Edit: Changed the Author's notes on this chapter and the next, which my idiotic younger self had made rather condescending on accident.

Sorry, offended people.

NO MATTER WHAT I DO, THIS CHAPTER JUST WON'T. FUCKING. WORK.

FUCK THIS SHIT.

(Oh, and hi, new people, I'm The Baron of Shadows. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Kindly reserve your judging and flaming for when you've read beyond this, because this chapter, despite being the seventh incarnation of my original thoughts, is still nothing but horseshit.

That's all, thanks.)

The Snitch Effect

Part 1: Him, Himself & Hermione

Episode I

"Many a time, from bad beginnings, great friendships have sprung up."
-Terence, circa 170 BC, because no beginning is as bad as the one to this fic.

August 1st, 1993

His desk, beaten, battered, and broken from having been in use for far too many years, clawed at his hand, setting the skin that touched it aflame as he tried to make his quill form coherent sentences, dancing across the parchment in only vaguely coherent lines as the soft scratch-scratch-scratch of the quill filled the otherwise deadly silent room.

He would prefer to have done this seated on his tiny, prickly bed, where cold, broken iron stuck out from its frame and neglected springs poked in his back at night as he tried to escape the horror of life and enter the relaxed bliss of his dreams; but only a few days ago, one side had finally given out, snapping in two from an overabundance of rust and sending him, dead-asleep, tumbling across the floor into the cold, hard wall of his cell. A tiny lamp, lighted by the barest left-over fumes of electricity, lighted his hand's path across the not-yet dry ink, smudging the text further into the realm of hard-to-read as his eyes tried to peer through the pungent fumes, thicker than smoke, trickling out from under his door; and impossibly, a grin started to stretch across his face as he realised that perhaps, what he was attempting wasn't as impossible as it might have seemed –

"BOY!" Vernon's thundering voice suddenly came from outside his door, and Harry flinched on reflex, quickly hiding his Potions homework – which he had been working on non-stop for the past twenty-four hours, desperately trying to get something that might grant him anything even close to vague semblance of a passing grade – under the big, fat Oxford dictionary he'd scooped up in Diagon the year before, in the vain hope of attempting to catch up with Hermione's impressive vocabulary. It had turned out to be a hopeless endeavour, but the dictionary itself made for a good paperweight. "The lawn hasn't been mowed since you've left for that ruddy school of yours, and I want it done before Marge gets here!"

"Wait, what?" Harry yelped, sprinting to his door. "Marge is coming?"

"Oh, didn't we tell you?" The smirk in Vernon's voice was audible, and when Harry opened his door to find his uncle standing only half a foot away, it was right there, obscured only by a large, disgusting moustache frankly fit only for a pig. "She'll be here by Saturday, so you'd best start cleaning up the guest bedroom too." Then, as if he hadn't just dropped a bomb the size of residential London on his nephew, Vernon moved off down the stairs, rubbing his grubby little hands greedily. "Oh, I wonder what Pet's made for breakfast…"

With a pitiful groan, Harry shut himself inside his room again, sliding down against the door until he came to rest on the floor, suddenly feeling quite sad for himself.

"…I hate my life."

Oo0oO

Marge came through the front door a day of mind-numbingly dumb chores later with Ripper yapping at her heels and, as Harry pondered in the entrance hall over what he should call his mother's sister's husband's sister, deposited her trunk on his toes with a nasty grin. "Oh, I'm so sorry." Marge smirked, and Harry had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from lashing out at her in the first five seconds of her visit. "I hadn't seen you there. Move my trunk upstairs, would you? And call your uncle down while you're at it."

"Bint." Harry wanted to mutter, as he was quite sure that the quadruple-chinned behemoth wouldn't hear as he lifted the heavy trunk onto his shoulder, but he couldn't be a hundred percent sure, so he refrained. "Vernon?" He called into the living room instead, sounding about as civil as he could manage. "Marge is here."

"Ah, how delightful!" Honestly, Harry hadn't expected even Vernon to sound delighted that Marge of all people had arrived – though he could distinctly hear Petunia's muttered curses from the bathroom as he lugged the trunk into the guest bedroom. "Good afternoon, Marge – Ripper – how are you – it's been so long!"

"That it has, Vernon." Marge's voice floated – rather, stomped ungracefully – up the stairs, and Ripper's barking conveniently masked the loud THUMP Harry made as he deposited Marge's trunk onto the floor. "Say, would Duddikins be around here somewhere? I have some presents for him in my trunk. The Boy is bringing it upstairs right now."

"He's out with some friends, playing in the local park, I'm afraid. But I'm sure that he'll like whatever you have once he gets home." Vernon chuckled fondly. "The little tyke likes his presents like he likes his food; aplenty! Come on, let's go and sit – we have a new couch I've yet to show you, custom-ordered all the way from America…"

Their loud voices faded as their owners left the hall for the sitting room, and Harry quickly retreated back into his room to hopefully escape the horror of Marge for at least one afternoon before they were forced to sit next to each other at dinner.

Oo0oO

Living with Marge could in Harry's opinion – though he might have been slightly biased in this – be equated to being a piece of paper on a roll of toilet paper. You never knew when you were going to get picked out, and when you did, you – and kindly excuse the ineloquence – got shit all over within moments. Only now, Harry was every single piece of paper on that roll, and Marge was using it up so fast a single day's worth of insults could've sustained an entire Third World city for a week.

Still, Harry felt that he had a right to be biased when the fat cow thumped around Number Four all day, ordering him around like an overgrown House Elf. Boy do this, Freak do that, do something you ungrateful mongrel – it was always something, and Harry rarely had any time to make his homework, of which there was still over half left to make.

The worst part was, undoubtedly, when he was forced to completely remodel the guest bedroom, to better 'fit her needs'. Apparently the bed, which she'd slept on for years, wasn't quite good, and needed to be replaced with a twin from the attic, which Harry was, of course, forced to get down by himself, without help; several couches and wardrobes had to be dragged down and back up, all because they 'weren't quite good', and by the time her lamp had stood in every square inch of the room at least once over the course of the three days it took to completely redo her room, Harry was quite fed up with the whole ordeal.

Unfortunately, the only thing chucking the damn thing at her head got him was the order to make a full five-course meal that evening, so that hadn't really been the best thing to do. Not that Harry cared. The loud SMACK it gave when hitting Marge straight in the face was reward enough.

The rest of the week was, perhaps not so surprisingly, much of the same. When Marge's room was done being redecorated – incidentally granting Harry muscles that really shouldn't have come as quickly as they had – Harry had to spend the final four days constantly having to go up to the attic, where Marge's massive trunk was stored, bring it downstairs, take out one little item, show it to Petunia, put it away, and bring the trunk back upstairs, because it would 'clutter up the place' if it remained anywhere else for longer than half a minute.

It was then that Harry realised that Petunia did, in fact, like Marge, if only because when working together they could make his day all that much worse. Barely half a minute after he settled down into his chair again, Marge's bombastic voice rang through the house, and likely the neighbours' as well, sounding horribly obnoxious even from another floor. "Boy! Come and bring my trunk – I have some things to show Petunia!"

Harry sighed, closed the book he had been reading – Defence Against the Dark Arts: Wounds, Water, and Werewolves – in the rare moment of quietness he'd had, and went to do as ordered. Just as the trunk was downstairs and in the hallway, however, Petunia shrieked, "Never mind, Freak! Bring it back upstairs, Marge doesn't want it anymore!"

Sigh.

Oo0oO

And so continued the rest of the week. Marge wanted something, usually involving some kind of labour, Harry did it, and just as he was settled back in his room to continue his homework, Marge wanted something else, and the whole cycle repeated itself all over again. It was monotonous, mind-numbingly dumb work that left much do be desired in the fun part of things, but when the only alternative was to get thrown out onto the streets for the night by a vindictive Vernon for ignoring orders… well, it wasn't really a question.

Especially considering that Vernon seemed ready to throw him out if he as much as breathed too loud, having been high-strung ever since Harry's hair had suddenly started growing at an 'unnatural' rate. Of course, 'unnatural' for Harry was about average for normal people – it'd grown an inch or three since around when Hermione was un-petrified, near the end of May – but any change was bad, in Vernon's book, doubly so when it concerned 'freaks' of any kind.

Harry was broken out of his reverie by Marge poking her knife in his general direction. They were eating in the dining room, and Marge, taking up most of the free space in the room, was rather hard to miss every time she made a movement. "– This one's got a mean, runty look about him. You get that with dogs. I had Colonel Fubster drown one last year. Ratty little thing it was. Weak. Under-bred."

Ignoring Marge's blatant announcement of having done something illegal (namely, animal abuse and cruelty) Harry tried to stop himself from reacting by reciting his duelling book in his mind. Quite the boring read, but good for occasions such as these. When dodging a fast-moving curse that has a slim, vertical shape (for example, a slashing curse with the wand motion being one from head to legs) one must always remember to –

"–comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out. Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia, but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us."

Fuming, Harry tried to remember another paragraph of the book, determined not to lash out. A wide-spread curse at a diagonal angle is a difficult one to dodge. Should you be determined to dodge, and not throw up a strong shield like the Supreme Aegis, which is powerful enough to stop curses from all but the most powerful of wizards, both Light and Dark [see page 216 for wand movement and incantation], one must twist one's body at a perfect 45-degree angle, and jump off of the ground – this should result in a jumping spin dancing right above the curse. Of course, should such a thing be possible, merely jumping high or ducking low enough should work as well –

"This Potter," Marge said loudly, "You never told me what – hic-scuse me! – what he did?"

"He – he didn't work," stammered Vernon, as Marge took a large swig from her glass, and hurriedly motioned for his wife to hand him the near-empty bottle of brandy. "Unemployed."

"As I ex- – hic! – expected!" Marge smirked, sounding like she felt quite superior. "A no-account, good-for-hic!-nothing, lazy scrounger who–"

"He was not." Harry hissed out suddenly, still glaring angrily at his plate, which had small cracks near the edges, a sure sign that he was losing control over his magic already; his pencil had cracked, too, back in second grade, when Mr. Gonzo felt the need to –

"More brandy!" Vernon yelled loudly, cutting straight through Harry's thoughts. "Pet, go fetch another bottle, quick now –" Harry himself was too angry at Marge and focused on reigning in said anger with what little control he had left to care what Vernon would do to him for interrupting Marge as he'd done. "You, boy!" The Dursley snarled at Harry. "Go to bed, go on –"

"No, Vernon," Marge disagreed, slamming another glass of brandy back. Petunia hurried to refill. "Go – hic! – on, boy, go on. Proud of – hic! – your parents, are – hic! – you? They go and get – hic! – themselves killed in a car – hic! – crash, drunk, I expect–"

"They didn't die in a car crash!" Harry bit out, standing up now, glaring at Marge through his longer-than-usual bangs.

Marge sneered at him. "They died in a - Hic! - car crash, you nasty - Hic! - little liar, and - Hic! - left you to be a burden on - Hic! - their decent, hardworking relati-Hic!-ves!" She was screaming now, glaring as hard as Harry was at her. "You are an - Hic! - insolent, ungrateful little –"

The woman was cut off by a loud rattling; the cutlery was shaking, making loud noises when they came into contact with the table and even louder ones when they hit each other. The windows were cracking, and loud, ominous creaking was the only warning the Dursleys got before an entire wooden wall broke into splinters, leaving them to look into the entrance hall with wide eyes.

Harry, meanwhile, was glaring even harsher at Marge. "Don't you dare talk about them like that!" He hissed sharply. "They were much better than you or your family could ever hope to be–"

Marge, who, in her drunken state, hadn't noticed a thing was going wrong, stood up quickly, toppling the entire table and, by extension, Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley, over with a loud crash. "You – HIC! – little brat!" She screamed, red-faced, as her beady little eyes bulged in anger, glaring at Harry. "You should – HIC! – have just died with the – HIC! – the – HIC! – the whore you – HIC! – call a mother!"

Everything, absolutely everything, from the rattling to the Dursleys' breathing, fell silent. Marge was the only thing making noise, making heavy huffs and puffs. "What did you just say?" Harry ground out, and Marge smirked cruelly, her hiccups all but gone now that she wasn't moving as much as she had.

"Yes, little boy, you heard me – hic! – right. That bitch should have been – hic! – put down like the rabid freak she was with you still in her – hic! – womb. That way us kind, hard-working, good folk wouldn't – hic! – have to deal with you–"

Suddenly, the world erupted into noise. Wood exploded left and right, miraculously evading the Dursleys and Harry as it did so. Walls – brick walls – crumbled into dust, leaving nothing but astonished neighbours behind. Lights throughout the street, all the way up until Magnolia Crescent, shut down from the amount of raw magic in the air, flickering every once in a while. The second floor and, by extension, the roof, was held up by the back wall and the stairs only, wobbling dangerously every few seconds as the winds whipping around the house forced it to swing from side to side.

As all this was happening, Marge finally fought through the drunken haze, and stared at Harry, only now realizing what she had brought upon her and her family.

Harry wasn't fuming. He wasn't mad, nor was he angry, or merely irritated.

He was pissed the fuck off.

His hair, which now reached down to his cheekbones, was waving in a non-existent breeze. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides, nails digging into his palm as drops of blood fell to the floor, and since when, a drunken Marge found herself wondering absently, did scars let out steam? Harry's eyes were clenched shut tightly, but when he opened them after only a second, they were glowing emerald green. And they were glaring right at Vernon's sister.

Marge hiccupped.

Not half a second later, she blew up – literally. Her entire body grew out of proportion, her torso becoming too big to fill the room, and she started floating up, even as her vest ripped open, buttons PANG-ing away from the purplish cotton and jumping around the room like ricochet bullets as her disgusting fat-rolls flopped out like a bucket of stale, month-old dough. Her pants started ripping and tearing, too, and for the sake of his mind, Harry quickly averted his still-glowing eyes as his disgustingly half-naked aunt started flying away on the gales carrying through the house.

Vernon, quickly shaking out of his stupor, sprang up and tried to latch onto Marge's foot to bring her back down, but to no avail – all he accomplished was being pulled up by Naked-Balloon-Marge. Petunia began screaming shrilly, Dudley fainted – though whether from the way his aunt looked under her clothes or from the magic, Harry didn't know – and Ripper, who had hidden under the table until that point, started barking loudly at Vernon, who was still refusing to let go, before biting into the fat man's leg.

Harry quickly realized he really needed to get out of there before Vernon beat him into a bloody pulp, because he definitely couldn't do such a thing again to make Vernon float away – accidental magic, it's in the name. Harry ran up the stairs, ignoring the wobbling of the floor, threw everything that he saw haphazardly into his trunk – luckily Hedwig was out, delivering a letter to Hermione, and would undoubtedly know where to find him, she always did – before wrenching up the loose floorboard and carefully putting away what was left of Mrs. Weasley's birthday cake, making sure not to crush it under other stuff. Closing his trunk with a loud SLAM, Harry snagged up Hedwig's empty cage and made his way downstairs just as his uncle was coming out of the dining room with a trouser leg in bloody tatters.

"GO BACK IN THERE!" Vernon bellowed, face as purple as Old Hag Figg's living room walls. "COME BACK AND PUT HER RIGHT!"

Harry glared at him with as much hate as he could muster – it worked out alright, from the way Vernon flinched back slightly. Then, he whipped out his wand, stored in his handy-dandy super-secure back pocket, and pointed it at his Uncle threateningly. "Do it." Harry hissed. "Try me. See if I don't harm you."

Vernon was spluttering at him, but cowering away from the wand at the same time. "Y-you can't do anything, Freak! Last year – letter – expelled –"

Smiling sweetly, Harry flicked his wand threateningly, and, when Vernon flinched back, said, "I have no problems with blasting you to the other end of this wall, you know. I'll get expelled from Hogwarts, sure. But that's not the only magical school around. Besides, what would the neighbours think if you suddenly came flying through their living room wall?" He smirked when Vernon drew back in fear, and unknown to him, his eyes flashed green again. "Good."

And with that, Harry was out of the door, leaving Vernon, Petunia, and a now-awake Dudley out on the porch to stare after him with wide eyes.

Suddenly, the house creaked loudly, and crashed down upon the foundations.

A few seconds later, the heavens boomed, and rain started pelting down upon Private drive.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, Aurors came to investigate the large amounts of magic released at Number 4 Privet Drive. One of them – who had pink hair that, even throughout the carnage, was looked upon with much disapproval by the Dursleys – tripped on arrival, and fired off a spell on reflex. It hit the Dursley's car, and the black sports car on loan from Grunnings went up in flames.

It was a bad, bad, day for the Dursleys, and all throughout the world, there was much rejoice.

IMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANT

For those wanting to point out that some of the stuff in this chapter - such as Harry's...explosive reaction - isn't exactly a reaction to his crush on Hermione, IT IS. I've thought things through, and it definitely is. Harry's scar has got to do with it, and if you think a little, you should probably be able to figure it out by yourself.

All of the changes in this fic are either results of Harry's crush on Hermione, either directly or indirectly, or 'things Rowling decided not to mention', like the addition of new Alleys aside from Diagon and Knockturn, or Dumbledore's entire speech every year, warning first-years of the forest and stuff, which, in the books, was only mentioned for Harry's sorting.

So if something doesn't make sense, then either try and see if you can't figure it out yourself (which, admittedly, might sometimes be rather more difficult than otherwise; just look at Snape's speech in first year, which, through the meanings of plants, referred to his relationship with Lily - what the fuck, Rowling), or wait until it gets revealed officially. Or ask me in a review. Whatever floats your goat, I suppose.

Oh, and FIY: I LOVE REVIEWS. Reviews are awesome. I'll love everyone that leaves one. I'd give you all a hug if I could.

...Unless you burst into flames and start hating on everything. Then I'll grab the fire extinguisher and shove it down your throat to get rid of the stick on the other end.

But reviews equal awesomeness! So gimme, my adorable little readers!

-The Baron