A Darker Form of Magic

The incident with the boa constrictor was something that Harry knew that Uncle Vernon wouldn't just overlook, not with him believing that Dudley had been put into danger by the younger boy. So Harry wasn't surprised in the least that the next time that he was allowed outside of his cupboard it was already well into the summer holidays.

 But with the holidays came Dudley's friends coming to the Dursleys each day, looking for another ten year old to beat senseless. More often than not, thay honor fell to Harry, so the boy was always quick to finish his chores for the day and escape to the field where he knew, hoped, that Jude would soon come.

The sun was beating down with an unforgiving heat by the time that Harry got to the field that day, his too large clothes hanging on the boy's much too small frame like an extra weight as he walked. Harry could see the top of brown hair that gleamed almost red in the midday light. He moved and met the boy in the tall grass, sitting down beside the older boy. Harry could already feel Jude's eyes on him before the other even turned his body to look at Harry fully.

Jude reached out and cupped Harry's face, turning it to meet his own. Harry could feel the slight sting there as the older boy ran a thumb over the cut on his brow. He could see the undeniable anger that always seemed to linger behind those eyes of his when Harry showed up in such a state, but the anger never burned him. Jude never let it.

"I think that Dudley's aim is getting better," Harry joked snarkily, something that Jude did not seem to appreciate if the harsh way that the other boy shoved Harry's face away was anything to go by.

Harry could see the older boy gritting his teeth as he attempted to calm himself. Each of them had a temper on them, one that they both knew would hurt the other if they didn't take the time to try and control it. 

"You know, if you would just learn to duck…" Jude started, but his voice trailed off the way that it always did when this topic came up over the past year that the boys had known one another.

"Then it would be twice as bad when he finally does get his hit in," Harry reminded the other anyways. "Making it easier for him to get it all out from the start is the best form of self preservation that I have," the ten year old finished as he pulled himself to his feet, Jude following closely behind Harry.

"I know," the other boy said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans as the pair set off for the woods at the edge of the field. "I still fucking hate it," the boy cursed.

You're not the only one, Harry thought but he didn't have to voice it for the other to know.

The pair walked through the woods, relishing in the shade that it provided. The trees were thick and the foliage full enough to block out the majority of the heat and the pair moved through them, tracing their fingers across the same bark that they'd climbed a hundred times before over the past year. If Harry were to think about it all long enough, he could almost feel that force within him longing to reach out to the woods as well. Harry didn't give in though, not with Jude around to see and leave him for being a freak too.

"Stonewall High will be better," Jude said suddenly as the boys sat on the tallest branches that they could without breaking them, the leaves pricking at each of their skin.

"No shit," Harry cursed, kicking the other boy's trainer with his own as they faced one another from opposite branches, their feet dangling in the open air.

For the first time in ten years that Harry had lived with the Dursleys, next school year would be the first time that he got to go to a school without Dudley and even some of his goons. What was even better, Stonewall High was the same school that the boys from the group home went to as well. Next year would be the beginning of five years spent at the other boy's side. And five years without having to see Dudley for twenty - four hours a day.

Even with the power thrumming dangerously under his skin, constantly begging to be released, Harry couldn't imagine anything better.

—-

Harry was surprised to find his body waking up naturally the next morning instead of to the sounds of his Aunt's screeching, but the heaviness of sleep was soon washed away by a horrid smell coming from the kitchen. Wrinkling his nose, Harry ventured out of the cupboard and into the other room to find the source of the offending smell.

"What is that?" Harry asked, his eyes taking in the sight of what almost appeared to be dirty rags cooking in gray water. He thought that he might already know the answer, but was just hoping - almost desperately so - that he was wrong. 

Aunt Petunia's lips tightened into the same thin line that they always did the few times that Harry had ever dared to break his own set of rules and ask a question. "Your new school uniform," the woman said with more than a hint of spite.

"I didn't realize that it had to be so wet," Harry muttered bitterly under his breath, just quite enough that no one else in the room could hear him.

Harry thought it best not to question the woman anymore and moved to the table, getting about as far away from the smell as he could while remaining in the room. It wasn't long before Uncle Vernon and Dudley waddled into the kitchen as well and sat down at the table. The older boy seemed to take great, oafish joy in banging his Smelting's stick on the table as he did so, leaving Harry to wonder - not for the first time - why the school thought that giving boys such things in the first place was such a good idea. He could only imagine how much it would hurt to be hit by one of those. Harry figured that by the end of secondary school he wouldn't have to imagine at all.

The mail slot clinked as it fell closed and a small stack of letters hit the doormat. Harry stood to get them without being ordered to do so, anything to get a reprieve from the stench slowly filling the house.

There were only three pieces of mail waiting for Harry when he went to pick it up. One was what looked to be a bill while another was a postcard of the Isle of Wight from Aunt Marge to Uncle Vernon, and the last… the last was a letter with his name written on the envelope in a dark green ink.

Harry walked to the kitchen slowly, staring at the letter in his hands as his mind was numbed from shock. If Harry had been thinking more clearly, he might have hidden the letter away in his cupboard before the Dursleys could see it, but as it was Harry was too busy staring at the address on the letter and the seal on the back.

Mr. H. Potter

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whining 

Surrey

The envelope was thick and made of a heavy parchment that reminded Harry of the old kind that he would see people using on one of Aunt Petunia's historical dramas. The seal had the image of a crest on it, divided into four pieces. There was a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding the letter H, all of it made from purple wax.

"What are you doing boy?" Uncle Vernon all but snarled at Harry when he stopped in the kitchen doorway. "Checking for letter bombs?" Harry handed over the postcard and the bill as the man laughed at his own joke.

Moving quickly, Harry sat down at the table and started breaking the seal on the letter before any of them realized that he had it and accused him of stealing from the Dursleys. It wouldn't have been the first time.

"Dad!" Dudley squealed suddenly, causing Harry to jump and bite his tongue to keep from cursing out loud, Aunt Petunia was not one to tolerate such a thing. "Dad! Harry's got something!"

No soonsenthad Harry started to unfold his letter, was it ripped away from him by his Uncle's meaty hands. Harry didn't bother to make any noise in protest, he knew that it would do himself any good to fight.

Harry watched as his Uncle shook the letter in what seemed to be triumph before he actually took the time to look at the paper in his hand. He could see the exact moment that undeniable fear took over the man's body, washing his face out into a paper white complexion.

"P - P - Petunia!" The man gasped, looking almost as if he had been possessed.

Dudley made a grab for the letter as Harry watched his Uncle all but hyperventilate at whatever it was that he had seen on the page, but Uncle Vernon moved the letter out of his son's reach. It was the first time in ten years that Harry had ever seen the man defy one of his son's whims.

Aunt Petunia walked over to her husband's side and gave the letter what was supposed to be nothing more than a cursory glance, but after reading the first line the woman looked one decent shock away from fainting where she stood.

"Vernon! Oh my goodness, Vernon!" The woman choked out once she was able to speak once more. Harry personally didn't believe that the woman had any goodness to her to speak of, but that was his personal opinion.

Harry and Dudley etched as the adults stared at one another, the older pair seemingly to have forgot one that they boys were still in the room at all until the older boy tapped his father on the head with his Smelting stick, a sight nay would have been almost comical in any other situation for Harry.

"I want to see that letter," the boy loudly proclaimed, lowering the stick back to the table with all of the grace of a drunken bastard.

Harry fought the urge to scoff at the older boy. "I want to read the letter," the younger boy said bitterly, knowing just how useless doing so was going to be, "you know, since it's mine."

"Get out, both of you," Uncle Vernon ordered, denying his son for the second time in as many minutes. Not for the first time, Harry wondered why all the interesting things always tended to happen when he had a stake in it.

But Dudley didn't move, so neither did Harry.

When Uncle Vernon saw that winter boy was going to easily comply, the man rose from his chair and grabbed both of the boys by the scruff of their necks. The man threw the boys into the hall and slammed the kitchen door shut with enough force to rattle the pictures on the wall. 

Harry and Dudley stared at one another for a moment, the pair sharing a strange case of likeness as neither could really believe what had just happened inside of the kitchen. It only took a beat for the pair to remember just what was going on inside of the other room and fit themselves against the door to listen.

"-what should we do, Vernon?" Harry heard his Aunt ask, her voice filled with a peculiar kind of fear that he only ever heard he used when a certain thing was mentioned. "Should we write them back? Tell them that we don't want-"

Harry could hear the disrictivice stomping steps of his Uncle on the other side of the door come to a stop as he cut his wife off. "No," the man decided firmly. "We'll ignore it. If these people don't get an answer…"

Harry didn't know who it was that they were talking about, but he could guess, he was no fool after all. There was only one unspoken rule within the Dursley household - all of the others were laid out bare as soon as a line was crossed and they needed to be created - and that was that the things that Harry could do, the freakish things, were not to be spoken of or encouraged.

The letter had to have been from someone like him.

—-

The night of the kitchen incident Harry was moved into Dudley's second bedroom, sharing the space with all of Dudley's old and broken things. He didn't bother asking about the change, figuring that it was some idiotic ploy made up by his Aunt and Uncle to fool those that had sent the letter, or to at least not make themselves look as bad. The cupboard under the stairs was a pretty picture to have painted after all.

The room was the smallest of the ones inside of the house and almost filled to the brim with all of the things that Dudley had cast off over the years. The only things in the room that appeared to be unharmed were the heavily diseased books lining the once sleek shelves, filling them to the brim. If the condition that they were in were anything to go by, Harry had a good guess that they were the only things in the room that had never suffered the older boy's touch.

What had caught Harry's attention the most was the month old broken camera in the corner of the room. The damage on it didn't look too extensive and that was enough reason to work on it well into the night to drown out the sounds of his cousin's whining about the new arrangement and his Aunt's placating voice.

—-

The next morning had to have taken second place on the strangeness scale of Harry's life as Uncle Vernon had been almost civil with him the entire time, going as far as making Dudley get the mail that morning. 

Not that it had anything close to the intended consequences.

The second letter had come that day, Dudley had it in his hands and was trying to open it as Uncle Vernon lunged for the envelope, wrestling the older boy to the ground to steal it away. Harry stood back and watched quietly as the pair grappled with one another for the letter as Aunt Petunia squalled for them to stop.

Harry had learned one thing that day when he'd caught a flash of flash of the address on the letter, the people sending the letter knew that he'd been moved.

—-

More letters came through the mail slot as the day passed on, the number of which steadily increased as well (though Harry or overly thought that this was more to annoy his relatives than anything else). Those letters were burned in the fireplace and the mail slot boarded up.

Next came twenty - four letters hidden inside of two dozen eggs that were shredded by Aunt Petunia through the food processor of all things on Saturday.

—-

Sunday was when Harry saw things hit their first breaking point as forty letters had come barreling out of the chimney during breakfast. While the Dursleys had ducked, Harry had dove to the floor to grab as many of the letters as he could, but Uncle Vernon had slapped them harshly out of the boy's hand and drug Harry out of the room before he could get a good grasp.

"That does it," the man proclaimed with a false calmness that always set Harry more on edge than the man's blatant anger ever could hope to.  "I want everyone back here, packed and ready to leave in five minutes. No argument!"

At that moment Harry knew that Dudley and Aunt Petunia saw in the man what Harry did most days as the pair scrambled up the stairs in a whimpering fear with Harry trailing close behind them.

Harry wasn't even surprised this time when Uncle Vernon had struck the older of the two boys across the face for taking twice as long as the time that he'd given them. 

The four of them drove and drove for the rest of the day, not making so much as a single stop for food or drink the entire time no matter how much Dudley whined about his two missed TV programs and the like. They didn't stop until they were at a dinghy motel in Cokeworth for the night.

—-

The morning didn't stop the letters though as another had come while they were at the hotel breakfast the next day.

—-

The cabin that they went to next would have been dreary enough on its own without the persistent rain pouring down on Harry and the others as they rowed out to it. The inside smelled strongly of seaweed and there were more holes than the number of walls in the shack. The fireplace was damp and cold from the sea, refusing to light no matter how much Uncle Vernon fought with it.

Despite all of this, Uncle Vernonnwas in a very good mood.

Harry could tell that the man believed that no mail could reach them here. Privately, Harry thought that his Uncle was foolish to believe such a thing, not if those sending the letter could do what he thought that they could.

Night fell and the storm outside raged on, chilling the bones of everyone in the shack. Harry watched silently as Aunt Petunia gathered up all of the spare blankets that she could find and made up a bed for her son on the couch, leaving the thinnest of the blankets and the floor for Harry himself. But that was fine by Harry. Between the thundering storms, Dudley's snores, and the anticipation coiling in the boy's stomach, Harry highly doubted that he would sleep at all that night.

Time ticked away quickly as midnight approached, closing in on the day that Harry would turn eleven.

The storm grew louder and the house creaked something fiercer as someone knocked on the door hard enough to shake the whole shack as midnight rang in.

There was a loud badging noise as Uncle Vernon came crashing into the main room, a rifle in his firm grip. "I'm warnin' ya, I'm armed?" The burly man shouted as the knocking ceased.

Then the door fell to the floor with a great band.

Harry pulled himself to his fear quickly from the ground at the figure of a man easily ten feet tall standing in the doorway, towering over everyone else inside of the shack. Harry watched the stranger with careful eyes as the man squeezed himself through the frame that the door had once sat in before bending down to put the door back where it had been. Harry knew that he could never hope to beat them stander in any type of physical fight - really that last was never much of a question -, but Harry thought that he might be able to outrun the giant if it came down to it.

The stranger's eyes seemed to scan the Dursleys, or more likely just Uncle Vernon and the pair hiding behind the man, before landing and staying on Harry himself.

"Ah' here's Harry!" The giant exclaimed with a booming voice that Harry thought was more likely than not just the man's usual volume.

Harry looked up and met the man's eyes and was surprised to find that they were krincled in a smile. It was the first time that anyone had looked at the boy like that. It made Harry want to claw the warm feeling out of his chest before anyone could take it.

"Last time that I saw you, you were just a baby," the stranger said, his voice inexplicably fond for some reason that Harry couldn't fathom. "Yeh look a lot like your dad, but yeh've got your mum's eyes."

Harry's breadth caught at the slip of information, all but trapping him there like a butterfly in a display case. He'd never know what his parents looked like before just then. There were no pictures of either of them in the house and Harry was forbidden from asking about them after being told how they had died. He didn't even know when they died.

Some part of Harry registered Uncle Vernon yelling at the stranger to leave and the giant bending the rifle into a knot as easily as someone breaks bread, but it wasn't until the man pulled a box for his coat that Harry found it within himself the capability to function again.

Inside of the box was a crushed chin late cake that said Happy Birthday, Harry in green icing that reminded the boy of the ink on the letters. It was Harry's first birthday cake.

"Who are you?"

The man chuckled loud enough to sound like distant thunder.

"Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts," the giant - Hagrid - answered, tacking on the title behind his name as if it was supposed to mean something to the boy before him. Though it meant nothing to Harry, the youngest boy noticed Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon both stiffened at the name almost instinctively and had a pretty good idea as to what Hogwarts was. Or at least who went there.

Harry watched as Hagrid sat himself down on the old couch, making the thing creak and groan under the new weight. Questions prickled at the boy's brown and for once he was going to ask them while there were answers that he could still acquire.

"What exactly is Hogwarts, sir?" Harry asked before anyone else could say anything to stop him from doing so.

Hagrid looked down at Harry within a shocked expression that made the youngest boy want to shy away from the older man's gaze. The giant turned to stare at the Dursleys who were still cowering in the corner of the room, tucked as much into the shadows as their figures would allow them to.

"You didn't tell the boy about Hogwarts?" The man asked, more to himself it seemed than to anyone else in the room before turning back to Harry. "Blimey Harry, do you even know what you are?"

Something cold swept through the already frozen room as a bitter taste filled Harry's mouth. He didn't need to be reminded of what he was.

"Stop!" Uncle Vernon suddenly commanded, seemingly finding his voice at last since it was lost with the rifle before. "Stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything more!"

Realization and rage seemed to play in equal parts over Hagrid's face as he took in the situation. "You never told him anything?" The giant bellowed, seeming to finally have concluded just how clueless Harry was supposed to be. "Yeh never told him what was in Dumbledore's letter? I was there! I was Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?"

"I know what I am."

All the eyes in the room landed on Harry as he spoke, his bitter voice carrying over the sound of the arguing adults. He took pleasure in the way that Aunt Petunia gasped in horror and raw ashen look that took over his Uncle's face.

"You do?" Aunt Petunia asked, her voice breathy with panic.

But Harry ignored the woman in favor of turning to the fireplace. A simple flick of his wrist was all that it took for the once dead fireplace to spring to life with flames that flashed a dark purple before changing to the usual hues or red and orange.

"I know what I am," Harry repeated, enjoying the fear that shone in his relatives' eyes at the simple action, but the shock in Hagird's dark eyes made much less sense to the boy.

But then the giant chuckled. "'Course you'd figure it is of your own," the man said, breaking the tension that had built, though Harry could still see some of the surprise lingering there. "You're Lily's son, aren't ya."

So they were like me… Harry realized, taking in the information that he could only speculate on before then.

"I reckon that it's about time that yeh read yer letter," Hagrid decided, taking out another one and handing it to Harry. For the first time, no one tried to stop the boy from reading it.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Wizard…

Harry let the title sink in, let himself think it for the first time since he realized that it was him causing all of the strange occurrences that he knew to be scientifically impossible.

Wizard…

It sounded a lot better than freak.

"What does it mean that they 'await my owl'?" Harry asked, finding that he quite liked getting to pretend that his relatives were not in the room at all as he spoke.

The giant cursed something about galloping before pulling out a quill, paper, and a legitimate owl from his coat pockets. Hagrid wrote down a quick message about taking Harry shopping the next day before putting the quill away and moving to the window to throw the owl out into the storm. Harry almost felt bad about asking. 

Almost.

So they use owls for post then…

"Now, where was I?" Hagrid asked as he sat back down, now birdless… Hopefully.

Harry opened his mouth to ask another question, but the sight of Uncle Vernon moving had him slamming it shut more than once. The man's face looked beyond angry, livid, as he moved in front of the fire light, but even then he and Hagrid were only at eye level with one another… Magic or no, Harry felt his body curling as he willed himself to become small.

"He's not going," Uncle Vernon said angrily. Harry knew that his Uncle was only one wrong word from screaming.

But Hagrid only grunted, feeling none of the fear coursing through Harry's small frame. "I'd like Ted see a great Muggle like you stop 'em," was all that the giant said.

Harry thought for a moment on the word that Hagrid had used, Muggle. Growing up in a house where he was the only one banned from asking questions, Harry had learned early on what lines to read between, behavior to study to get the answers that he sought after. It wasn't hard to figure out that Muggles were those born without magic.

They're the normal ones.

"We swore when we took the boy in that we'd put a stop to all of this rubbish," his Uncle bellowed, his foot stomping uselessly on the ground. "We swore that we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed."

Anger rose up inside of Harry and with it came magic, coursing through his veins as good as any drug, like pure adrenaline. Wind began to rustle and stare in the shake, the walls creaking violently as an unnatural thunder cracked in the distance. There was a storm raging inside of the boy, always had been, and he was getting close to willing it to let go.

Everyone else seemed to know it too.

The Dursleys were looking at Harry with ashen faces as Hagrid stared at the boy with the same look of shock that he had worn earlier with the fire.

"They were like me? Weren't they?" Harry asked, moving close to the cowering family, forcing them to tell him of the answers that they'd withheld for years. "My parents."

Harry watched as his Aunt shrieked, a rant years in the making falling from the woman's lips. She spoke of a sister born with magic, of a letter that came and whisked her away to a faraway school every year. Of a family that was proud of the girl, even though Aunt Petunia only saw her as a freak. 

"Then she went and met that Potter at school, got married and had you. Course I knew that you'd be just as strange, as abnormal. Then they went and got themselves blown up and we got landed with you!"

The wind picked up and grew much stronger, rattling the table and chairs, tossing everyone's hair this way and that until it looked like a tangled mess. "Blown up?" The boy questioned harshly. "You told me that they died in a car crash!" Harry yelled, the wind picking up until it was hard to hear.

That didn't stop Hagrid from yelling over it.

"Car crash?" The man screamed, sprinignto his feet with enough force to shake the entire shack. "It's an outrage! A scandal!" The man insisted. "Harry Potter boy knowing his own story when everyone else in our world knows his name!"

"What happened?" Harry asked, his confusion damping the winds into a not so gentle breeze.

Hagrid's face softened into something anxious.

I never expected this," the giant said in a voice that would probably be his version of a whisper. "I had no idea when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble getting hold of yeh how much yeh didn't know…" the man continued on, but Harry only half listened to the giant's ramblings about all of the things that he didn't know.

Because Harry was taking that time to analyze what he did know. Because he'd just found out in the course of one conversation that the Headmaster of his school was the reason that he was placed with the Dursleys, that he'd given Harry to them himself, fucking letter and all. And that the man must have known at least the minimum of what was happening inside of that house, but still did nothing to help. 

He wondered where the bastard got off on playing god.

Harry had never seriously thought of killing someone before, but he thought that this Dunbledore might be at the top of his list. Right up there with this Voldemort bloke that Hagrid was telling him about.

"Took you from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore's orders. Brought yeh to this lot…"

Harry could understand everything that Hagrid had explained about Voldemort easily enough, about the killings and the war, but what he couldn't piece together was why a school teacher was legally allowed to give such orders. Was allowed to dictate where a child would end up. Harry thought that there had to be some laws about that kind of thing. 

"What happened to Voldemort?" Harry asked instead, feeling that asking something about the headmaster to someone that seemed to follow his orders so absolutely wouldn't be the best idea that the boy could have.

The faint flinched as if Harry had hit him. Harry didn't feel so bad about causing such a reaction.

"Some say that he died," the giant said once his face had regained its proper coloring. "Codswallop," the man cursed. "Don't know if he had enough human left in him to die. Most of us reckon that he's still out there somewhere but lost his powers. Too weak to carry on," the grounds keeper explained. 

Harry was glad that the giant didn't seem to notice the catch in Harry's breadth, or only took it for childish fear if he did. But Harry was relieved to learn that the wizard was still around, Harry wanted to kill him with his own hands in a way that he could remember for years to come.

"Somethin' about you fished him Harry," Hagrid continued. "There was somethin' goin' on that night he hadn't counted on - I dunno what, no one does, but somethin' about you stopped him."

"None of this matters," Uncle Vernon hissed, seeming to have finally found his voice once more. Harry wished that he hadn't. "I already told you he's not going! The boy is going to Stonewall High and he'll be grateful for it. I've read those letters-"

But the man stopped talking as Harry saw Hagrid raise the pink umbrella that he'd had at his side this whole time. "Harry has had his name down since he was born. He'll be going to the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. He'll-"

But Uncle Vernon, Harry knew better than most, was never one to be questioned or talked over. "I am not paying for some old fool to teach the brat magic tricks!"

Harry saw Hagrid's face contort into something ugly as he stood, his umbrella still aimed at the Dursley lot. Harry knew that he wasn't imagining the sparks that came out of the thing, hitting Dudley square in the chest. The boy squealed and danced, his hands covering his rear, but Harry could still see a pig's tail curling between his cousin's fingers.

"Never insult Albus Dumbledore in front of me," Hagrid said dangerously to Uncle Vernon.

The man roared, but he knew - just like Harry had so many times before - that this was a fight that he wouldn't be winning. Harry watched with silent satisfaction as Uncle Vernon grabbed his family in a vice grip and dragged them into the other room, closing the door tightly shut.

Hagrid sat back down as the door closed, a sullen look on the giant's face as the anger seemed to have mostly drained away. "Shouldn't lost my temper," the giant mumbled ruefully before meekly meeting Harry's gaze. "I'd be grateful if you didn't tell anyone at Hogwarts about that. Strictly speaking, I'm not supposed to be doing magic."

Harry only nodded, choosing not to ask why. He was just grateful that he'd known better than to question the headmaster's orders out loud. If Hagrid was willing to do such a thing to a muggle boy only a year older than Harry, he didn't want to think of what the man would do to Harry himself if he were to have insulted the man, Dumbledore.

Hagrid gave Harry his coat to sleep under that night, but Harry was still wide awake by the time that the sun rose.