Ok, I got the first inspiration for this story from both Beyond the Pale by Araceil and When Darkness Sings by the Spirit of the Shrine. Both good story ideas, though one has been abandoned and the other hasn't been updated since February 2014. I liked the idea of an apathetic Harry, and one who gets along spiders is pretty cool too. I thought about it, and after that harrowing experience, this story came out differently. It will have a Female Harry, mainly because I am tired of reading the name Harry allllllll the frikkin time, and some other changes, in magic and in people. Ok, I have blabbered enough, lets get started.

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At Number Four, Privet Drive, the Dursley family was finishing up with dinner. "Lovely, as always Pet," stated Vernon Dursley with a sigh, relaxing his rather large bulk back into his chair at the table for a moment before standing up and heading into the living room to turn on the television. "Yeah, steak is great!" exclaimed a blond-haired boy well on his way to matching his father in appearance said as he followed.

Petunia Dursley fairly glowed with pride as her family left the room, bustling around to clean up the dishes left from the meal, save for a wrapped portion sitting on top of the microwave. She debated for a moment, then wrote a note and left it beside the wrapped food. Yes, she had the perfect life. Her husband was doing well in his career, her son was growing up strong and was popular among his peers, and that girl stayed well out of the way. Life was good.

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I lay quietly, simply enjoying the stillness, the silence, the peace. I waited a few minutes more, before opening my eyes. Only the barest rays of moonlight managed to find their way through both the windows and the cracks in the door of my cupboard, but I didn't mind. This was my space. My power was woven through it, and I was aware of everything within my web. I smiled up at the spiders sharing the space with me. I knew from my readings, and early attempts to force me into primary school, that normal girls usually hated and feared them, but why should I? I wasn't a normal girl. Normal girls hated and feared me as well. And it was from spiders that I had learned so much about my power, so I didn't care what anyone else thought. These spiders were my only companions, the only ones who wanted me, and the only ones I would allow in return.

With a thought, I sent a small greeting through the strands of my web connected to theirs, and I felt the closest equivalent to a response they could offer reverberate back. I knew spiders weren't intelligent enough to understand a greeting, but I liked to think that my power had affected them a bit, granting them understanding in return for the understanding they had given me. I stood up, and began changing out of the old nightgown I slept in. I still remembered the time I wore it outside and someone saw me. The rumors of a ghost took a while to die down.

Now clad in a black cotton sweatshirt and jogging pants, I slipped on my comfortable tennis shoes, and as I opened the door, I checked my web. Since I put it in place, it had remained strong, though I had never left it since so I had no real inkling of what might happen should I leave. By now, it stretched throughout the house and over the yard, and I needed only touch a strand of it with my power to feel anything touching it. Coincidentally, I had several strands set up around all of the Dursley beds.

I headed into the kitchen, grabbing both my food and list of chores for the night. Chores were much more fair around the Dursley home these days, and as I walked back to eat in my cupboard, I reminisced on how it began. On the day I discovered my power, and with it, so much more.

Social Services meant the Dursleys had to send me to school. Naive child that I was, I thought that any time away from my lovely home slavery- er, life - could only be for the better. So I endured Uncle Vernon's rant that lasted an hour and was basically just No Freakishness!, and held on to hope as I entered the small classroom with the other children. Unfortunately, I had been called referred to as simply "girl" when one of the Dursley adults deigned to speak to me, and introducing myself as such to other children only led to scorn and ridicule. Things only got worse when the teacher scolded me for my introduction, and as I tried to explain why I didn't know my own name, Dudley quickly took his chance to both accuse me of lying, and to mock me as too stupid to remember my own name. Amidst the laughter of the other children, and the disapproval of the teacher, the last hope I held for the "goodness of humanity" crumbled.

That day, I came home in tears, but not of sadness, as the Dursleys found out when they gathered in the living room to mock me. I screamed and shouted at them instead, angered that they would cause me to humiliate myself like that. As Uncle Vernon purpled in rage and reached out to grab me, I felt something rise up from within me, and it too reached out, and somehow caught Uncle Vernon's hand, but it didn't stop there. I felt it continue to flow, out of me and settling around Uncle Vernon before pulling tight, all in a second, and suddenly Uncle Vernon fell, arms and legs ramrod straight by his sides, only his eyes fairly bulging out with distress as my power bound every other inch of his body.

A small smile tugged at the corner of my lips, and as I was alone, I let the emotion express itself for a moment before taking my dishes back to the kitchen. Taking one final sip of my tea, I began the first of my chores, loading the dishwasher, before continuing my reminiscing.

Since that disastrous first day, the tone for school was set. Though the Dursleys looked at me with fearful eyes now, as Vernon was paralyzed well into the night, they feared Social Services as well, and I was still forced to go. The children ostracized me, and Dudley's efforts had not been in vain, for the teacher now firmly believed me to be "one to watch out for." My anger built. When I discovered my efforts at flipping avidly through simple books Dudley ignored enough for me to take gave me an advantage on reading, and only I and the boy beside me scored perfectly on the first test, the teacher immediately started to question me, claiming that while he knew the other boy was intelligent, he seriously doubted a girl who didn't know her own name could get a perfect score on her first reading test honestly, my anger turned to fury. When I refused to "be honest," he questioned me, and when I answered correctly, he simply flushed and turned away. My anger turned to contempt. When the next test came, I filled in every question save one, and I knew they were all correct. The only thing missing was a name. When he handed them back the next day, stating one paper had no name and thus received no grade, I received only a glare, and I felt nothing for such a petty man. It showed, and he openly scowled. That was the day I realized that giving them nothing was the only way to deny them everything.

I sighed as I closed the dishwasher, turning it on as I headed next to the laundry room, and my next chore.

As I turned in paper after paper that would have undoubtedly received a high score, had I not refused to claim them as my own, I received scolding after scolding as well. When the teacher told me to put my name on it before I handed it in, I told him it wasn't mine, that it was simply lying on the floor. When he stood over me during the test, I was momentarily stumped, before I carefully spelled every answer… backwards. For a moment he simply looked confused, but then it changed to understanding, and fury. He yelled, and I simply stared. He ordered me out of the classroom, and threatened me with parent conferences. I still said nothing.

When the Uncle Vernon found out, he screamed and spit at me until I grew annoyed. Then the power rose again, and suddenly he was still shouting, but no sound emerged. Aunt Petunia screamed when she realized what had happened, but only for a second. Then she was silent too. Uncle Vernon took a step towards me. I raised an eyebrow, and his feet were stuck to the ground. In the sudden silence, I said, "I don't want to go to school. I will not go anymore."

Finished with the laundry, I grabbed the broom and dustpan, as well as the mop and bucket. The gentle scrape of the broom began, soft and steady, adding to the atmosphere without breaking it. I fell into a rythym, enjoying my peace as I continued to relive how I had earned it.

Within a month, I was being homeschooled. Of course, it was simply me with my books, studying and filling out the required work either in my cupboard or outside. Aunt Petunia was quite clearly terrified of me, but would still yell at me if I was in the same room. Luckily for me, the work came easily, and when I was finished I had time to practice with my power. Less fortunately, came no where near as easily as it had when I faced Uncle Vernon. For a while I was stumped, and began to think it only worked on my family (not that I would have been too upset, but still), but one day I was attempting to use it yet again, when I saw a spider spinning a web. I watched it as its legs worked, reaching down to the tiny spinneret before pulling out the silk, coiling out and out, the other legs working to place it as the silk just kept flowing from it. When the spider stopped moving, it took me a moment to realize why. Then I realized I was why. My power had unspooled as well, and was touching the spider.

I stepped outside, and took a deep breath. This. The moonlight shining down, the soft hum of nature around me, the sent of dew growing on the grass… this was something to live for. I had few of those things, but how wonderful they were! With my web, I could feel it as well. All the little animals bumping it, and all the plants it touched. Even the wind as it flew through it caused a reaction, though it was slight. I bent down to weed, not at all unhappy to be out on such a gorgeous night.

Thus began a period of experimentation, and discovery. As I grew, I learned what I could get the Dursleys to agree to, both with my power and by doing things for them, like continuing some of my chores. I learned to consciously draw on my power, and to do more things with it, such as my web, mostly by observing spiders. It worked the first time, and it continued to do so.

I also experimented with people, and society. Those experiments yielded less pleasant results. Children were stupid brats most of the time. Even when they started off seeming nice, the second things went wrong, they all turned on me. Adults were deceitful. Masks upon masks, some so perfect that I likely would have fell for them had I not been 'raised' by the Dursleys', whose entire life was devoted to maintaining a mask of normalcy. They were also nosy, and controlling. They always wanted something from me, particularly information. Always asking…

A light sweat had built up by the time I was finished, but I felt good. Simple work like this, a simple life without having to bother with all the bureaucracy and gossip of society. People are idiots, and they force their idiocy upon all of those born into so-called civilization. There is nothing civil about the great majority of them. Sighing, I went inside to participate in one of the most heinous institutions of society: boring-as-sin homework.

Eventually, I grew tired of having to always having to deal with people. So I spent more and more time awake during the night and early mornings, when others were more likely to sleep, and I less likely to have to deal with them. The less I dealt with them, the more peace I had. Eventually, I decided to never deal with other human beings if at all, beyond absolute necessity. Unsurprisingly, the Dursleys had no problem with that…

Having finished all of my work, I had time for myself now. I sat down at the foot of the sole tree growing in the yard, and I reached out with my magic. I joined with with my web, and through it, with the very web of life. My face involuntarily split in a grin as my magic danced with the magic within all of the living things around me. The plants glowed with a soft green that flowed slowly throughout there length, even and calm, with pools of brighter light reaching towards the light. My magic touched those pools, and, so used to the touch were they, the plants sprouted new buds, which quickly grew into full leaves or bloomed into deep, lovely blossoms. Fireflies dance through the air, forming patterns and glowing in an orchestrated light show with my magic as the conductor, touching each little spark of orange and causing them to glow yellow as my magic fed their bioluminescence. And as the dawn broke across the sky in streaks of peach and lavender, I looked about myself, and thought that indeed, life is good.

Little did I know, that shortly would my peaceful, beautiful life be utterly disrupted.

Ok, mostly just showing what her life was like. Next time, the story starts for real.