Chapter one: Choosing the Path

"Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think."
―Robert Greene

The day that everything changed for Harry Potter started as all the other days he had before. His Aunt woke him early in the morning by pounding on his cupboard door and demanding he get breakfast ready. His neck was strangely stiff that morning and he remembered wondering how bad it would be for him to ignore her for a few moments. When he got out of his cupboard a few minutes later than normal his aunt was in a right mood from being kept waiting and he knew then it was going to be a very long day.

Harry had been in charge of breakfast and lunch making since he had turned five and at eight he had a well established routine. However, this day he felt off and strangely heavy as he went about his work cooking for a veritable army. It was summer and so Harry hadn't really noticed he felt hotter than normal since it was always very hot in the kitchen while he cooked during the summer months. His moves had been sluggish and Harry found himself making a lot of little mistakes that he had not done a good long while. This only proved to make his Aunt's irritation with him grow with every passing minute until her face looked so pinched it was as if she had bitten into a lemon.

Finally, Harry made his final mistake and burnt some of the bacon rashers he had been frying. His Aunt was so upset, and he was so slow from dizziness that he didn't manage to dodge the frying pan as usual resulting in her landing a very solid blow to his head with a heavy crack. He landed on the ground with a dull thud and his Aunt began screeching at him for not dodging causing her to land such a hard blow. Eventually he was banished to his cupboard without his morning scrapes and he barely managed to make it there he was so dizzy.

The morning progressed on without him, his Aunt took Dudley to his friend Piers house locking him inside his cupboard and Uncle Vernon went to work. Eventually his Aunt came back and unlocked his cupboard and forced him to go to the bathroom. It turned out his Aunt needed to go into London that day to run errands and had been unable to secure a babysitter so he was going to go with her. The drive was the longest one Harry had ever been on and not in a small part to how awful he was feeling at the moment.

His Aunt loaded him down carrying all her bags and Harry barely managed to coddle along after her. It was late into the afternoon when it happened, a man came crashing into Harry sending him to the ground and scattering his Aunt's bags. There was a shout from another man as the man who crashed into Harry got up hurriedly and ran off as the other shouting man pursued him hot on his heels. His Aunt was not pleased and stood glowering over him as he picked up all the purchases.

It had been while his Aunt was scanning the crowds with beady little eyes that Harry saw it, a very nice leather notebook that was most definitely not a part of his Aunt's purchases. Now, even as sick as he was Harry had lived long enough with the Dursleys to know when to seize and opportunity when presented with one. He stuck the leather notebook in the waistband on his oversized jeans and let his loose T-shirt out to cover the bulge. A short while later they left for home and Harry very nervously tried to keep his latest acquisition from his Aunt's sharp eyes.

The thing Harry had learned about living with his relatives for so long was that he would never get anything if he didn't take it for himself. What this meant was Harry had become very comfortable with taking things that weren't necessarily his and his behavior usually bordered the line of stealing. He knew from his very harsh lessons at his Uncle Vernon's hands that any form of stealing would not be tolerated and were very much frowned upon. However, taking things no one wanted or had abandoned wasn't exactly stealing now was it? That was what Harry told himself anyway, since he took the broken toys Dudley threw away and the abandoned things he sometimes found on the playground for toys.

Harry coveted books, had since he had learned to read and had managed to bring home a fairy tale book that had been left in a box on the curb by the trash cans. He had entertained himself for weeks while he had been locked in the cupboard after that, at least until his Aunt had found him out and shredded it. He had gotten punished for a very long time after that for reading something that 'would put funny business in his head' and from then on his Aunt had been keeping a keen eye on anything he had that was readable.

This notebook was not his only attempt at gaining access to a book so he could do something while locked in his cupboard. He went through nearly six books before he figured out how to pry some floor boards up from the panel on the wall of his cupboard for his secret hiding stash. Before he had that place to hide his taken things his Aunt would always find them when she randomly searched his cupboard for things he wasn't allowed to have. That was a long list of things, he wasn't allowed books, toys, paper or crayons. Basically anything that Harry could get his hands on to entertain himself while inside his cupboard was banned from him.

He had managed to get one book in his secret place and this was one more thing he would have to very carefully sneak into his cupboard. Harry figured that even if it wasn't a book he could read maybe it had blank pages he could draw on. His Aunt threw him into his cupboard as soon as he finished putting away her things and he was elated to see that she hadn't bother checking him this time for contraband. He quickly put his new leather notebook into his secret place and laid back heavily as the adrenaline wore off leaving him feeling heavy with sickness again.

Harry very rarely got sick, he wasn't sure why but he usually got better if he slept a long time when he got sick. So he closed his little eyes and hoped his sickness would be gone by morning. What Harry Potter couldn't possibly know was that his magic was usually the thing responsible for his survival in this place. His magic fed his body keeping him just shy of suffering from malnutrition; it healed him when he had his run-ins with Dudley or his Aunt's frying pans. Harry's magic even kept him from suffering from sickness for very long and kept him relatively healthy if a bit undernourished.

However, his magic usually depended on Harry having some form of food to fuel it during his times of sickness and injury. This day though Harry hadn't been allowed even the barest scrapes of food and his last 'meal' had been the morning before. Harry had very little left in him to do much of anything with his meager supply of magic that was available. Much of it had already been eaten up that day keeping him from passing out from hunger and the little left over was focused on healing his fractured skull from that morning. Harry didn't have enough to spare to address the illness running through his body and this left him very vulnerable.

Magical being very rarely fell to non magical sickness because they had natural defenses in their magic to protect them from such things. However, Harry's situation had given his body the perfect circumstances to fall prey to a usually fatal strain of illness. Meningitis was usually fatal if not caught early because it was an inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and the spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The location of the inflammation was very dangerous because of its close proximity to the brain. As Harry slept his body fell into a high fever and the meningitis ravaged his body.

The little magic he had left over from healing his fractured skull was struggling feebly to keep him alive throughout the night and it was barely managing that. When his Aunt found him in the morning she was very annoyed to find him ill and left him unattended until late in the afternoon. Since Harry had not recovered like he usually did his Aunt grew concerned enough to mention to Vernon that she might need to take the boy in to see a doctor.

Her concern of course was not for Harry, but for what could happen to them if the boy died on their watch. So the very next morning his Aunt dressed him in his emergency clothes that actually fit him and she was very annoyed in having to bath him beforehand. His Aunt was not stupid enough to bring the child to the hospital in the things he usually wore since she didn't want undue attention drawn to how he had gotten so ill in the first place. They made it to the hospital without much fuss and his Aunt gave herself a fake name while checking in Harry under his real one.

Petunia knew for a fact there was no record of a Harry Potter living with her family since she had registered him as living with her dead sister in the school he was attending with Dudley. She waited impatiently as the doctors rushed Harry into the I.C.U. and they ran test to see what was wrong with the boy. Eventually they told her he had Meningitis and that it had progressed far enough that they would need to give him a very strong antibiotic to save the little cretin. The antibiotic ran a very high risk of turning the boy deaf, if he wasn't already due to the inflammation, and they needed her consent to give it to him.

Needless to say Petunia signed the papers with no little satisfaction at the thought that her perfect little sister's boy was not going to be so perfect anymore. Then it was a waiting game, she went home and came to pick the boy up the next day as he had recovered miraculously enough to be released. They ran tests and it seemed the boy had lost his hearing in both ears. It was unclear whether he would recover some of the hearing loss in time or if he would remain permanently deaf. Petunia couldn't have been more gleeful at that new if she tried and took particular satisfaction in the miserable look on Harry's face.

Though the boy was now more of a burden than ever and Petunia was a bit annoyed at that. The hospital had given her a bunch of brochures to go through regarding the boy's new deaf status. While she would have been inclined to just throw that rubbish away a nurse mentioned that there might be some government supplemental funds she could get from his deafness. So Petunia locked the boy in the cupboard and then primly sat down at the kitchen table to comb through the information to see exactly how much money she could squeeze out of this situation.

There were funds for hearing aids; there were programs to get funds for paying for tutors in speech and sign language lessons. It was a gold mine; sure there were draw backs in that she would actually need to get him some of these things. The hearing aid, speech and sign language lessons were carefully monitored. However, Petunia was sure she could get the cheapest ones available and pocket the money herself. It was just a matter of bargain shopping and price matching.

While his aunt plotted how to get the most out of his newfound deafness Harry laid in his cupboard and stared unseeing at his ceiling. The silence was beginning to get to him. This was the moment that his life changed forever, had he forgotten the book he had hidden away and not reached for it to distract himself in that vulnerable moment things might have turned out differently. Harry might have suffered through his life the same as he had before he had lost his hearing and had been just as miserable. Yet, that was not what happened and Harry in that moment remembered that book taking it from its hiding place to read.

It was a thick leather bound notebook that had a nice design embossed on the front cover and it was the nicest thing that Harry had ever owned. He opened it and found that it was something like a journal, only different; there were other things inside of it. There were clippings from other books, notes scrawled on the sides of the paper and little doodles here and there. About three quarters of it was full of notes and the rest were blank pages waiting to be filled. Harry was fascinated by it and turned to the very first page to read what was written there. He figured it was always better to start at the beginning instead of somewhere in the middle.

The inside cover had a name written hastily on it: Property of Robert Gre~ the rest of the last name was splotched out like he had broken his pen writing it. The first official page said this: "The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us—when we feel helpless we feel miserable. No one wants less power; everyone wants more. In the world today, however, it is dangerous to seem to power hungry, to be overt in power moves. We have to seem fair and decent."

They were just a few lines, just a few words in a random journal but those words had caught his attention. Harry found himself reading those lines over and over again trying to let them sink into his thoughts. He hated that he could not hear anything, it made him feel even more powerless than ever before and it made him miserable. Harry wished he was the one that was powerful, that he was the one that could tell his relatives what to do and that he was the one they would have to answer to instead of being under their oppressive fist. He absolutely hated feeling so powerless.

Harry turned his eyes back to the journal and read on. 'Power is a game, you must learn the rules to play by otherwise you run the risk of falling prey to them. There are countless examples of people falling into those traps and losing everything to a better player in the game. Learning to become powerful is a never ending exercise that forces you to adapt to the world around you.' "Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective. It takes effort and years of practice, for much of the game does not come naturally. Certain basic skills are required, and once you master these skills you will be able to apply the laws of power more easily."

"The most import of these skills, and power's crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings. Emotions cloud reason, and if you cannot see the situation clearly, you cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control. Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most. It also has a ripple effect that invariably makes situations less controllable and heightens your enemy's resolve. If you are trying to destroy an enemy who has hurt you, far better to keep him off-guard by feigning friendliness than showing your anger."

The words were a lot bigger than the ones Harry usually came across though he had a solution to that as well. He had managed to save one of the dictionaries that Dudley had been given by their Aunt Marge one year for his birthday. It was one of the reasons Harry knew as many words as he did because he often took to using it as a reference. The Dursleys had drilled into his head from a young age how dangerous asking questions could be for him and so Harry had gotten into the habit of finding answers on his own.

This meant that he rarely if ever asked questions in school and so he was very much looked over by his teachers by more eager students. So with a patience born of practice Harry took out his slightly torn and damaged dictionary and looked up the words he did not understand in the book. Once he looked them all up and understood them somewhat he went back to read it again. Once he understood what the writer was saying he sat back on his little cot stumped and thinking about his life thus far.

Were the Dursleys his enemies? They were his relatives but Harry had never felt like that meant much to them. In the dictionary the word enemy had been defined as: a person hostile or opposed to a policy, cause, person, or group, esp one who actively tries to do damage; opponent. And the word relative meant: a person who is related by blood or marriage; relation. The Dursleys were certainly not his family, they were not his caretakers, they ridiculed and hated him. If Harry thought of it, being a relative didn't make them any less of an enemy and it only made their actions hurt worse.

This was the moment where everything changed, where the path split in front of Harry Potter and presented him with two choices. It all came down to one question; if the Dursleys were his enemies…did he want to destroy them? Harry put his books away as he contemplated the question and seriously gave it some thought. The Dursleys were all he knew, they were his relatives, they were his rulers, and they made his life miserable. They hated him, he disliked them, he was living in hostile territory and for the first time there was something he could see before him to do something about it.

There was a book hidden in the wall of his cupboard that seemed to be a guidebook to taking power. It was a book on power, how to get it, and how to play this power game that he hadn't thought existed. It could tell him how to do it, and that left Harry asking if he should. For a long time he thought about all the things the Dursleys had done to him, all he had suffered, all his anger and resentment. Then as the night rolled in Harry came to a decision. He would do it, he would pursue this path of power and he would destroy his enemies. It was only after he had resolved to devote himself to the lessons in the book that Harry realized he had not thought about his new deaf status. Perhaps being unable to hear anymore would not be so bad.