The One Thing He Ever Wanted

Chapter 1 – A New Life

Disclaimer:

I don't own anything.

Dreams can be quite a mystery. Some believe them to be prophetic visions, a signaling of events yet to unfold. Yet others perceive them to be the chaotic ramblings of the mind whilst the body is at rest.

In the ordinary household of No. 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, there lived a normal, boring English family by the surname of Dursley. Vernon was the man of the house. He was a large, burly man with close to no neck, and a thick mustache. These attributes made him look reminiscent of a walrus. He was in his mid twenties to early thirties, and worked at the office building of a drilling company that was about fifteen minutes' drive into town.

His wife, Petunia, was a tall, almost gangly woman with a slightly longer than normal neck and light brown hair, usually pulled into a bun. Her long face gave a resemblance to a horse. She was a typical housewife and took care of her unusually large son, Dudley, who had straight dirty blond hair. She often gossiped with the other women of the neighborhood. What they didn't know was that she was keeping a very large secret from them.

Only Arabella Figg, who lived a few houses down the street with her house full of cats, knew of the fourth occupant of No. 4. Whenever the Dursleys would go on holiday, they would discreetly drop off a young boy with untidy jet black hair and startlingly mature green eyes.

This skinny, pale boy was severely neglected and was viewed as a freak in their household. As such, he was hidden under the stairs in his prison: a ratty cupboard.

Only when he was joining primary school did he first learn his name and birth date: Harry Potter, July 31, 1980. It was not until he started learning the alphabet and reading that it was brought to attention that he required optical assistance, and only to keep up appearances did they buy him his spectacles. He still had to squint to read the simplest of words, which was testimony to how much they really "cared".

The beatings started when he was three years old. Vernon seemed to have neither conscience nor morals, and Petunia just gave her silent approval. Dudley enjoyed watching, as his father was his role model. It started out as the fabled two-by-four on the seat of his ratty, oversized hand-me-down pants, but that soon led to slaps, punches, and kicks all over his body, and finally the belt.

When he was at home, he was beaten. If he asked too many questions, a beating was in order. If he asked about his parents, the subject would be quickly changed, and Vernon used the two-by-four. Even when he asked the sobering, "Why do you hate me?" and Petunia's eyes widened, almost showing pity, Vernon would use his favorite, the belt, after telling him off for how ungrateful he was for their "care".

Each beating was followed by a certain period of the absence of food and allotted prison time. He was only let out twice a day to use the loo, and he still fixed all the meals. During school, they wouldn't send him back until he could walk without wincing, as he had open wounds on his back, and often times he had a few bruised or cracked, if not broken, bones. They would always play it off as, "He has a weak immune system."

Once, he had tried telling a teacher about his home life, and was ignored. The teacher told his aunt and uncle, earning him the reopening of the scars on his back, and the pouring of rubbing alcohol on his open skin, a new burning sensation searing through his body. He learned quickly not to trust adults.

He also was beaten at school by Dudley. He would often break Harry's glasses and eat him up on the playground, afterwards tying Harry by his old trainers' laces to a tree or a random piece of playground equipment, like the jungle gym or the tower. If other kids were nice to Harry or anything of the sort, Dudley would beat them up. If Harry tried to be friends with anyone, Dudley beat him up.

The only comfort Harry found was in books: his only friends. Even though his grades were terrible, atrocious, really, he would often rejoice within his mind when he saw Dudley's grades, which were wonderful, because he was the one who really did Dudley's homework. It was the only pride he had.

After testing the waters a few times, Harry discovered that he could stay after school, which got out at twelve o' clock, at the library for about five and a half hours, before he had to go home to make dinner. He soaked up information there, and learned about the world, and received hope from the fantasy section. Oftentimes on his walk "home" he could stop to visit his second favorite place, the abandoned No. 19 Privet Drive, which was set back in the woods by the park where it seemed that he was the only one able to find it. He would skip the library two to three times a week to explore No. 19, or settle there with a book.

It was during his second visit to the house that he discovered the door to the cellar. He gingerly opened the door by curiosity, and gaped at what he saw. He was six years old and it was the most food he had seen in his short life at one time. That cellar was what nourished his health in the months to come.

Harry Potter was a strong willed person, and as such, he didn't let the Dursleys' attitudes and beatings bring him down. He still had feelings, hopes, dreams, and insecurities, but he just hid them well. During his beatings, he let his mind wander to more pleasant things and shut everything out until all his feeling turned numb.

He was almost seven years old when the dream came.

It was always in third person. His consciousness drifted over a neighborhood of uniformly decorated, but slightly different, homes.

As his mind's eye passed along the sidewalk of the cobbled street, the town was periodically illuminated by brief strobes of lightning accompanied by loud claps of thunder, whilst the pouring rain covered all surfaces and made the sidewalk and road slick.

It was in the darkness between two street lamps that he paused to see the gate to the town graveyard. He floated over the fence and his gaze was immediately drawn to the point where two fences met where he viewed a man who seemed to be waiting.

The lightning flashed, and when his eyes readjusted, another man suddenly appeared next to the first, his cloak billowing in the wind.

The first man lowered his hood and dipped his head, revealing his slightly balding head. When he raised his head again, Harry could see his pointed nose, dark eyes, and gaunt face, which all together gave him look that screamed, "RAT!"

The rat-faced man quickly produced a scrap piece of parchment and swiftly jotted down a phrase, passing it to the other man, whose mere presence emanated power. As soon as he finished reading, the paper immediately burst into flame.

The cloaked man stepped out into the street and smiled, which was an overall unsettling effect. He watched as the fence between two properties split in half and slowly stretched away from each other, like two magnets of the same polarity, repelling each other.

Harry knew only fear at this point. The hooded and cloaked man seemed to know something that should never have been revealed to him.

The man steadily stalked forward and seemed to be almost at the point of evil, maniacal laughter. He was ready to kill and had done so before. The darkness of the man's soul seemed to escape him and collect outside his midnight-black cloak, slowly becoming an undulating, smoky fog and an extension of his robes, billowing in the wind.

Upon reaching the newly-revealed property, he drew a thin piece of wood, and with a flick of the wrist, the gate opened silently. Before he reached the porch, he began to chant in Latin, or a similar language, and moved his hands in a complex pattern.

Somehow Harry knew that escape was not an option for the occupants of the house. Either three or one would leave this place.

He raised his wand and a sphere of air at the end seemed to convulse before racing towards the front door.

BOOM!

The door shot off its hinges, in pieces, and was followed by a red jet of light.

As he walked through the door-frame, Harry caught a flash of red bounce up the stairs. The cloaked man reached out and lithely caught a second wand with his long, skeletal fingers, leaving the opposition defenseless.

"Ah, fancy seeing you here, James," he said, earning a grimace from said man on the floor. His voice was high, cold, and raspy, not unlike nails on a chalkboard. "You know what I want, James. Don't let your pure blood go to waste. It would be a shame to see that."

"If you think that I'll just step aside and let you take my flesh and blood, and what little hope we have left, then you are sorely mistaken, you sick bastard," he spat right back at him, and continued guarding the stairs.

"I have no mercy for fools."

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as a sickly green light proceeded to emit from the end of his wand, bathing the hallway in its light.

The spell shot towards James who kept his determined glare to the last. Only when his limp form landed in front of the stairs did his face relax. Harry's mind screamed in protest until he realized what had happened.

As the man stepped over James' body, a seething hatred for him permeated Harry's mind. He would need to become stronger in case he ever met this man.

Upon finding the bedroom, he proceeded to disintegrate the door, leaving nothing in its place. The lack of a door revealed Lily, who was guarding a crib with her own body. A young child with miniature green eyes like hers peered out from underneath her arm.

"I imagine you want the same deal as your darling husband, then?" he offered, toying with her.

"Not my baby," she whimpered. "Please, not Harry!"

"I only want the boy."

"No! Please!" she cried, tears flowing freely now. "Kill me! Just don't hurt him!"

He was beyond bargaining.

"I think not."

The green light filled the room again. When it died down, this time Lily's body slumped to the floor, dead, like a discarded rag doll.

Harry's anger surged again after seeing this. Watching the life leave Lily's eyes was infuriating.

The cloaked monster glided to the crib and peered down his nose at the one-year-old. Seeing Lily's green eyes reflected in the child's and a tuft of black hair caused him to connect the dots.

The young couple was his parents. The one thing he'd ever wanted in this life had been taken by this creature. No one in this world loved him, and the man in his dream had caused it. He now knew that this dream was real and that he had been lied to.

The all too familiar green light filled the room again, but this time an inhuman shriek filled the room; a scream that did not belong to this world. The cloaked man was vaporized before Harry's eyes, his body simply dissipated and dispersed.

Harry himself, in baby form, came away unscathed, save for a cut which by now was a distinctive scar on his forehead.

As his view drifted out of the destroyed home, he noticed that the lightning had stopped, seemingly in reverence for the souls of the honorable people that had passed that night. In agreement, the wind ceased also, in respect for the fallen.

The only thing that continued was the rain, scorning the memory of his parents, and he hated it for that. It was the only thing that continued when he lost everything, a reminder that mocked him. The life he could never have was now gone forever.

He always woke up screaming, sweating profusely, and crying without any sense of control. It seemed that only through pure desire was it that his relatives could not hear him during the night. Harry learned early on that crying made things worse, but nights like these brought him a time to let it all out.

It was the first night of the dream when suddenly all the street lamps disappeared from existence on his street.

After that night, strange things happened even more frequently around Harry. The first time before this was when he was four. He was preparing breakfast when Vernon started going off about how useless Harry's parents were, which Harry somehow knew was false. As he lifted his morning tea to his lips, the mug exploded, sending hot tea all over him. Harry was out of commission for two weeks after that, and could barely stay awake long enough to get sufficient fluids to sustain him.

Little things like that continued to happen about once every three months. After he discovered the numbing ability, things got steadily worse. Things in the house randomly disappeared, Harry would suddenly find himself in a new place, and he got blamed for everything. The most impressive thing happened, unbeknownst to him, when he dreamed of his parents the first time and the street lamps disappeared.

Every morning since he dreamed, Harry would do as much exercise as he could while inside the cupboard, because he wanted to become stronger. He would also take runs and found them to be quite relaxing after a nightmare. Visits to No. 19 became more frequent. He would get some food every day after school from the house and spend most of his weekends there, as the Dursleys were more than happy to have him out of the house.

It was the first day of July, 1989, when things took a turn for the worse, well worse than before. As Harry was cleaning out the kitchen, Vernon restated his opinions about Harry's parents when he couldn't take it any longer.

"Why do you insist that my parents were drunks and died in a car crash?" he asked. "I know they were murdered."

Petunia gasped. "How did you know that?"

"I've had nightmares about it almost every night for almost two years, now."

"No one dreams about something they couldn't possibly remember," Vernon spat scornfully. "Whatever you're dreaming isn't true."

"Yes it is," Harry replied.

"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT CONTRADICTING ME, BOY!" he yelled. "WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT THE FACT THAT YOUR PARENTS WERE LAZY, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING DRUNKS WHO DIDN'T CARE ABOUT YOU ONE BIT?"

"That's not true, and you know it," Harry whispered. His green eyes glowed with fury, the very air crackled with electricity, and suddenly, Harry could see the truth in Vernon's mind. He was right, his uncle was wrong, and he could finally see through all the lies he'd been fed for his whole life.

Vernon slumped to the floor, unconscious, as all the windows in the house exploded with a crash.

Petunia's voice was shaky but the message was clear. "Leave now. You're not welcome here anymore," she said, her voice barely audible.

Harry gave her a dark look, his gaze filled with contempt, disgust, and, surprisingly, pity. He knew that she really did love her sister, but never got to say so again before Lily passed. That did not excuse the way she treated a child, though.

He turned away from his aunt, and he disappeared without a sound, a feat which he would soon learn to be near impossible. Unbeknownst to them, the protections there were quickly falling.

Many miles away to the north was an old castle. In the largest office, there sat an old man with light grey hair, a waist-length beard, a crooked nose, and half-moon spectacles. On the shelves around him laid many contraptions. Some whirred, clicked, and beeped, among other noises. What brought his attention to them were the puffs of smoke coming from several of them, and some of them melting.

"What?" he murmured, before his eyes widened in realization.

Harry found himself on the entrance mat to No. 19, Privet Drive. How he got there, he knew not, but he did know that he was never going back to his relatives again. He didn't know how true that statement was. Within twelve hours of his departure, all that would be left would be a smoking pile of rubble.

Since he had been visiting this house just about every day for the past three years, he decided to "set up camp", so to speak, here. The food seemed to never run out, there was no FOR SALE sign out in front, and no one had ever been there besides him, which he found to be quite peculiar, because for the life of him, he could not find any dust in the whole house.

For the next thirty days Harry stayed at No. 19. He exercised every day to keep his promise to become stronger and to be the best he could be. He ate and slept there, and went for runs outside, slowly building his stamina and endurance. The years of abuse and malnutrition still showed as he was still skinny, but he was slowly gaining muscle for his skin and bones. It was sad though, because he was starting to get lonely.

So as he awoke on July the thirty-first for his ninth birthday, he voiced his concerns and said so no one in particular, "I wish someone was here with me."

His request was answered with a loud crack, and to his astonishment, a three foot tall creature appeared. It had tennis ball sized eyes and floppy, bat-like ears. It looked impish with its grey skin and pointed nose. Wearing merely a pillowcase, an expensive looking one at that, it looked at him curiously.

"I is being Toby, Master Harry Potter, sir, and I is finally able to come at your call!" he said excitedly, and Harry promptly fainted.

Hey, everyone. This is my first attempt at writing anything, so please drop a review in the box. I'd really appreciate constructive criticism and an assesment of my abilities as a writer. Until next time,

Henry Baxendale