*The Absolutely Unfortunate Harry Potter*

The Absolutely Unfortunate Harry Potter by Pseudonymous Entity

Summary: Harold James Potter -who much prefers 'Harry' thanks- is the only utterly ordinary member of the great Potter family. He doesn't have political ambitions, or a high IQ. He isn't even tall enough to get the cereal off the top shelf. There's a bitter and vengefull demon living inside of him though. That's something, isn't it?

Characters: Harry Potter

Warnings: Posession?

AN: Several hints and foreshadowing tucked within...

NOTE: Contains a conglomeration of inspiration from three or four novels outside of Harry Potter. Props if you're part of their fandoms.

Ever Yours, Pseu [The clever, magnificent and ridiculously good looking]

"Evil on your mind? Trouble at your feet!

I shook the hand yeah I took the fix

...I crossed the line to taste

The Devil's pill - Yeah I shot the gun, yeah I shot my fill...

Evil on your mind? Trouble at your feet!"

-Devil's Got You Beat

Chapter four

Rose's hand didn't release Harry's arm until she'd dragged him to the edge of the crowd.

Release generally means to let go but here it means Harry yanked his arm away from his twin violently.

"Why did you do that? Why do you always do that?" Harry demanded. "They think I'm enough of a screw-up -a freak- without you making a spectacle!" Harry's chest heaved, breath puffing out in the cool autumn air in fierce dragon-esque curls. The twins stared at one another across the small space between them, all pretense gone, washed away with the crowds that had left them. Leaving behind nothing but truth or as close to it as any Potter dared to tiptoe.

"I was only trying to help." Said Rose.

She turned on her heel and started down the path leading away from the festivities and toward Potter Cottage. She turned left at the fork with little hesitation, strayed into the little-used path that crossed through the forest. Harry's fingers dug into his palm for a moment before he stomped after her, walking alongside his bike. She was lucky she hadn't gotten it scratched while dragging Harry along. He valued everything Sirius sent him, and since he rarely ever got to see him Harry didn't want to risk his Godfather showing up out of the blue as he usually did, and having him think he treated his gifts poorly.

The forest.

Shudders Harry could not repress rippled through him as he stepped further along the path. It was faster to go this way, he knew. But he hated these woods. It always felt as if something was watching him. The forest was dark and twisted and nothing at all like the sort of place anyone in their right minds would want to picnic or go hiking. A horrible fire and raged through it years ago and the forest, much like the Potters, outlived the fire and thrived around it. Some of the trees ashen and frozen in a sort of melting pose, branches twisted away from the source of the flames -which were now nonexistent- as if committed to surviving in spite of whatever had caused it.

Harry, like every other child in the village, learned about the great fire in class. What the others kids wouldn't know was that the fire hadn't been like anything ever seen. That there had been rumours, those who had been there and seen who swore that the fire had come alive, clawing through the forest and snapping its jaws at anything and anyone within reach. It was one of the stories whispered among the Potters but never confirmed one way or the other. Just another secret kept by his family. Like what had started the fire in first place and why it had ended so suddenly when the rain storms taking place at the same time hadn't diminished the flames at all.

Or why no one ever talked about it except to skim over it in class.

Harry sometimes thought the reason the Potters avoided the forest and ignored it, for the most part, was because the forest seemed to know things about the Potters no one else did. It stopped abruptly at the edge of the property for Potter Cottage, refusing to grow beyond the fence. Even the birds would stop a the fence and their twittering and calls would cease. The wild grass and vines rose up around the fence but never went beyond it. Not the flowers, not the dragonflies. Nothing living in that forest wanted anything to do with Potter Cottage. And Harry could never get rid of the feeling that it held that exact same sentiment for the Potters themselves.

Well, Harry thought. I don't much like the Potters either. So there.

As they walked Rose-Marie started up one of her famous attempts to get Harry to be more like everyone else in her family. Using the only real talent, apart from lying perhaps, that Harry possessed. He could draw. Paint. Sketch. You name it; if it was art Harry could do it. She would try to convince him to show off his work to the art teacher at school or show it to their parents. Not in a million-million years. As brilliant and talented and successful as the members of his family were, they didn't have an artistic bone in all of their bodies.

Unless you counted his Godfather Sirius or his second cousin thrice removed Lucius Malfoy. Sirius was a famous Illusionist. A stage magician and he traveled the world showing off his skills, which had always fascinated Harry. Not that he was permitted to learn any. And Cousin Lucius... well the Malfoy part of the family was known for doing whatever they pleased. And Lucius had certainly done that. After his wife Narcissa and his own twin sister, Elise, died in a tragedic accident he'd moved away from the rest of the family. His sister's husband and her daughter moved in with him and -according to grandmother Dorea- he totally lost it.

Lucius owned a huge publishing company and they sold things like newspapers and magazines and things like that. Well, one day Lucius decided he was going to be a novelist because suddenly he was publishing books he'd written. And they were popular! He was on every bestseller list there was in the UK, in Europe and in the United States.

The problem was that he wrote fiction. Not just any fictions either. Stories about secret societies living invisibly around normal folk, casting spells and sucking the happiness from people, and even these guys who could turn into animals. Grandmother Dorea had the biggest tantrum Harry had ever seen when she was only three pages in. And Harry, being Harry, had seen his grandmother very angry on occasion. The point was that his family didn't have much regard for imagination or entertainers or any other sort of 'degenerate' work either.

Of course, both Sirius and Lucius had managed to get themselves just about exiled from the family and were never invited to events and rarely mentioned. Harry had tried for years to figure out how they had managed it and just what he could do to enjoy the same. Much to his parent's disapproval.

That was another thing. His parents. They were just so...good. His father would go on and on about Rose and Harry growing up and joining them on their work in the foundation and changing the world, and his mother would talk about all the goodwill trips to various countries they would go on. See, his parents were all about charity and helping others and what you could do to improve the world and the lives of others. Art? It made him happy. But it didn't do a thing for anyone else. They wouldn't be impressed. Just about then Harry ran right into the back of his twin.

Blinking up at her red hair Harry took a step back. "Rose?"

His sister's arm reached behind her, grabbed him by the sleeve and yanked him forward. He opened his mouth to complain and froze. At the bottom of the hill was the path that lead to Potter Cottage and the fence that surrounded the property. What was unusual was the fifty some people standing there, staring up at them. Every eye was on them. Some of them familiar family faces, others once he'd rarely ever seen. And they seemed to be...waiting for them. And there in front of them all stood grandmother Dorea with an apron around her waist holding out a tray of sweet and wearing a lovely smile.

"We've been waiting for you, loves!"

That was it. Harry's fight or flight response kicked in and he spun around determined to hop on his bike and get as far away as possible. If grandmother was smiling at them like that it could only mean one thing. She'd finally decided to poison him and be done with it. Skinning puppies and driving people to suicide wasn't enough for her anymore, she needed to start outright killing family members too. Unfortunately, Rose's fight or flight response seemed to have picked the opposite of Harrys because she grabbed him by the hand, dug her nails into him, and started down the hill with her chin up.

Harry decided if died because of this he was going to haunt Rose-Marie for eternity.

PseudonymousEntity

2018

Notes: Thoughts, Theories, Questions, Comments and Limmericks always welcomed

An: COMMING UP: More relatives, more backstory. James. And a warning.

ANx2: Dun, Dun, Dun...

Ever Yours, Pseu