that the Dursley’s had been mistaken all along. Here, this right here, these letters streaming in… this was magic. Harry knew he had precious few seconds he had before his Uncle thrashed him. He was keenly aware of three things.

1)   He had to grab a letter quietly and hide it

2)   If he didn’t make a show of grabbing for a letter and getting caught the Oppressor would assume he was hiding one somewhere and take it back before giving Harry another thrashing.

3)   Last, but certainly not least, he needed to find a way to send a letter back to the person who sent all of these. It seemed to him that a letter sent by Owl was less likely to have a return address to which letters could be sent with nothing more than an envelope and stamp.

Harry acted quickly. He set the tray he was clutching down on the counter. Observed everyone for a moment and leaned down slowly until his fingertips brushed against thick paper. He tucked the letter carefully inside his sock so it wrapped around his ankle, secure against his body. Time for the next step in his plan.

He checked to make sure no part of the letter was visible and that his pants lay just as they should before running headlong into the flurry of letters. He brushed aside his Aunts spindly hand and leapt with a joyous cry onto the top of her coffee table. It was an incredible moment even if his frantic grabs for letters as they swirled about the air was fake, the comforting roughness of the letter tucked into his sock infused his body with life.

Vernon would have none of it. He reached for Harry, but Harry was quick and small. He threw his body through the space beneath Vernon’s arms and booked it to his cupboard. He had barely laid his hand on the small nob of a handle when great fleshy arms grabbed his from behind and dragged him back kicking against his Uncles corpulent form. Harry struggled not to protect the letter that he hand mangled in his hand, but to protect himself.

His Uncle had never been a rash man, he considered himself a cut above the riff-raff who made decision with not sort of planning or for thought. So when his Uncle screamed that they were leaving everyone stopped moving. The letters were the only things not affected by the strange fluctuations of time in the hall.

Petunia quickly moved into action. Harry was thrown into his cupboard none to kindly as she attempted to calm her husband. Petunia even argued that she would need time to clean up the letters since they couldn’t trust Harry to do it.

The usually comforting closeness of the cupboard seemed to be closing in on him as he waited for his Aunt and uncle to move into the kitchen. As their voices faded Harry removed the letter from his sock.

His fingers shook as he pried the seal loose, remarking to himself that it was a special letter indeed that was sealed thusly. The words stood out against the creamy background of the paper, their emerald tone cementing itself in his memory.

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…

Harry felt like screaming, like shouting in joy until the world knew or his voice gave out. MAGIC WAS REAL!!! It filled Harry with more satisfaction that anything ever had before. This moment was food and drink to him. He ran his fingers lovingly over the page… magic. The entire world could have burned down around his small cupboard under the stairs and Harry wouldn’t have known or cared.

Harry rolled over, his hand still clutching the letter, and began searching for a pen, anything with which he write out his reply. His fingers closed around the ballpoint pen his Uncle had given him for Christmas last year.  It was not wasted on him that this small hateful gift would be the method of his escape.  Harry paused; he needed to find something to write his response on… his eye lit on the sign on the inside of the door. It’s bold looping crayon lines spelled out in clumsy childish English ‘Harry’s Room’ but the back of the paper was blank.

There are moments when the Universe aligns so perfectly that, though we cannot see its machinations, the course of fate is altered into something entirely strange and different. It was no different for Harry, he scribbled out his message on the back of his drawing, and as he packed the car for his family he’d approached one of the birds. Instead of saying, please take this to Mrs. McGonagall or please take this to Hogwarts… instead he held the letter out and asked quietly.

‘Please take this to someone who can help me.’

He wouldn’t know that the Owl would bring the letter to one Professor Severus Snape. That as he strode back from Hogsmead the exhausted creature would give him a letter that would haunt them for days. No, Harry wouldn’t know this for some time.

As the Owl winged it’s way to Scotland, flirting with destiny, Harry and his Family drove endlessly through the countryside. Stopping at hotels and Inns until they reached the coast. A great storm had started blowing by the time they reached the hut on the rock, by then Harry was sure his heart was broken. For days he had waited for someone to respond to his letter, waited with his heart beating hard against his chest, until it exhausted itself.

Now, he was sure that no one was coming. Laying on the cold dirt floor, a thin blanket below him and the cold night air pressing down on him.  He watched the flames of the fire die slowly like the embers of hope he’d fostered since he sent that letter. Had he known the events unfolding miles away, he would have held out longer, but he couldn’t fight the helpless tears anymore. They ran down his cheeks in small rivers, mingling with the blood on his face before falling into the dirt.

***

Severus stood on the shore, watching as night blanketed the lands with it’s dark magic. The cool breeze of the coming fall rustled through the trees that lay to the north of him. A storm raged off shore, it’s great thunderheads and flashes of lightening humbled him. In his hands a thin piece of Muggle made paper barely weathered its abuse. Severus had crumpled it, straightened it, tossed it out, and retrieved it many times in the last few days. He would never admit to anyone other than himself but he was terrified that Harry, his last link to Lily, would be just like his father.

He knew that tomorrow was Harry’s birthday… he knew that he needed to answer the letter. That he needed to find the boy and confront those ghosts of mistakes past that he carried with him. Severus looked down at the envelope he pulled from his pocket.

‘Mr. H. Potter

The Floor

Hut on the Rock

Middle of the Sea’

Severus felt a shiver race up his spine. He had learned long ago, before even Lily, that he needed to trust his instincts. They had saved him from the Marauder’s, from his abusive and drunk father… he knew that something here was wrong. He struggled with himself for a moment longer. Finally he apparated leaving no mark that he had stood in that spot for the last hour.

The storm thrashed the small island rock. Waves crashed mightily against the stone, rain coming down with the might of bullets. Severus moved to the aged wooden door of a hut that had certainly seen better days. He disillusioned himself and opened the door silently. The wind ripped the door from his hand and slammed it against the wall waking all but the lump snoring away on the coach. He quickly moved near a damp corner of the room as a small child rose from his place in front of the dying fire. The child struggled with the door. Severus felt a sneer twist his face. There in front of him stood the spitting image of James Potter. Severus felt anger grow inside of him. Before he could exit the hut or appear before the child, loud steps thumped down the stairs to the loft. The child struggled with the door harder… there was a tension in his small form. The footsteps grew louder until finally a form came into view.

The man who appeared was large, as wide as he was tall, and in his hand was clutched a shotgun. Snape was not unfamiliar with Muggle weapons, he had received his N.E.W.T. in Muggle studies and grown up in a fairly Muggle home, but he was confused as to the purpose of the gun in this instance.

The man slammed the door shut and glared at the boy, who looked intently at his belly button.

“Boy, What’s the meaning of this? You could have woken Dudley. I told you that one more peep out of you and you’d get it, but you never listen do you, Freak.” The man’s thick jowls shook as he yelled. Severus was transfixed by the scene in front of him, his mind overlaid the scene in front of him and the past… a scene from his own childhood.

He wanted to move, to intervene by he couldn’t break the spell of memory. The man raised his free hand backhanded the boy, knocking him to the floor. He lifted his foot and with one great arch slammed it down into the boys ribs. The child didn’t yell or cry out, he bit at his lip, biting it clean through as the man began to stomp on the boys frail back.

Finally it stopped. The man grabbed the boy by his frayed collar and dragged his unresponsive form toward the very corner by which Snape stood. Severus held his breathe as the child thumped against the wall.

“Don’t move, Boy. If I found out you did…” The man trailed off, his hand tightening on the Shotgun as he turned away and headed back up stairs.

Severus looked at the lump of a boy, but instead of seeing James Potter he was caught and transfixed by Harry’s green eyes. Lily’s eyes… filled with tears and pain.  Lily’s eyes, staring up unresponsive at the leaking ceiling above him.

Harry moved. He carefully wrapped his arms around himself and began to silently sob. Severus could no longer stand quiet; he dispelled the charm that kept him unseen.

Harry didn’t notice him at first. Severus knelt beside him. He didn’t care about the dirt on his pristine robs; he reached his hand out gently as he spoke.

“Harry.” His voice was soft and infused with warmth. Harry’s head shot up, for the moment shock forced away all the other preceding emotions.

“I’ve come to take you away Harry. You’re Mum and Dad wouldn’t have wanted this for you… come with me.” Severus felt the child’s eyes appraise him before the boy spoke.

“Are you magic?” Severus nodded. The boy moved with a careful injured grace until he was hunched against Severus’ chest.

“I didn’t think you’d come. I didn’t think anyone cared.” Severus felt tears damped in robes. He placed his arms around the quivering child, taking care to move slow and avoid his injuries.

“I’ve always cared Harry… always.”