A/N: This is an edited version of chapter one (as of Oct 22, 2015). It's both shorter and longer than what was previously here - there are more words, but less scenes. I'm planning to go through and edit the rest of what I currently have, so there will probably be another two or three chapters before I get into writing completely new material.

I hope you enjoy the new version, and that it's not too jarring given the change in tense/person etc, for previous readers.

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One more minute past.

I flop back onto the bed, automatically shifting to avoid the broken springs and odd sinking patches. No amount of staring at the small alarm clock on the bedside crate will make the seconds tick by any faster. It will still take sixty of them for a minute to pass, I know. I might as well distract myself, rather than feel every single one of them.

It's July 31, the evening of my 14th birthday and the day has been just like any other. The Dursleys assigned me an incredulous amount of chores. And, as per the new usual, otherwise ignored my presence in their precious home. Since I told them at the start of the holidays that my godfather was a 'convicted mass murderer', thank you Sirius, they had taken to treating me like empty air. Except in the mornings, when Aunt Petunia hands me the chores list for the day.

I look over to the clock that is slowly blinking closer and closer to midnight. Much to slowly, in my mind; all I want is for it to finally reach 12:00am.

Unfortunately, Harry never saw those numbers, the clock had never been properly reset, and was lagging about two minutes behind. It was also because as midnight struck, he was overcome by intense pain. There was no equal to it. For the few seconds before everything went blank he thought it was a feeling not unlike like someone flaying the skin of his limbs and then dipping him into a vat of corrosive liquid. Then proceeding to break and reset every bone in his body. Only the latter of that interpretation was correct; Harry's bones were indeed breaking. Lengthening, and fixing the damage of a decade's worth of malnutrition and confinement.

When his new skeletal structure was solid again, his new appendages broke through. Piercing the skin of his back, either side of his skull above his ears, the base of his spine. Several more bone structures had been modified, morphing and twisting as they reformed inside him. Harry's body had shut down, his conscious mind firmly locked away to protect him. Being aware during the massive restructuring his body was doing, would likely have driven him insane.

A side effect of this was that he didn't see the flash of light, or hear the ominous, crackling rumble of thunder in perfectly clear skies. He did, however hear the book thumping down on his floor. It jolted him back into awareness.

I jump when I hear something heavy thud to the floor off to my right. Fingers automatically grasping for the wand I keep on the crate that functions as a bedside table. Only to gasp and recoil into myself as pain ratchets through my body. All my muscles ache like they've been bruised by a sledgehammer, one wielded by a vengeful troll. Contracting and releasing my muscles in a slow rhythm to attempt to desensitise myself from the pain, I start to shift. Starting with my toes, wriggling them in my socks. Summer it may be, but the Dursley's haven't seen fit to give me blankets. Several minutes of methodical torture in the guise of movement later, I reach again for my wand. Though, really, if there was an attacker in the room, I would be dead, cursed, or kidnapped by now. But there is something fundamentally comforting about holding it, even if I can't legally cast any magic in the summers.

After a deep inhale, I gingerly roll onto my side, gaze flicking over the room. At first glance nothing is out of place. The bars, reinstated by Vernon sometime in the time I'd been at Hogwarts, casting lines on the floor in the moonlight. It's absentmindedly following these stripes that I find the most likely cause of my rude awakening.

There is a book on my floor. A thick one; old, and bound by a heavy belt. It's also blanketed in a thin layer of dust.

"Right." I say, "I'm guessing this a magic thing." I continue, directed at the room at large, "I'm pretty sure I don't know of anything else that drops off old, dusty books in locked rooms." I move cautiously towards it, wand raised.

I crouch down in front of it, chin propped on one wrist. After several long minutes of staring, I poke with one Dudley's old trainer's, abandoned in a small mountain of disintegrating fabric near the door. When nothing obviously magically happens I decide that if it was going to curse me, well it would have happened already. Wand still held ready in one hand, I pick it up with the other. For a book as thick as my bicep, it's surprisingly light.

With a shrug I settle back on the bed, shuffling back to lean against the headboard. Wand placed back on the bedside crate, but still within easy reach, I examine the outside of the book. The belt holding it closed comes of with a touch to the buckle tucked in the hollow of the fore edge. The book is bound is heavy, aged leather, supple to the touch, with the creases wearing to white with age. There is a title, cut into the leather of the spine and the cover, but it's almost worn away.

The leather creaks and the pages whisper as I open it, having found the back to be unadorned. The first page is blank, but that's normal all of our Hogwarts books are the same, what's not is that the next five pages are blank as well. A quick thumbing reveals that the entire book is blank, pages still creamy white no signs of aging, but also no ink or typeface at all.

I let out a huff, yes magical indeed, this book. All that getting worked up for nothing. "Well, if nothing else, I have a book I can write in now." I say, patting the book cover absentmindedly, finger slipping to run over the fore edge. Only to jerk back, tips stinging. Lifting my fingers up to my face I can see that each of them has a long papercut across the pad. "Okay. Blood thirsty magical book." I'm slightly more concerned now.

I flip the book onto it's spine just in time to see the blood, my blood, disappear into the pages. A warm, tingly sensation in my cut fingers distracts me from the blood - that is no longer there because the book ate it. Flipping the book again, I can see that the back now has imprints of my fingers. Fine cuts that match the whorls and loops of my fingerprints impressed into the leather. A quick look at my fingers confirms that it also healed the cuts.

My head thunks back into the wall above the headboard. "Why Potter Luck, why? Why must the book be a vampire book? Why can't books be normal, instead of trying to suck the life out of you, or bite your hand off, or drink your blood?" I whine, because, really, the Wizarding World gives their book a little bit too much sentience to be comfortable. I stare at the ceiling for several long moments.

When I look back down, the book has fallen open in my lap. There's writing in it now, in a suspiciously bloody red ink. All flourishes and accents, it looks incredible, but it's also not in English.

"Really book, you are far too much trouble for something I can't even read." I mutter sourly. But even as I say it the words shift and writhe on the page, resolving into something I can actually understand. Now I can clearly see that this page is covered in names. Not set up like a family tree though, just names, looking like they'd each been written by the people who'd used them. They weren't just names, but titles too, strings of initials and words that looked like gibberish. There's even a bloody fingerprint in one corner, with a triangular marking above like the claws on dog's paw print.