Disclaimer: Harry and all of Rowling's other character & places are hers. Nothing is mine except the tiny plot bunny. If the series was mine, there'd be slash happening because we all know Harry is gay. As such, I am making nothing from this story.

Summary: AU post OotP: When Vernon takes the abuse of his nephew too far, Harry snaps. When Dumbledore and his meddling get involved, it just makes everything worse.

Warnings: Slash (male-male sex), abuse, character death, bad language, rape, pedophilia, non-con, incest, attempted suicide, bashing of most of the wizarding world, possible M-preg. Ignores just about everything from the 6th and 7th books. I'll add more warnings should they be needed.

A/N: I was in the doctor's office waiting on my mother and I was listening to music. I don't remember the song that was playing, but this Powerful-&-Independent Harry plot just popped into my head.

I have a habit of letting stories die a chapter or two along, so I decided not to start posting chapters until I had at least three completed. Also, this story is un-beta'd. If there is someone who would like to beta, let me know (even though I tend to fix as many grammar/spelling/plot issues I can on my own).

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Prologue

It was the middle of summer in the suburbs of Little Whinging, Surrey and nearly everyone was inside their cookie-cutter homes escaping the heat of the day. One such house (specifically number four, Privet Drive) even had all the drapes closed. Most neighbors assumed it was to help keep the hot sun from making the house too warm. The real reason was to make sure the peeping neighbors didn't see the sinister things happening inside the home – sinister things revolving around the boy residing in the smallest bedroom. This boy was called Harry Potter.

Harry Potter was a wizard; in fact, he was one of the most powerful wizards alive even before he became of age. The wizarding world was almost holding its breath to see how powerful the teen became in just a couple of weeks, when he reached the wizarding majority age of seventeen on July 31st. Though to look at Harry now, no one would ever think him powerful.

On a mattress with several broken springs in the smallest bedroom was a boy who looked twelve, not nearly seventeen. He was short and skinny due to malnourishment, but this was not what made him to be pitied. All over his body were cuts and bruises, though the most telling of the real situation were the identical circular bruises around his wrists and the handprint bruises to his thighs.

Green eyes slowly opened as Harry woke from his nap. The eyes that were normally bright when at Hogwarts had dimmed to a dull hue; but a small spark still lied in them. As the Dursleys no longer made him do chores (mostly since a nosey neighbor had commented on Harry's wrist bruises off-hand to the boy's aunt, Petunia) he was mostly confined to his room. This left Harry nothing to do over the summer except to relive horrible memories and talk to Hedwig, Harry's owl, who had also been confined for the summer.

The horrible memories that young Harry thought over were mostly about the years of his abuse. He remembered that the real physical abuse started sometime around the age of five or six, as he knew that praise from a teacher his first school year triggered the first beating. Harry learned not to ever do better in school than his cousin Dudley - not that this knowledge stopped the beatings. The day the sexual abuse started he remembered quite clearly; it was during the summer when Harry was nine years old.

Harry's uncle Vernon had been watching the news and the story of a man raping a young boy was being reported on. Harry just happened to walk into the den as the story was ending to tell Vernon that supper was ready. Harry would never forget how his uncle's eyes had taken on a gleam that frightened him more than the man's big fists. Harry finished his scraps of toast and water quickly that night, washed the dishes, and shut himself in his cupboard (which was a small cupboard under the stairs the Dursleys has decided was good enough for a room for the boy). He sighed in relief as he heard the television being shut off a few hours later and listened to his whale of a cousin and equal whale of an uncle pound up the stairs. He figured his aunt had gone upstairs as well, but no one would be able to hear her normal-weight footsteps over those two giants. Harry, figuring he was safe from whatever weirdness had taken over his uncle before, drifted off to sleep on his uncomfortable cot. That night, Harry woke to his cupboard door being opened and his uncle's beefy hand clamping down roughly on his ankle. He was dragged out into the hallway, his protests being cut off when his uncle slapped his free hand over the boy's mouth. Vernon held the child down while he grabbed a belt he brought with him and wrapped it around Harry's head and then used that as a make-shift gag. Harry was then brutally raped, his uncle making lewd comments the entire time, especially about how nice the child looked covered in bruises, blood, and tears.

That night soon became a weekly routine for Vernon, usually occurring on Fridays so that when school was in session, the boy would have recovered enough by Monday to keep suspicion away. Harry was sometimes fortunate in that Vernon would sometimes skip a week when Petunia put out, a client was to come to the house over the weekend, or Vernon's sister Marge would come over to stay for a visit. While Petunia didn't like what her husband was doing, she let him continue anything that hurt the child; that was how much she hated Harry. Dudley didn't seem to understand whatever new punishment Harry was receiving, but was overjoyed that it seemed to take his smaller cousin an entire weekend to recover from it.

When the strange letters addressed to Harry started to arrive, he thought for sure that the beatings and rape would increase in frequency and harshness due to the 'freakishness' of it all, but was surprised when it stopped all-together. Harry assumed it was due to Vernon's belief that the house was now being watched since the letters had been addressed to the cupboard and then changed to the bedroom after he was moved. Whenever Hagrid had caught up with the family in the hut on the rock in the middle of a sea, he understood the real reason - Vernon believed that once Harry knew he could do magic, the boy would use it against his abusers.

During his time at Hogwarts, Harry was free to come out of his shell to a degree. He could argue, laugh, and do almost anything without the threat of a beating or rape as punishment looming over him. When Harry learned at the end of his first year that magic outside of school was prohibited, he kept quiet about it since he knew that Vernon would start up his abuse again knowing Harry couldn't fight back. Dobby ruined this secret though, as once Vernon read the reprimand from the Ministry of Magic, he started in on Harry. Unfortunately, due to Harry keeping secret his inability to use magic and the threats of magic against Dudley earlier that summer, Vernon raped Harry with little mercy and at least twice a week unless Marge was visiting. Things continued along those lines the rest the summer he spent at Privet Drive as well as the summer after his second year at Hogwarts.

The summers after Harry's third and fourth years, however, there was absolutely no abuse. The reason was the discovery that Sirius Black, escaped convict and mass murderer, was Harry's godfather and was quite fond of the child. The last thing Vernon needed was Black finding out about the abuse and murdering him in a horrendous and freakish way.

When Sirius died though, things in Harry's life became worse than ever. Harry was extremely depressed over the loss of Sirius to begin with. When the Order of the Phoenix opened its big mouth and told Vernon, things quickly went downhill. Vernon raped Harry almost every other day in frequency and that summer, Dudley decided to join in. Harry was bleeding, sore, and kept handcuffed to his bed most of his time away from school. He was only released from the cuffs to use the bathroom and shower (after all, Vernon didn't want to fuck someone filthy). Harry really only knew the school year was approaching because the rapes and abuse stopped, which signified that he was being given his usual week to recover to keep suspicion down.

Despite escaping Privet Drive for his sixth year at Hogwarts, things didn't really improve for Harry Potter. All of the friends that had gone with him to the debacle of the Department of Mysteries, including his closest friends Ron and Hermione, had finally understood just how perilous it was to be friends with Harry and had blamed him for putting them in unnecessary danger. They abandoned him and while they didn't say anything to the others in the school who questioned them about this abandonment, it was enough for Harry's peers to decide that if his closest friends thought he should be avoided, then they should avoid him as well. Even people Harry thought he could count on outside of school, like Remus Lupin or Nymphadora Tonks, had ignored all letters he had sent them.

Where once Harry had felt free at Hogwarts, he suddenly felt like he was in another cage. He was still banned from Quidditch, had no one to talk to, and was looked at by his peers as if he had leprosy. The only thing he could really do with his time was study and practice magic; he couldn't even look forward to fighting Voldemort as the snake-man was quiet the entire year. Due to how Harry spent his year, his grades improved so that by the time June rolled around, Harry had managed a top rank in most of his classes. No one seemed to care about this achievement though, and the day came for him to switch from the cage of Hogwarts to the cage of number four, Privet Drive. Once Harry stepped through the door of the house, he was dragged to his room, handcuffed to the bed, and raped by his uncle – thus starting this summer much like the last one.

Things continued this way for Harry up until today, two weeks before Harry turned seventeen. Today, Harry's uncle was stepping up the abuse and would push Harry over the edge.

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Song for this chapter: Tragedy Bound by The Bravery

A/N: I'm not committed on who will be paired with Harry as of now. I'll be putting a poll up on my profile to see if readers have a preference. It may sway my preference.