I have had (the start of) this story sitting on my hard drive for years, completely stalled after a certain point and no motivation to finish it.

Many thanks to Stella Wind and Jukebox Hound here on fanfiction who gave lovely feedback as well as concrit and let me whine at them about this story. If anyone else betaed or gave feedback who I've forgotten to mention I am very sorry.

(W)angsty first chapter but I promise it does pick up after this.

Golden Apples and Frankincense

Chapter One: Pyre

Harry lay on his bed, nursing a split lip with the tip of his tongue. It hurt, but less than a lot of pains he'd experienced recently. It was nothing compared to the disembodied spirit of a madman passing through his body, or a giant basilisk's venom coursing through his veins. It was nothing compared to the hurt he was feeling now, which transcended physical discomfort.

Harry dear,

I hope you are enjoying the summer holidays and didn't make yourself sick with all those pastries I sent you. I should have mentioned that there was a preservation charm on them, so there was no need finish them so quickly.

Ginny sends her love and the boys miss you of course, they have been pestering me for weeks about having you over for a game of pick-up quidditch. I know I said that we could have you over earlier in the summer this year, but Professor Dumbledore thinks it would be best for you to spend your birthday with family and I agree with him.

I cannot thank you enough for all you've done for my family, but perhaps this would be a good time to mend the rift in yours? We'll be there to pick you up on the 1st of August as previously agreed.

Much love,

Mrs Weasley.

The letter was the same no matter how many times he read it and Harry angrily shoved the parchment back into its hiding place along with his prized possessions and the last crumbs of Mrs Weasley's pastries. They had been the lion's share of the calories he'd eaten since late June as his aunt had placed him on a slow starvation diet again. At least she was occasionally heating up the soup she shoved through his cat flap, and over-ripe fruit meant he wouldn't die of scurvy at least.

He had picked the lock on Hedwig's cage when food started to run low, during the window of opportunity when the Dursleys were away for a weekend-long flower show. Hedwig's regular disappearances hadn't been noticed and Harry was glad that at least she wasn't hungry (she was more than well-fed if the dead mice she brought him meant anything. Naturally, Harry hadn't eaten them, though he appreciated the gesture).

Harry had begged Mrs Weasley to let him stay at The Burrow, the same woman who had been so supportive and motherly after he rescued Ginny from the Chamber, who had twice knitted him a Weasley jumper like he was a part of her family... and she said 'no'.

She said she cared, he had saved her daughter's life but she acted like everything her children had told her was a lie, that Harry asking for food and sanctuary was just a cry for attention rather than a legitimate plea for his life.

There weren't iron bars keeping him locked up any more but the old window had been replaced with a 'child friendly' brand that opened outwards a couple of inches and no more. Hedwig had some trouble manoeuvring in and out; Harry, emaciated though he was from lack of food and exercise, had no chance of escape. Add that to the multiple locks on his door and a cat-flap just large enough to push a plate through, Harry would have gone stir crazy if he wasn't able to get out more than once a day for his bathroom break.

The twins, funnily enough, were the only ones that really took the situation they'd seen last year seriously and had helped Harry hide hairpins in his clothes: at the hem of his trousers, the collar of his too-large shirt, even the tops of his socks. Enough of them had survived the journey from King's Cross and weren't discovered when uncle Vernon confiscated his wand. Harry was by no means a lock picking expert after the twin's crash course, but he got plenty of practice sneaking out in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, steal food from the kitchen, or retrieve some of his homework from his old bedroom under the stairs.

Harry was probably the only student at Hogwarts who started his summer assignments before he left school and still only finished half of them before the train ride back.

"It's the... nineteenth of July." He consulted the scrap of paper pinned above his headboard, marked off every morning like a prisoner counting days off their sentence. "It's not that long until August, right Hedwig?"

She hooted softly from her cage, her feathers rustling agitatedly.

"Yeah, I know you're restless, girl." Dudley's old alarm clock, painstakingly repaired after his cousin had thrown it at the wall, read quarter past eleven. "I don't think the Dursleys will be up any more tonight. Want to go hunting?"

The snowy owl hooted again, more enthusiastically but still keeping the decibel count low, matching Harry's whispers.

"Okay girl, no point having both of us cooped up all night." The almost-thirteen-year-old retrieved a hairpin from his hiding place under the floorboards, a row of them were gently pinching a page of his photo album, so they wouldn't get lost in the folds of his invisibility cloak. The green eyed boy smiled as his parents waved at him from their enchanted photograph of they day he was born, before gently closing the album again and moving the board back over the hole.

Hedwig was practically vibrating with excitement as Harry picked the cheap bike lock uncle Vernon had bought. For once the man's stinginess towards his nephew had actually worked in Harry's favour.

"There you go, gorgeous." Harry stroked the black-dappled feathers at the side of her star white face. Hedwig leaned into his touch before hopping out her cage and flying to her boy's shoulder, crooning into his neck for more pettings. Harry laughed softly. "Someone wants to be spoiled tonight. I should have named you 'Princess'."

The hoot was more like a squawk this time.

"Don't like that?" Harry murmured amusedly. "How about... 'Empress'? Or 'Your Ladyship'?"

Hedwig beat her wings, smacking Harry around the head and knocking his glasses askew. He righted them and went back to petting, her chest feathers this time.

"I take it back, you fit 'battle' and 'war' perfectly."

Hedwig preened her human's hair smugly, crooned into his cheek one more time then flew to the sill on silent wings, waiting for him to unlatch the fiddly window for her.

"Good hunting." Hedwig wriggled around the pane and took to flight with a reassuring hoot. Harry watched her skim over the lawn and arch into the night sky, a white spectre against the indigo night.

He felt restless as he watched her fade from sight and he stood by the window for several minutes after she had gone. A hot prickling at his eyes made him turn away. 'Stupid,' he thought, 'getting mushy about Hedwig going hunting.' Even though she was his only friend here, he had no right to keep her locked up like he was, not when she could fly free.

All the same, Harry didn't feel like he could sleep just yet, not when he'd been cooped up in one little room for the past month. Restless energy was making him twitchy. He retrieved his Charms textbook from under the bed and flipped to his page mark, flopped onto the ratty duvet and began reading about the locking charm. There was no harm waiting until Hedwig came back...

Harry woke with a start.

He'd fallen asleep, one hand curled around his textbook and his glasses pressing uncomfortably into the side of his face. Righting the frames on his face, Harry felt his stomach flip as he realised why he'd woken up in the first place.

Someone was unlocking the door.

Harry scrambled to his feet, his gaze darting about to see if anything was out of place. Stupidly he realised he was still holding his Charms book and, with no time to reach his hiding place, shoved it under his pillow just in time for uncle Vernon to open the door and peer one beady eye around the frame.

"Any idea what time it is, boy?" He snapped, his moustache twitching side-to-side.

Harry glanced at the clock surreptitiously and blanched as it read half one in the morning. "Late, sir. I'm sorry, I fell asleep with the light on." Harry had learned a long time ago that owning up to a small infraction was better than Vernon stringing a bigger one out of him later.

The whale of a man almost left it at that, tired and irritable enough to go back to bed or continue to the bathroom, the kitchen- wherever he'd been going at this early hour of the morning but his eyes settled on the one incrimination Harry couldn't hide. "Where's that ruddy bird, boy?" His voice was deceptively calm.

"Er..." Harry scrambled for an explanation but there was none, Hedwig's cage had been locked since the day they got back from Hogwarts, at least according to his uncle's view of the world. "Sending a letter, sir." Harry settled on, if he was going to get in trouble for this he might as well make the most of it.

"A letter." Vernon stepped into the room fully, his bulk making the floorboards under Harry's feet vibrate with every step. "What the bloody hell is that thing SENDING A LETTER FOR?"

Harry refused to flinch, keeping his chin up and his split lip from the day before on view. "I wrote to my friends, told them I wanted to go stay with them for the summer. Told them-" Harry wove the story in his mind, pulling together half dream and half desperation. "I told them if I didn't write to them again soon they should come pick me up right away. Hagrid would be furious if he found out you'd kept me locked up again, angry enough to turn Dudley into a real pig this time-"

SMACK!

Harry rocked back, grabbing the bedside table for support as his other hand probed the welt rising on his left cheek. Usually he was better at dodging than that but Vernon's fury had catapulted the man across the room like a particularly bloated rocket. Before he had time to react, Vernon had a fist of messy black locks in a tight hold and had dragged the green eyed boy into an uncomfortably close face-to-face confrontation. "If one of your freakish little friends comes anywhere near my family again, I'll make you regret the day you were born, boy!" He shook his nephew roughly, almost lifting the feather light boy off the ground with the shaking. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

Spittle flecked Harry's face as he tried to nod and settled instead for a quiet "yes, sir." His scalp was burning by the time he was let go and he resisted checking to see if he had bald patches from the experience.

Vernon smiled nastily, his chest heaving from exertion. "Good, because when that flea-infested feather duster of yours comes back, I'm going to wring its scrawny little neck. That'll teach you to threaten my son."

"What! No!" Harry exclaimed, "Hedwig hasn't done anything wrong! I was lying before- she's not even sending a letter, I let her out to hunt, please!" He pleaded, rising to his feet, "don't hurt her!" Tears pricked at his eyes, though he hadn't cried in years he felt an almost overwhelming urge to now. How could he survive the summers without Hedwig? The only living being in the whole house that didn't look at him like he was scum and Harry had just sent her to her death. "Uncle Vernon, please!" The man had always liked to hear him beg, some days it even made him chuckle delightedly and comment how 'everything was right in the world'.

That tactic wasn't working tonight either. Vernon knocked Harry to the bed with one meaty arm, swatting off any attempt for the child to reason with him. Vernon was turning an interesting shade of puce which was a danger sign right there. "You brought this on yourself." He turned off the light and pulled up Harry's desk chair, seemingly content now to wait out the night until Hedwig came back. She was too smart for that, surely? And she would see Vernon in the dark before he would- she was nocturnal and had great night vision and... Harry didn't want to take a chance on his friend's life.

The skinny pre-teen dove for the door and slipped around the still ajar entrance like a snake, leaving the tiniest gap, now if only he could get it closed before- no, Vernon had caught the handle before Harry could put three locks and a cat flap between them. Harry bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time as Vernon's furious bellow woke his wife and son.

Harry just needed to get outside, he knew where he could hide and Hedwig would track him, would instinctively know like she always did that Harry wasn't where she'd left her. Then all it would take was a word and she'd be safely on her way to the Weasley's. He'd leave her with them from now on, or at Hogwarts. Where she'd be safe.

The grass was dewy under Harry's bare feet and already it was soaking the hems of his too-large pyjamas. He couldn't remember fumbling with the back door, just the bulk of Vernon bearing down on him as the door clicked open under his sweaty grasp and that chapter on unlocking charms flashed before his eyes.

He ran. Through the gap in the fence, which he had fixed two years ago and Dudley's gang had broken again the next summer; if Harry hadn't been locked up this summer and the last he would have been made to fix it again. The hole made was only two slats wide but Harry made it through with barely a wriggle, Vernon would have to go over the top. Then he was tumbling down the hill leading to the primary school, the cemetery, so many locations so far from here and none in the direction he really wanted to go.

Up a tree would be best, neither Vernon or Dudley could climb one and Petunia would sooner swallow arsenic than touch something as 'dirty' as tree bark.

There was one, just up ahead, the one Ripper had chased him up when he was little and he had clung to the trunk all night before that rabid thing was finally called off. Vernon would have to call the fire brigade to get him down, and he wouldn't if he could avoid losing face in front of the neighbours.

Ten feet, five-

Harry yelped in pain as something hard clipped the back of his head. It wasn't a hand, it was too round and dense for that. From the bleary eyed position face-down on the grass, Harry spotted a rounded river stone from aunt Petunia's rockery which was suspiciously wet with a dark substance.

"I GOT HIM, DAD!" Dudley crowed victoriously as Harry wobbled to his feet, sanctuary just within reach. He jumped for one of the low hanging branches but was snatched back by the collar and swung around to face a heavily panting Vernon. Behind him stood a wildly grinning Dudley, his pyjamas already a size too small and Petunia, her arms crossed over a paisley dressing gown and her blonde hair in a rare state of disarray.

"Get him inside," Petunia sniffed, peering at the upper windows of Privet Drive still barely in view with her long neck. A couple of houses were starting to flicker into wakefulness, as people turned on their bedside lamps to see who was making that racket at this time of night. "Quickly, before people see."

Harry's loving aunt: not concerned that her husband and son were beating her nephew black and blue, but what the Jones' would think if they knew.

Harry giggled, that rhymed. And his head hurt, three head injuries in two days was his limit evidently. He couldn't even remember how he'd gotten the first one anymore...

"What are you laughing about, freak?" Vernon shook him for extra emphasis, unintentionally clearing some of the fog from his nephew's mind as he bestowed Harry his most loathed insult.

Freak. 'Freak' and 'Boy' were all Harry could remember being called until the first morning of primary school, when his aunt had taken him aside and told him his name, so he would know when to answer the register.

He sometimes wondered what would have happened if she never had, if he had calmly told Miss Conner of class 1B that his name was 'Boy Freak' or 'Freak Boy', whichever she preferred.

Though maybe, like the red haired matriarch, she might not have even cared. It's not like he had saved Miss Conner's daughter after all.

"Don't call me that." He struggled against Vernon's hold until Harry's hand-me-down shirt slopped up his skeletal ribs and hooded over his head. "Let me go- LET ME GO!"

"Keep him quiet!" Petunia hissed, her pale eyes darting once more to the windows. "Shut up, you nasty little boy or you'll think what you were eating before was five star dining!"

Vernon cuffed him around the head and started dragging him in the direction of the house. Harry's struggles increased, in for a penny, in for a pound. "HELP ME, SOMEBODY HELP ME!" He gagged around one of Vernon's hand's and his screams were muffled before he was being marched double time back up the hill. The wizard twisted and squirmed, digging in his heels against the wet earth and all the while trying to get his mouth free to cry out again. Eventually Dudley had to help pull his cousin along, gleefully chocking the smaller boy while Petunia made hurrying motions with her hands.

No one was coming out of their houses, though more lights were on than ever, he should have known. Privet Drive had always been the sort of place where everyone spied on everyone else but never did anything about the secrets they unearthed, no matter how horrible they were. Either that or they just hadn't noticed that he hadn't been outside a single day this summer and very few the last- who was aunt Petunia blaming the graffiti and burnt out wheelie bins on now?

They were at the back door, despite all Harry's best efforts, when Mr Turner at number Five turned on his porch light and stepped out into his garden. A three foot tall hedge and Petunia's rake thin body couldn't hide the bruise purpling on Harry's cheek, and certainly not the death grip the male Dursleys had on the black haired boy.

Mr Turner, for all his blind-eyeing in the past couldn't let this one slip by. His withered face went pale, then red and he slammed the door with the cry: "I'm calling the police!"

"Oh, look what you've done!" Petunia's hands were now torn between ringing themselves and curling into fists. "Where's your owl, I need it right now!"

"Mnnph!" Harry's response was swallowed by Vernon's hand though a moment later he withdrew after a frosty glance from his wife. "Why do you want Hedwig? What are you going to do to her now?"

She levelled a look at her portly spouse before smothering her lips in a smile that looked almost painful. "Harry, dear, I just need to send a message to your headmaster. You wanted to leave, didn't you? Well, if you let me borrow your owl you can leave tonight."

Harry's mind whirled. Dumbledore. What did she want with Dumbledore? He was one of the only people who knew where he was, except the Ministry who had sent him that warning about the levitating pudding last year. Aunt Petunia only asked when someone saw, because that was what she feared most, to be labelled abnormal. Dumbledore had left Harry on her doorstep, but did this mean they had been in contact after that?

Harry's stomach sank. Did this mean Dumbledore had been covering up for the Dursleys all these years? Was his headmaster just another Lockhart?

He stalled. "You never needed Hedwig before, you'd have scars if you'd even tried to get close to her." Hedwig was too smart to let Petunia use her and there was no way his aunt had an owl of her own.

She was practically cringing in trepidation now, it was impossible for her to be more afraid of Mr Turner now than if the pensioner had donned a hockey mask and blood splattered apron. "You idiot boy! I don't have time to send a letter the normal way, do I? And you've not used any of your freakish abilities this time!" She drew a breath, smoothing rumpled curls. "Harry, just tell your... Hedwig that I need her to send a letter, it will be much easier for you if you do."

"No chance, you old hag." Harry snapped back which in turn caused Dudley to snap.

"Don't talk to my mum like that!" Harry bent over double from the blow and tried to pull in oxygen which was now strangely absent from the atmosphere.

In the background he felt Vernon's hand tightening on the back of his neck and Petunia cooing at her obese offspring. "Now Diddykins, let mummy handle this." She turned her cold gaze back to her nephew, her voice now dripping with contempt. "Harry, this is all going to get swept under the carpet one way or the other, but I'd rather not suffer the embarrassment in the meantime. If you cooperate," she shared a look with her husband, "we'll let you out into the garden on occasion, you could eat meals with the family-"

"But mummy!" Dudley whined, "he'll put me off my food!"

"Dudders," Vernon grunted, "your mother's handling this."

"I'd rather eat sewage than sit at the same table as you." Harry grumbled, now almost too tried to struggle against his aching skull and the constant pressure against his upper spinal column.

"Fine," Petunia's lips pursed, "then you can have some of your freaky books, I couldn't care less right now. Tell your owl to accept my letter or you won't have any human comforts this summer and I'll still have my way."

Vernon interjected, too late informing her the reason why he had been screaming down the house in the wee hours of the morning. "Pet', the bird took off, he let it out."

Petunia's lips thinned further, to the point where she could give Professor McGonagall a run for her money. "Inside, now. We'll deal with this somehow."

"No!" Harry scrambled against his captors, not caring that his muddy feet were scraping against the gravel, or that his spine was being used like a leash on one end, and his night shirt a noose on the other. If he was taken inside, he just knew he wouldn't see sunlight until August first. Petunia would figure something out with Dumbledore, or Vernon would plaster on a smile and spin another tale about his 'poor, mentally disturbed nephew'.

He lashed out with his feet, dug in his elbows, even tried to bite whatever exposed flesh he could reach but soon he was getting dragged into the doorway, as his aunt held the door open, his uncle pushed and his cousin pulled. It was like a madness that had taken over him as he wedged his bruised and filthy feet in the door frame. There was no moon tonight and the stars were obscured by street lamps but Harry felt primal, removed from the modern as adrenaline ran through his veins, a lunatic high.

The trials guarding the Philosopher's Stone, the day he walked through fire, with only a friend's word that he wouldn't burn alive-

Flesh fizzled under his hands, turning to ash and falling through his fingers, into his eyes. Harry held on to survive and tried to block out the sounds of screams-

The Chamber of Secrets, blind and terrified as he strained his ears for the scrape of basilisk scales on stone and the chorus of phoenix song.

"STOP FIGHTING ME, BOY!" Harry became aware of the world again when Vernon screamed, and that was enough of a distraction to get his feet on the ground. The wizard tried to wedge himself back in the frame but his arms and legs were pinned and he didn't want to be trapped again, wanted, no- needed to be free!

A broken croon rose in Harry's throat.

An answering shriek shattered the night as Hedwig descended from on-high, returned from her hunt at last. Talons raked Vernon's scalp and he screamed, arms flailing to protect himself. Harry, who was only held by Dudley now, dropped like a stone, barely stopping another whack to the head by sacrificing some of the skin from his elbows.

"Vernon- no! We need it! Boy, call it off, right now!" Even then, Petunia was trying to establish order.

Harry lashed out with his feet, catching a distracted Dudley off guard and breaking his cousin's sweaty grip. "Fly away Hedwig, go to Hogwarts!" 'Be safe.'

"No!" Petunia shrieked in fury and, in lieu of a spare frying pan tried to slap him with her bare hand.

Harry dodged, scrambling to his feet. "I'm leaving. You'll never see me again, you can sort this mess out by yourself- you made it!" Back to the sanctuary tree, he could wait them out if he got that far, were those police sirens in the distance? Hedwig alighted on his shoulder, hissing at the Dursleys as if daring them to try anything while she was there. "Hedwig, I told you to get away!"

She cried her disagreement, tightening her grip until her talons sank into the thin cotton of his shirt, delicately skimming his shoulder without breaking the skin. "Hedwig, please, I need you to-" Harry screamed as Vernon's meaty fist swung up meet them and Hedwig was clipped. "HEDWIG!" The same claws which had tied her to him now stopped her from falling to the ground. He cradled her to his face, her body was warm but her eyes were closed, wings splayed awkwardly from her failed flight. "Hedwig?"

The world narrowed to a single point but it didn't matter, Hedwig wasn't breathing.

Harry screamed, a crescendo of voices and feelings wrapped in a melodic, frightening cry.

Harry James Potter was engulfed in golden flames, his mouth still open in a wordless scream as he vanished from Little Whinging, Surrey.

A.N.: Okay, I've hinted at a few things in here. Thoughts? Am I being too obvious with my cringe-worthy attempts at subtle fore-shadowing?