Prologue 

Present Day 

Severus Snape strode through the filthy streets of this forgotten section of London. He was searching, seeking out a young boy whose Hogwarts letter had been addressed to an alley right near here. Nobody had noticed the name or the address until a response had been sent back with the school owl. The note had been written on the back of the letter in a blocky, childish scrawl, drawn in what looked like charcoal. It read:

I.m sorry I don.t know anything about Hogworts. Please explain.

So Severus had been sent to explain. As he approached the mouth of the alley, he considered what he might find. Would the child be starving, injured, sick? Would he be suspicious and defiant, or practically feral from surviving on his own? Would he be unwilling to come with a strange man to a magical world he had never known existed?

He rounded the corner, slipping into the narrow space between the neglected buildings on either side, and spotted a small waif of a boy. He was perched on a cracked crate, squatting next to a bent drainpipe that stretched up to the roof of the building behind him. His dark hair tickled his nose in front and brushed the base of his neck in the back, and it looked tangled and snarled where it poked out from beneath a battered baseball cap. He held a long, unnaturally straight stick between his crouched legs so that its tip rested on the ground. The boy’s skin and the odd stick were both so muddy that it was difficult to tell their original color.

“Harry… Harry Potter?” Severus called out. The boy’s head snapped up, his hair falling into his eyes. He jumped down from the crate and took a couple of steps forward, the stick held in his right hand at an angle in front of him. Then he brushed the hair out of his eyes and switched the stick to his left hand, holding his right out in front of him to shake Severus.’

“I’m Harry Potter,” he said.

Severus stepped forward to shake his hand, and then nearly gasped as he caught sight of the child’s eyes. They were reminiscent of Lily’s eyes, but that was not what made him so nearly lose his composure. Where Lily’s eyes had been a bright and clear green, Harry’s were clouded and hazy. Snape took in the long stick, the foggy eyes, the oddly staring look, and realized…

Harry Potter was blind.

All of this Severus processed in the amount of time it took him to take a single step. He drew his spiralling thoughts together quickly and grasped Harry’s hand, giving it a firm shake.

“Hello, Mr. Potter. I am Professor Snape. I am here to take you to Hogwarts.”

3 Years Previously 

*“Up! Get up now!”*

Harry was woken by this brisk command, punctuated by two sharp raps on the grate of his cupboard door. He groaned quietly but was up quickly, padding into the kitchen and receiving a cuff to the head from his Aunt Petunia for not moving swiftly enough. He busied himself with making the eggs and bacon, dragging a little stool around with him to reach onto the counters and stove. He tossed several strips of bacon into one pan, then cracked the eggs into another and began scrambling them under the watchful eye of his aunt. Just then, the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia left to answer it in the living room.

When the bacon was nearly done and Harry was beginning to pour the eggs into a serving dish, Uncle Vernon lumbered into the room and sat with the paper open in front of him, followed closely by Dudley. Aunt Petunia re-entered the room as Harry turned off the stove.

*“Bad news, Vernon,” she said. “Mrs. Figg just rang. She’s taken ill, can’t take him today.” She jerked her chin in Harry’s direction.*

Vernon’s face purpled. “We can’t take him with us to the cinema! Think of the --”

“I know, Vernon,” Aunt Petunia snapped. “I wasn’t suggesting we do, we’ll have to come up with something else.” She began scraping the eggs and bacon onto four plates with rough movements, placing hearty helpings in front of Vernon, Dudley, and herself and one meager portion on the corner of the table near where Harry stood on his stool as he wiped down the counter.

“What about your sister Marge?” she suggested as she sat down.

*“Don’t be ridiculous, she hates the boy,”* Uncle Vernon mumbled through a mouthful of food.

Dudley was following his parents’ discussion like a tennis match, his gaze shifting between the two while he began shoveling food into his mouth, his brow furrowed in consternation. Harry, meanwhile, was torn between excitement and trepidation. On the one hand, he hated it at Mrs. Figg’s house. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figg made him look at photographs of all the cats she’d ever owned. On the other hand, the as-yet unknown alternative could be worse.

Uncle Vernon frowned. “I suppose we could leave the boy here… We could lock the door and draw the shades…”

“And have him blow up the house?” Aunt Petunia returned. “I shudder to think what could happen to my new carpet.” She glared at Harry as he took a seat in front of his plate, and he tried to make himself look small in the chair, a feat which was aided by his diminutive size.

Aunt Petunia continued, “We could just leave him in the car. We’ll have to leave a window cracked though, it’s nearly July.”

“That’s a brand new company car, I’ll not have him soil it!” Uncle Vernon retorted angrily. His face wrinkled further as he considered, then he heaved a sigh. “I suppose he’ll just have to come, he’s still just seven we might be able to get the little kids’ price for him.”

Harry tried very hard to keep his growing anticipation from his face. He was (hopefully) going to the cinemas! He had never been before, the Dursleys never took him on any of their outings. He had never even seen a full movie before; whenever Aunt Petunia noticed him paying attention to whatever Dudley or the family was watching on the telly she quickly gave him another chore to do or sent him to his cupboard.

Dudley, however, provided an excellent distraction from Harry’s only semi-hidden joy as just then he burst out wailing over the idea of Harry coming with them, and his mother rushed over to soothe him.

“I -- DON’T -- WANT -- HIM -- TO -- COME!” he screeched as he heaved great shuddering gasps of air. “HE -- RUINS -- EVERYTHING! I WANT -- MY DAY -- WITH MUMMY AND DADDY!”

However, in the end, there were no suitable alternatives, and so Harry found himself, for the first time in his life, awaiting with great anticipation an excursion with the Dursleys. His high spirits could not even be dampened by the long wait through the morning in his dark, locked cupboard, into which he had been tossed after breakfast (as a futile attempt at balancing out the excitement of the forthcoming afternoon, or as a punishment for not being easily dumped on someone else, Harry was not sure). He sat gazing at a small, crinkled picture of his mother which he had found and secreted away to his cupboard just last month when Aunt Petunia had ordered him to clean out the attic. His mother could not have been older than 10 in the photograph, and was smiling at the camera with one arm raised as though resting on someone else’s shoulders. Harry had deduced that it was his mother from the caption on the back, which read: “Petunia Evans with Lily Evans, 5 July, 19-.” The rest of the date had been cut off, presumably when Aunt Petunia cut her sister out of the picture. Harry had taken to holding this picture up to the light that filtered in through the grate in the cupboard door and talking softly to his mother when the Dursleys were far enough away that they would not hear.

“I’m going to the cinema for the first time today, Mum,” he whispered to her softly. “Do you think I’ll get any popcorn? I’d like to try some popcorn.” Harry grinned at the picture, then tucked it hastily back away as someone approached the cupboard and unbolted the lock.

He followed the Dursleys outside to the driveway, but before he could climb into the car behind Dudley, Uncle Vernon pulled him aside and warned him in a low, threatening whisper, *"No funny business, you hear me boy? Anything out of the ordinary, anything freakish, and you'll be locked in your cupboard for a month!"*

Harry quickly stammered assurances and clambered into the backseat under his uncle's baleful glare, but inwardly he was seething. He never made anything happen, weird things just seemed to happen around him! Like the time Dudley and his game were chasing him outside of the schoolhouse and he suddenly found himself on the roof with no idea how he had arrived there. The Dursleys were called and the school accused Harry of recklessly climbing on school buildings. He was quite hungry by the time the Dursleys let him out of the cupboard after that. A different time, he was being chased by Aunt Marge's snarling bulldog, Ripper, when suddenly it was whining as if its mouth had been mysteriously glued shut. Aunt Marge assumed the dog must have found some peanut butter somewhere, but the Dursleys were not so easily assured and were quick to blame Harry once Marge was on her way home.

But Harry was determined that this time nothing strange or unexplainable would happen. He would have a good time at the cinema and maybe the Dursleys would see he could be taken places. ‘I’m not too much of a freak,’ he thought to himself.

xxXxx

It was on the way home, while Harry was trying to ignore Dudley's poking, that it happened.

One minute they were driving down a dark highway, the next Harry's world was spinning and then it was black. When he came to, the car was tilted in a ditch and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were helping Dudley out of the backseat.

He moved to follow them, noting that aside from some bruising where he had flown into his seatbelt he seemed to be unharmed. But when he tried to release his seatbelt, it refused to cooperate, clearly jammed somewhere in the mechanism. He jiggled it, then looked around for his relatives, fear beginning to creep into his mind.

"Aunt Petunia, help please, I'm stuck," he called, trying to keep his voice polite and without any hint of panic.

His aunt looked back from where she was scrambling out of the ditch with her husband and son. An unrecognizable emotion flickered across her face and she began to turn around, then her eyes widened and her expression clouded with terror as she looked at something beyond Harry.

Harry turned and saw through the cracked windshield that smoke was beginning to rise from the hood. He began frantically wrestling with his seatbelt and turned pleading eyes to his aunt.

Aunt Petunia took two quick steps back down the embankment, determination on her face, then paused as fear overpowered the determination in her expression. She shook her head and sadly backed away, as Harry began struggling fiercely, even trying to wriggle under the belt. He looked up and his eyes widened when he saw flames, then as his vision filled with light, he felt a half-remembered twist in his gut and was suddenly out of the car. A sharp pain lanced across his hip as he registered the agonizing burning that was in his eyes, then his head struck asphalt and he knew no more.

xxXxx

The next several days were a haze of pain and confusing conversations as Harry drifted in and out of consciousness. He was disoriented the first few times he woke by the darkness surrounding him, but soon learned of the bandages on his eyes, as well as those swathing his head, right hip, and right forearm. He thought he heard the voice of his Aunt Petunia out in the hallway at one point, though he was never sure, yet as far as he knew the Dursleys never came in to speak with him. A few days after he thought he heard his aunt’s voice, one doctor took pity on him and explained about the damage to his eyes that might improve (he later learned that surgery would likely have corrected the retinal damage at least somewhat, but that the Dursleys would have had to agree to this surgery), and the damage to the vision centers at the back of his brain that would almost certainly be permanent. She explained that, similar to his hip, the only way to determine how much recovery of function he would achieve would be to wait and work at it.

Harry did not have much time to truly consider what this meant for his future while in the hospital. At first the pain distracted him, then as that faded somewhat he grew worried that he had not yet heard from the Dursleys. As the days stretched on and his injuries healed, he stopped expecting the Dursleys to return for him and began worrying about where he would go next. Where did they send boys like him - blind freaks with no family?

When his bandages were finally removed, Harry was able to take better stock of the full extent of his injuries. He discovered, with the nurses’ help, that he had some amount of residual vision. He could distinguish whether the room was light or dark, and recognize some amount of movement, though he could not tell where the movement occurred or what was moving. He explored with his fingertips the uneven skin on the forearm of his right arm and right thigh, the ropy scar that extended horizontally from the front to the back of that same thigh, just a bit below his hip bone, and discovered just how painfully stiff his hip was when he attempted to walk on it later on. The nurses also informed him of the faint white scars speckled just around his eyes, and he pictured them accompanying the zig-zagging scar on his forehead, which he had sported for as long as he could remember, in decorating his face like a starry night sky lit up by lightning. While the nurses and occupational and physical therapists began working with him on regaining mobility in his right leg and re-learning some basic tasks, the thoughts that consumed him were where he would be sent next, and how much his future guardians would hate him if he were forced upon them.

His mood was improved a little when he learned that a bundle of his belongings had arrived one afternoon during the second week of his stay. He learned it contained three pairs of pants, one pair of shorts, a few t-shirts, a sweatshirt, and a battered blue baseball cap with the Chelsea FC logo on it (all the old clothing of Dudley’s that the Dursleys had bequeathed to him), as well as the photograph of his mother. Harry was never sure whether the picture had gone unnoticed when his belongings were gathered, or whether it had been left for him by Aunt Petunia out of some vague feelings of guilt. He was, however, heartened to know he still had it even if he could no longer see it, and he began holding it in his hands every night as he fell asleep, smoothing out the crinkles over and over again and conducting imaginary conversations with his mother in his head.

xxXxx

“Albus! Albus Dumbledore! I need to speak with you at once! It’s about Harry!”

The man in question strode into the room where a green fire was crackling, his burgundy robes streaming out behind him and his long gray beard puffing up towards one shoulder, and addressed the disembodied head resting among the coals.

“Yes, Arabella? Is something wrong? Step through, please,” he directed her patiently, leveling his full attention onto the distressed woman. “And do remember to start at the beginning.” His eyes twinkled a bit at this admonishment, though his expression remained serious.

“The Dursleys just returned from some vacation or other early last week,” Arabella began quickly as she emerged from the fireplace, “I hadn’t seen young Harry around since then, but I assumed he’d taken ill and was being kept inside. He does seem to disappear indoors like that at times, you know. Anyways, but now I’m hearing rumors that the Dursleys’ nephew is dead! Died in some accident! I don’t know if they’re true, but Albus, what could have happened?” The old woman’s voice had risen as she finished her hastily-spoken speech, and now she collapsed into a chair and began wringing her hands.