AN-I was supposed to have this up months ago, but personal problems got in the way. That being said, I'm not happy with how this chapter turned out at all, but the only way to move forward with the story is to get it done. Chapter Three will hopefully be...better.

Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.

Chapter One

Lady Charlotte Holmes had the patience of a saint. She would not have survived her darling sons' childhoods, if she didn't. Between Mycroft deciding early that caring was unwise, and Sherlock experimenting on everything his long-fingered hands could get ahold of, it was a wonder that she had (and Cherrywood Manor) had survived.

But Charlotte was made of iron and steel. She had not bent when her husband of twenty-two years 'died', leaving her with a stoic sixteen-year-old and an angry ten-year-old. She had not bent when that angry ten year old grew into a drug addicted twenty something, and her eldest had taken control of the British Government by the time he was twenty-four. It would take more than life could ever throw at her to break her.

Or so she had always thought.

Staring at the picture Angus had painstakingly captured for her, green eyes staring out of Sherlocks' face, she felt herself beginning to crack. Lady Holmes traced one finger over the little boy's printed visage, looking and finding traces of her oldest and herself in those bruised and battered fingers, and reached for the intercom on her desk. She shifted in her chair, the bending and breaking steel at her core hardening in the face of her maternal rage.

"Ma'am?" Angus answered, Scottish brogue soothing the parts of her that ached with pain. They had been a team, longer than even she remembered, and she grounded herself in him.

"Ready the car and have a trauma unit on standby at King Edwards, if you will." Charlotte stated and pushed herself back from her desk. Her hands absolutely did not shake, she told herself, as she gathered her things and strode towards the door. She did not wait for a reply. She knew, just as she knew the sun would rise in the east every morning, that Angus would do as he was asked.

He was her constant, and she desperately needed that foundation.

She had expected this out of Sherlock; his drug induced shenanigans, and obsession with solving any mystery that caught his interest, was exactly the sort of lifestyle that lent itself to miniature lookalikes running around London's suburbs.

She had not expected her always in control eldest to be the one causing her current headache.

Angus had the Rolls waiting, the bulletproof silver frame gleaming in the sunlight as she stepped out of Cherrywood and down towards the door he held open. He did not smile at her, his own eyes filled with as much concern as she knew that hers held. He loved the boys as much as she did, had been beside them for every scrapped knee and late night request for bail, she knew that he would be there for them as much as he would be there for her.

It made her smile as she slid into the rich leather and the door closed behind her.

"Little Whinging, ma'am?" He asked, the car smoothly sliding into motion and heading down the drive. "We should avoid the worst of the traffic, but I can call for the helicopter if you wish."

"No, Angus," Charlotte murmured quietly, looking down at the picture still held tightly in her gloved hands. "We don't want to frighten our hosts more than we must."

"Ma'am?" Angus asked, a bit confused. Charlotte was not the type of woman to leave things half done. Her marriage was proof of that.

"Mycroft will want to attend to the remains, I am sure. As soon as we make him see the truth." She frowned. "I do hope he is not in one of his obstinate moods. He's let this situation fester long enough."

"Understood ma'am. The trauma team will be waiting, bar an emergency with Her Majesty."

"Thank you Angus. I do hope we are not too late. Children are fragile things."

Angus snorted. "If the boy is a Holmes, ma'am, fragile is the last word I would use to describe him. He may be a bit bent, but nothing we can't fix with time."

"Indeed."

Harry ducked behind the hedges of Number 12, hugging his library books to his chest as the thundering footsteps of Dudley and his gang of followers charged past. His right eye throbbed with pain, evidence of his early run in with his cousin, and he wanted to avoid another at all costs.

"One. Two. Three. Four." Harry counted slowly in his head, the numbers soothing him as the footsteps got further and further away from his hiding spot. "Five. Six. Seven. Eigh…" The foot steps faded out of hearing range, and Harry braved a peek over the top of the hedge. No one was in sight, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped out into the open. He was already late, the bright sun of a hot May day giving way to a cool spring evening, but he didn't care.

He would rather take his lumps from Aunt Petunia than from Dudley and his gang any day. Aunt Petunia never left bruises where others could see, and her words hurt more than the hits anyway. Dudley didn't care who saw.

Harry, a small boy in a tattered yellow jumper and beaten tennis shoes, made his way down the sidewalk. His mind quickly wandered away from the threat his cousin presented, and to the history books that he clutched tightly in his arms. He had stumbled upon them by accident, sneaking into the adult stacks when the children's library no longer held any interest for him, and he couldn't wait to start reading. Books were the one thing that he could call his own. Dudley took anything that Harry found interesting, just because he could, but he avoided books like the plague.

Harry smiled at the thought. If he was quick enough, and Dudley just slow enough, he could escape into the library and the worlds contained within, a refuge for a few short hours.

It helped that the Librarian, Mrs. Dolly, hated Dudley and his friends more than Harry himself. Though she would never admit to hating any of her students, it was clear in how much pleasure she took in scolding Dudley whenever she managed to catch him doing something he shouldn't. Harry was rather fond of her, though a vague fondness was all it amounted to.

He knew what happened when he got overly fond of someone.

They always managed to disappear.

He didn't want that to happen to Mrs. Dolly, so he stayed distant from her bright smiles and cheery hellos, ignoring the offers of sweets or lollys, and kept his head down. She was safer that way, and so was he.

Caring was not an advantage, after all.

"There you are, Freak."

Harry stopped in his tracks, looking up from the book on ancient Rome that he had peeked a look at and paled. Dudley, a smirk across his piggy face, uncrossed his arms and took a threatening step towards his younger and smaller cousin. His friends, Piers Polkis slamming his right hand into his left palm like the fighters on tv, fanned out behind him.

Harry looked around, panic filling him as he realized he was totally trapped. None of the adults on the street were paying attention to the ring of boys, and none of them would raise a hand to protect the Freak of Number Four even if he did scream and manage to draw their attention. He was a delinquent after all, and they would probably think he was bringing the fight on himself.

"Dudley….."

"Shut up, Freaky Potty," Piers called from behind Dudley's bulk, pointed nose and beady eyes showing his excitement. Harry flinched backwards from that look. Dudley hit harder, but Piers ran faster. Harry had no chance of escaping the other boy if he tried to run.

"You're gonna pay, Freak. I know you're the one that snitched to that old bag." Dudley sneered. "We lost recess for the next week."

Harry hadn't told her anything. He knew what happened when he told anyone what Dudley did to him. He got in even more trouble.

"Dudley, I promise, I didn't…."

It didn't do any good. Dudley leapt at him, crossing the distance between them quickly, much quicker than an eight year old of his size should be able to move. Harry saw the fist coming towards him, and closed his eyes. His head snapped to the side, his ears ringing from the impact and blood running from his nose.

From there, things only got worse. Harry curled into a ball on the cracked pavement, covering his head, and waited for it to be over. He knew better than to fight back. He did hope, though, that the other boys left the history books alone. He didn't want to see the look on Mrs. Dolly's face if he brought them back with footprints on the cover and ripped pages.

"Hey, what's all this now!"

Harry didn't know how long he had been on the ground before rough hands reached into the circle around him and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him up and away from the fists and feet.

"Scatter!" Piers yelled, dodging the man reaching for him nimbly and high tailing it down the sidewalk with the rest of the gang. Dudley, however, wasn't so lucky. The man reached out, quicker than Harry had ever seen an adult move, and grabbed the boy by the upper arm.

"Don't you even think about it, laddie." The man growled, and Dudley froze. With his blue eyes wide, Dudley Dursley looked at the man like he had ever seen an adult in his life. And, Harry supposed, he hadn't. Not one that treated him like a troublemaker and not the perfect angel that his parents told everyone within listening distance that he was.

Not even Mrs. Dolly.

Harry gulped and tried to make himself as small as he could. If someone thought Dudley was a troublemaker, he didn't want to know what they would think he was.

"Let me go," Dudley said, his voice shaking. "My Dad will call…"

The man shook him, once, like Ripper would shake a toy, and Dudley's mouth snapped shut with a sharp click.

"Your dad will call no one, son." The man said, "Now shut your mouth."

Dudley's eyes widened, and Harry bit his lip. He really didn't want to go anywhere with the man now, but as he started to tow both of them down the sidewalk towards Privet Drive, Harry supposed that he didn't really have much of a choice in the matter.

He just wished he had been able to take his library books, Mrs. Dolly was going to be so disappointed in him when he didn't bring them back.

"You're going to get it, Freak." Dudley hissed as they were marched bodily up the street. "Dad's gonna kill you, and then I'm going to kill you."

Harry didn't respond, eyes locked on the silhouette off Number Four rapidly coming closer, and didn't look over at the other boy. Their jailer didn't have the same restraint, and gave Dudley a sharp shake.

"You and your dad won't be doing anything of the sort, youngin." He shook Dudley harder when he tried to reply, until the boy finally gave up. They marched up the walk and the man pushed open the door to Number Four without knocking or waiting for Aunt Petunia to let him in.

"I'm fine, sir." Harry finally said as they passed through the entrance way and were towed towards the living room. "They were just…"

"None of that now, I know very well what they were doing." The man looked at him sidelong, "And if I hadn't seen it all, your nose would tell me what I hadn't seen." He released Harry's arm, but one sharp look kept him from trying to escape back to the safety of his cupboard until everything in Number Four blew over, and pulled a pristine handkerchief out of his pocket. "Here, you'll feel better when you mop up some of that blood. You're leaking like a faucet."

Harry did as he was told and pressed the handkerchief to his throbbing nose.

"Boy, what did you do." Vernon Dursley's voice reached them before his footsteps brought the large man around the corner and into the hallway. His eyes were focused on Harry, a vein throbbing in his red face as he stomped towards them, barely glancing at his son. "I swear if I hear anything from that school again…."

"Hello again Dursley."

Vernon stopped in his tracks, color leeching from his face, and stared at the man that held his son in a tight grip. Harry flinched backwards out of reach out of habit, and took another larger step back as Vernon smiled. The smile did not meet his eyes.

"Oh, you're back."

"I figured we should have the child in question here, don't you agree?" The man didn't wait, just pushed Dudley past his father and into the living room. He looked over his shoulder, meeting Harry's eyes and crooning a smile at him, "Come along Harry lad."

Uncle Vernon stared at him, eyes promising punishment if he dared listen, but Harry steeled his shoulders and ignored the threat for the first time in his life. He didn't know why, but he had the feeling that as scary as the man was, he wanted to know what was waiting in the living room. He skirted around Uncle Vernon, dodging the hand that whipped out to grabbed him, and slid around the living room door to stand against the wall. The man smiled, and nodded approvingly.

"Good lad, your da' would be proud."

Harry jerked his head up and stared at the grown-up, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

"You knew my dad?" He asked, throat dry. All his life he had heard about how horrible his parents had been, and how Harry should count his blessings that he had such caring relatives that would take him in after they got themselves killed in a car smash. He had never heard anyone talk about them like he should be proud of them.

Or like they would be proud of him.

"I do, lad, I do." The man smiled at him, and crooked a finger. "And if you'll come here and stop hiding like a scared rabbit, you'll hear all about him."

Harry scampered forward, his desire to hear more about the parents he'd never known stronger than the fear of the punishment that would no doubt await him when the stranger left. It would, Harry thought as he stepped around the couch that blocked view of the rest of the room, be absolutely worth it.

"Oh, you are a darling, aren't you." A woman said softly, a woman that was not Aunt Petunia, and Harry froze again. His hands went to the tattered edge of his shirt and he twisted it, "Angus, I knew from the pictures but seeing it in person is…extraordinary. Why he looks just like…"

"Ma'am, I think he looks more like his father, if I'm honest." The man interrupted smoothly, depositing Dudley none too gently on the couch and fixing the boy with a glare, "though those eyes must be his mothers."

"Indeed." The woman said, eyes fixed on Harry and never leaving him. She leaned forward and placed the delicate china cup on the table in front of her, smoothing the wrinkles out of her skirt as she did and held out a hand. "Come here, Harry. Let me get a good look at you."

Aunt Petunia, fake smile plastered on her face, glared at him from icy blue eyes, but made no move to stop him as he edged towards the woman. The handkerchief still pressed to his face was red with his blood, but she didn't say anything as she took his face in her hands. She studied him closely, grey eyes narrowed, until she smiled brightly and patted his cheek softly.

"You're going to fit in just fine, Harry."

"You're not taking him anywhere." Aunt Petunia said stiffly, setting her own tea down with a rattle and glaring. "He was left in my custody and that is final."

"You say that as if you have a choice in the matter, Petunia." The woman said, smile never leaving her face. "While I would prefer to keep this out of the courts, for Harry's sake, do not think that I won't do what I need to."

"He is perfectly content here." Petunia snapped, hands clenched into fists are her sides, "What right do you have to tell me you can care for him better than I can?"

The woman laughed. "Petunia dear, your own son attacked him and broke his nose, if I don't miss my mark." Her voice was quickly losing all sense of politeness and slipping into an icy coldness that made Harry shiver. "Not to mention, the abysmal conditions you've forced him to live in. I have no doubts the surgeons will find plenty of evidence of old injuries and malnourishment."

"How dare you!?" Petunia stood jerkily from the couch, spots of color high on her cheeks, and pointed a bony finger. "Take your guard dog and get out of my house, right now."

"I'm not going anywhere Petunia, not without my grandson."

"Charlotte…." The man that had started all of this stood in concern, a sharp look at Uncle Vernon keeping the much larger man in his place.

"Angus, take Harry to get his things and to the car, I'll handle this." She shot Angus a look, and he sighed. "And please call Mycroft, he will like to meet us at King Edward's."

"Yes ma'am," Angus reached out for Harry, tugging him gently towards the door. Harry didn't want to go, he wanted to stay and ask the million questions that were running through his head. Starting with was Charlotte really his grandmother? If she was, why hadn't she come earlier?

Did the Dursleys really want him?

But Angus pulled him resolutely towards the hall, until the living room and the woman that had turned his world upside down disappeared from view.