Chapter 2: Shadows and Secrets
Little Whinging, Surrey - Age 5
The first time Petunia Dursley hit Harry Potter with a frying pan, he was five years old.
He had been reaching for a piece of toast—just one piece, because Dudley had already eaten four and declared himself still hungry—when Aunt Petunia's hand had shot out like a striking snake. The cast iron pan caught him across the shoulder with a crack that Harry felt in his bones. He stumbled, catching himself against the counter, his small body already learning the reflexes that would keep him alive.
"Clumsy freak," Petunia hissed, her pinched face twisted with satisfaction. "You'll eat what you're given, when you're given it. If there's anything left after Dudley finishes."
There never was anything left.
Harry had learned that lesson quickly, along with so many others. He learned that speaking drew attention, and attention brought pain. He learned that the cupboard under the stairs was both prison and sanctuary—a place where Vernon's meaty fists couldn't reach, where Petunia's cutting words were muffled by the door. He learned that bruises could be hidden under long sleeves, that broken ribs healed if you stayed very still, that hunger was just another kind of pain to be endured.
He learned, most importantly, that survival meant invisibility.
The beatings had started small. A shove here, a slap there. Vernon's face turning purple with rage over some imagined slight, his hand connecting with Harry's face hard enough to make his ears ring. Petunia's nails digging into his arm as she dragged him to the cupboard, her voice a litany of hatred: "Freak. Abnormal. Just like your mother."
By the time Harry turned five, the violence had become routine.
Vernon used his belt when he was truly angry, the leather leaving welts across Harry's back that burned for days. Petunia preferred her hands—slaps, pinches, once grabbing Harry's hair and slamming his head against the kitchen wall hard enough that he saw stars. And Dudley, encouraged by his parents' example, had learned that his freakish cousin made an excellent target for "Harry Hunting"—a game that involved Dudley and his gang chasing Harry through the neighborhood, fists flying when they caught him.
The cupboard under the stairs became Harry's entire world. Four feet wide, maybe six feet deep, with a slanted ceiling that pressed down like a physical weight. A thin, stained mattress. A single blanket that did nothing against the winter cold. Spiders in the corners that Harry had long since stopped fearing—they were better company than the Dursleys.
No light. No warmth. No comfort.
Just darkness, and the distant sounds of the family he would never be part of laughing in the living room.
Harry bore it all in silence, his green eyes—Lily's eyes—becoming harder with each passing day. Because every bruise, every hungry night, every moment of degradation was a price he paid willingly. His siblings were safe. His father was hidden. And Harry would endure anything to keep them that way.
But endurance didn't mean acceptance.
In the darkness of his cupboard, Harry practiced the mental exercises his mother had taught him during those last precious months. Occlumency, she had called it—the art of organizing and protecting one's mind. He was far too young to truly understand the theory, but Lily had given him the foundations: visualization, compartmentalization, emotional control.
"Your mind is a fortress, Harry," she had told him, her green eyes serious. "And you are its only defender. Build your walls strong, and nothing can break through them."
So Harry built his walls.
He took every memory of his family—his mother's smile, his father's laughter, the weight of his infant siblings in his arms—and locked them away in the deepest, most protected part of his mind. He surrounded them with steel and stone, with magic and will, with everything he had. Those memories were precious beyond measure, and he would die before he let the Dursleys' cruelty touch them.
The rest—the pain, the hunger, the casual brutality of life at Number Four, Privet Drive—he organized methodically. This beating went here. That insult went there. Each piece of suffering catalogued and filed away, examined dispassionately and then stored where it couldn't hurt him.
It wasn't true Occlumency, not yet. But it was enough to keep him sane.
And slowly, carefully, Harry began to test the other things his mother had taught him.
Magic.
It started small. A feeling, more than anything concrete—a warmth in his chest, a tingling in his fingertips. Harry would sit in his cupboard after a particularly bad beating, his body aching, and reach for that warmth. He didn't know the words for what he was doing, couldn't have explained the theory behind it. But his mother had shown him, in those last months, how magic responded to intent, to will, to desperate need.
And Harry was very desperate.
The first time he managed wandless magic, he was trying to reach a glass of water that Petunia had left on the kitchen counter—taunting him with it, just out of reach, while she forced him to scrub the floor. Harry had stared at that glass, his throat burning with thirst, his small hands raw from the cleaning solution, and thought: Come to me.
The glass had trembled. Just slightly, just for a moment. But it had moved.
Petunia had shrieked and thrown the glass at him. The water had done nothing to slake his thirst, and he'd gotten the belt for "freakishness," but Harry hadn't cared. Because he had done magic. Real, controlled magic. Not the wild bursts of accidental magic that all young wizards experienced, but deliberate, focused power.
It was a beginning.
Over the months that followed, Harry practiced in secret. Late at night, when the Dursleys were asleep, he would hold out his hand and whisper the incantations his mother had taught him. "Lumos." A faint glow would appear above his palm, barely brighter than a candle flame, but there. "Nox." The light would die. Again and again, until his head pounded and exhaustion dragged at him, Harry practiced.
He learned to levitate small objects—a button, a pebble, the spider that lived in the corner of his cupboard (he always apologized to it afterward). He learned to unlock the door of his cupboard with a thought, though he never actually opened it—that would have brought questions he couldn't answer. He learned to summon water from the bathroom tap, to heal small cuts with a touch, to see in the dark when even his Lumos was too risky.
All of it wandless. All of it silent. All of it invisible to the Dursleys who would have beaten him bloody if they'd known.
And through it all, Harry waited. Because he had a plan.
Little Whinging Primary School had been Harry's first real contact with the outside world since that terrible night when he was three.
The Dursleys had been forced to send him—child services had come asking questions when Dudley started school and Harry didn't. So at age five, Harry had been grudgingly enrolled, with strict instructions from Petunia: "You will not embarrass us. You will not mention your freakishness. And you will NOT, under ANY circumstances, do better than Dudley. Do you understand?"
Harry had understood perfectly.
So at school, he played dumb. When the teacher asked questions he knew the answers to, Harry stayed silent or gave wrong answers. When tests came back, he made sure his scores were always just below Dudley's—not so low as to attract concern, but never high enough to outshine his cousin. It was a delicate balance, one that required careful attention and constant vigilance.
Because Harry wasn't just playing dumb. In reality, he was learning everything.
The school library became his sanctuary. During lunch periods, when other children played outside, Harry buried himself in books. Science, mathematics, history, literature—he devoured it all with a hunger that had nothing to do with the meager breakfast he'd been allowed that morning. The librarian, Mrs. Fletcher, took pity on the small, thin boy who seemed to live among her shelves, and began setting aside books she thought he'd enjoy.
If she noticed that he read far above his grade level, that he understood concepts that should have been beyond a five-year-old, she never said anything. She just smiled kindly and brought him more books.
Harry read about physics and chemistry, about how the universe worked on a fundamental level. He read about biology and anatomy, about how the human body functioned and could be healed. He read about technology and computers, about electricity and circuits and the strange, non-magical way that Muggles had bent the world to their will.
And he understood it. All of it. Not because he was trying to show off, not because he wanted to be special, but because he knew, with absolute certainty, that knowledge was power. Knowledge was protection. Knowledge would help him keep his siblings safe.
His mother had been a genius who bridged magic and science. Harry would honor her memory by doing the same.
But the real revelation came on his first day of school, when Harry discovered something that changed everything.
He could see the wards.
It happened as he was walking home, Dudley and his gang having abandoned their usual "Harry Hunting" game in favor of ice cream from the corner shop. Harry had been trailing behind, his too-large clothes hanging off his thin frame, when he felt it—a subtle shift in the air, a tingling across his skin that made his magic sit up and take notice.
He stopped walking and looked around, trying to identify the source of the sensation. And there, shimmering at the edge of his vision like heat waves on summer pavement, he saw them.
Lines of light. Threads of power. Weaving through the air in complex patterns that made his head hurt if he looked at them too long.
Wards.
The blood wards that Dumbledore had anchored to Number Four, Privet Drive, using Lily's sacrifice and Petunia's grudging acceptance. Harry could see them as clearly as he could see the street signs and mailboxes. They formed a dome over the house, extending outward in a roughly circular pattern that covered about two blocks in every direction.
And Harry was standing right at the edge.
One more step, and he would be outside the wards entirely. Outside Dumbledore's protection. Outside the magical monitoring that surely tracked his every move within the warded area.
Free.
Harry's mind raced. If he could leave the wards—if he could do it without Dumbledore knowing, without setting off alarms or alerts—then he wasn't trapped here. He wasn't limited to this miserable existence. He could...
He could go home.
Not Privet Drive. Home. Potter Castle. His grandparents. His siblings.
The thought hit him with the force of a physical blow. For two years, he had endured. For two years, he had survived the Dursleys' abuse with the knowledge that his family was safe, that his sacrifice meant something. But he had also believed that he was truly trapped here, that seeing his siblings again would have to wait until he was old enough, strong enough, clever enough to escape Dumbledore's machinations entirely.
But if he could slip past the wards undetected...
Harry forced himself to keep walking, to continue home as if nothing had changed. But inside, his thoughts were spinning. He needed to be careful. Needed to plan. Dumbledore was no fool—if Harry simply disappeared from the wards for hours at a time, questions would be asked. Investigations would be launched. And the last thing Harry could afford was for Dumbledore to start digging into the Potter family's whereabouts.
No. Harry would have to be subtle. Smart. He would have to wait for the right moment.
That moment came three nights later.
The Dursleys had long since gone to bed—Vernon's snores rattling through the house like a freight train, Petunia's lighter breathing a counterpoint from the master bedroom, Dudley wheezing slightly from whatever massive dinner he'd stuffed himself with. The house was dark and quiet, the neighborhood outside equally still.
Harry sat in his cupboard, his heart pounding, and reached for the lock with his magic. The mechanism clicked open silently, well-practiced from months of secret practice. He eased the door open an inch, then another, listening intently for any sign that someone had woken.
Nothing.
Harry slipped out of the cupboard, his bare feet silent on the floor. He had dressed in his least-tattered clothes—still obviously too large, still obviously hand-me-downs from Dudley, but clean at least. His heart hammered in his chest as he crept toward the front door, every creaking floorboard sounding like a gunshot in the stillness.
Don't wake them. Please don't wake them.
The front door had three locks—the handle lock, a deadbolt, and a chain. Under normal circumstances, a five-year-old boy would have no chance of opening them silently. But Harry wasn't normal. He raised his hand, focused his intent, and felt his magic respond.
Alohomora.
The locks clicked open one by one. The chain slid free. And Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, stepped out into the night.
The wards tingled across his skin as he approached the edge. He could see them more clearly now in the darkness, threads of golden light woven tight around the Dursley property. He took a breath, steadied himself, and stepped through.
The change was immediate. The oppressive weight that had pressed down on him since he first arrived at Privet Drive lifted. The air felt cleaner, crisper, more real. And most importantly, Harry felt the magical signature of the wards pass over him and then... ignore him. As if he'd simply stepped out for a walk. As if he was still within the boundaries, still under protection, still exactly where he was supposed to be.
He had done it.
"Pipsy," Harry whispered into the night, his voice barely audible. "I need you."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then there was a soft crack of displaced air, and Pipsy appeared.
The old house elf looked exactly as Harry remembered—ancient, wrinkled, with enormous eyes that had seen nearly a century of Potter family history. Those eyes widened when they saw Harry, taking in his thin frame, the bruises that were visible even in the darkness, the way he held himself as if expecting a blow.
"Master Harry," Pipsy breathed, her voice cracking with emotion. "Oh, Master Harry, what has—"
"Later," Harry interrupted gently. "Please, Pipsy. Can you take me to Grandfather and Grandmother? Can you take me home?"
Pipsy's eyes filled with tears, but she nodded. "Pipsy can take Master Harry anywhere. The elf bond is stronger than any ward or magic. Hold on, Master Harry."
Harry took her small, gnarled hand. The world twisted, color and sound compressing into a single point of impossible pressure. And then—
They appeared in a large entrance hall that Harry recognized immediately from his mother's memories and stories. Potter Castle. Not the modest cottage in Godric's Hollow where they had lived in hiding, but the true ancestral seat of the Potter family—a sprawling fortress that had stood for over a thousand years, hidden from Muggle eyes by ancient wards and protected by magic that predated the Statute of Secrecy itself.
The entrance hall was enormous, with a vaulted ceiling that disappeared into shadows overhead. Tapestries hung on the walls, depicting Potter family history—battles fought, alliances forged, magic performed. A grand staircase swept upward, splitting into two directions on a landing decorated with suits of armor and display cases filled with artifacts. Floating candles provided warm light, casting dancing shadows across marble floors inlaid with gold and silver.
It was beautiful. It was magnificent.
And Harry barely noticed any of it.
"HARRY!"
His grandmother's voice echoed through the hall. Dorea Potter appeared at the top of the stairs, still in her nightgown and robe, her aristocratic features shocked and disbelieving. She flew down the stairs with a speed that would have been undignified under any other circumstances, her wand appearing in her hand.
"Diagnostic spells," she was saying, already casting before she'd even reached him. "Full medical scan. Pipsy, wake Charlus. Tell him—tell him Harry's here. Oh, sweet Merlin, let me look at you."
Harry stood very still as spells washed over him, his grandmother's wand moving in complex patterns that made the air shimmer with magic. Her face, already pale, went white as parchment as the results appeared in floating text that only she could see.
"Three broken ribs, partially healed," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Malnourishment. Signs of repeated physical trauma. Bruising in various stages of healing. Scarring on your back from—from a belt. Harry, what have they done to you?"
"Grandmother," Harry started, but Dorea wasn't listening. Her hands were glowing with healing magic now, warm golden light flowing from her fingers as she began running them over Harry's injuries. He felt the ache in his ribs ease, felt torn tissue knitting back together, felt the constant low-grade pain that had become his normal state begin to fade.
"WHAT?"
Charlus Potter's roar shook the entrance hall. He appeared on the stairs, his silver hair wild, his green eyes—Potter eyes, the same shade as Harry's—blazing with fury. He took in the scene below in a single glance: Harry, small and thin and covered in bruises. Dorea, her face streaked with tears as she healed their grandson. The evidence of two years of abuse written in every line of the boy's too-thin body.
"I'll kill them," Charlus said, his voice deadly quiet. "I will go to that house right now and I will kill every single person who laid a hand on him."
"Grandfather, no," Harry said quickly. "You can't. If they die, if anything happens to them, Dumbledore will investigate. He'll want to know why. He'll start asking questions about where I'll go, about family. He might discover—"
"I don't care!" Charlus was descending the stairs now, his wand out, his magic crackling in the air around him with barely contained rage. "Harry, look at yourself! Look at what they've done! You're five years old and you look like you've survived a war!"
"I have survived," Harry said simply. "And I'll continue surviving. That's the plan, remember? I endure. I grow strong. And when the time comes, I take back everything Dumbledore stole from us."
The raw pragmatism in his voice stopped Charlus in his tracks. The older man stared at his grandson—this five-year-old child who spoke with the cold calculation of a general planning a campaign—and something in his expression crumbled.
"You shouldn't have to be this strong," Charlus said, his voice breaking. "You're a child, Harry. You should be playing and laughing and learning magic because it's fun, not because it's necessary for survival. You should be with family, not locked in a cupboard being beaten by people who are supposed to protect you."
"A cupboard?" Dorea's voice was barely a whisper. "They kept you in a cupboard?"
Harry nodded. "Under the stairs. It's small, but it's safe. They can't hurt me when I'm in there."
The sound Dorea made was inhuman. She pulled Harry into a fierce hug, careful of his injuries, and Harry felt something crack in his chest. The walls he'd so carefully built, the emotional control he'd maintained for two solid years—all of it threatened to crumble under the weight of his grandmother's love.
"I'm okay," he whispered, even though it was a lie. "I'm okay, Grandmother. I promise."
"You're not okay," Dorea said fiercely. "None of this is okay. But you're here now, and we're going to fix this. We're going to fix all of it."
Charlus had been pacing, his anger a living thing in the air. Now he stopped and turned to Harry. "How did you get here? The wards should have—Dumbledore should have been alerted the moment you left—"
"The wards think I'm still there," Harry explained. "I tested it. When I step outside the boundary, the magic registers it as a temporary departure but doesn't send an alert. I think it's because I'm not trying to escape—I'm planning to go back. The wards are keyed to my intent as much as my location."
"Clever," Charlus said grudgingly. "But Harry, you can't keep doing this. Sneaking out in the middle of the night, traveling across the Atlantic—"
"I can," Harry interrupted. "I have to. Because Charlus and Rose are here, and I promised Mummy I would protect them. I can't do that from an ocean away."
At the mention of his siblings, Harry's careful control finally broke. His voice cracked as he said, "Are they—are they okay? Can I see them? Please, I need to see them."
The anger drained from Charlus and Dorea's faces, replaced by understanding. Of course. For two years, Harry had endured hell, sustained only by the knowledge that his sacrifice kept his siblings safe. And he hadn't seen them since that terrible night, hadn't held them or heard their voices or known for certain that they were well.
"Come," Dorea said gently, taking Harry's hand. "Let me finish healing you first—I won't have you meeting your siblings covered in bruises. Then you can see them. They're sleeping now, but I think this qualifies as a special circumstance."
Harry stood very still as his grandmother worked, her healing magic warm and thorough. She mended his ribs completely, fixed the malnutrition as best she could (though she couldn't replace the meals he hadn't eaten, couldn't undo two years of deliberate starvation), healed every bruise and cut and scar. When she was done, Harry looked almost normal—still too thin, still too small for his age, but at least not actively injured.
"Better," Dorea said, though her voice was tight. "Now come. Let's go see your brother and sister."
They climbed the stairs, Charlus's hand on Harry's shoulder—protective, reassuring, a reminder that he wasn't alone. They walked down a long hallway lined with portraits of past Potters, all of them stirring in their frames to watch Harry pass. At the end of the hall, Dorea opened a door and gestured Harry inside.
The nursery was beautiful. Soft carpet, warm lighting, walls painted with moving murals of forests and castles and magical creatures. Two cribs stood side by side, their occupants sleeping peacefully under enchanted blankets that kept them warm and safe.
Harry approached on trembling legs. He looked down at his siblings, seeing them properly for the first time in two years, and felt his carefully constructed walls finally, completely shatter.
Charlus and Rose had grown. Of course they had—they were two years old now, not the tiny infants he'd last held. Charlus slept on his back, his dark hair (James's hair, the same perpetually messy style that marked all Potter men) falling across his forehead. His face was peaceful in sleep, his small chest rising and falling with each breath. He looked healthy. Well-fed. Safe.
Rose slept curled on her side, her thumb in her mouth, her red hair (Lily's hair, the same brilliant copper that had made their mother so distinctive) spread across her pillow like a living flame. Even in sleep, her face held an expression of fierce determination—Lily's spirit, burning bright even at two years old.
They were perfect.
"Can I—" Harry's voice cracked. "Can I hold them?"
"Of course," Dorea said gently. "But perhaps just one at a time? We don't want to overwhelm them."
Harry nodded. With trembling hands, he reached into Rose's crib and carefully lifted his sister. She stirred, her eyes fluttering open—green, like his and Lily's and Charlus Senior's, the mark of Potter blood—and for a moment she just stared at him in confusion.
"Hi, Rose," Harry whispered, his voice thick with tears. "It's me. It's Harry. Your big brother. I promised Mummy I'd protect you, and I have. I will. I love you so much."
Rose blinked. Then, with the unerring instinct of children who recognize family, she smiled and reached for Harry's face with her small hands.
"'Arry," she said. It was probably her attempt at his name, mangled by a two-year-old's pronunciation, but to Harry it was the most beautiful sound in the world. "My 'Arry."
Harry pulled her close, buried his face in her hair, and cried. Great, wrenching sobs that he'd held back for two years, all the pain and fear and loneliness finally breaking free. He cried for his mother, dead because she'd tried to protect her children. He cried for his father, trapped in an endless sleep. He cried for himself, for the childhood he'd lost, for the innocence that had been beaten out of him.
And Rose, with the perfect compassion of a child who loved without question, patted his cheek and said, "No cry, 'Arry. I here."
"I know," Harry managed through his tears. "I know, sweetheart. You're here. You're safe. That's all that matters."
A small sound made him look up. Charlus had woken, probably roused by Harry's crying. The little boy was standing in his crib, holding onto the rails, staring at Harry with wide green eyes.
"Charlie," Dorea said softly, moving to the crib. "Look who's here. This is your big brother Harry. Remember how we told you about him?"
Charlus (or Charlie, as Dorea had called him—Harry filed that away) continued to stare. Then, in a voice that was high and clear and heartbreakingly young, he said, "Brave Harry? Who protects us?"
Harry felt something crack in his chest. His grandparents had told them about him. Had made sure his siblings knew they had a brother, even if they couldn't be with him.
"Yes," Harry said, his voice rough. "Brave Harry. But I'm not sure about the brave part. I just—I just love you both so much. More than anything."
"Come here," Charlie demanded, holding out his arms in that imperious way that small children have. "Up!"
Harry handed Rose to Dorea and moved to Charlie's crib. He lifted his brother carefully, cradling him close, and Charlie immediately wrapped his small arms around Harry's neck in a hug that squeezed the breath from his lungs.
"Missed you," Charlie said seriously. "Gramma says you come back. But you not come."
"I'm here now," Harry promised. "And I'll come as often as I can. Every night, if possible. I'll never abandon you, Charlie. Never."
Charlie pulled back to look at Harry's face, his expression solemn. "Promise?"
"I promise," Harry said, and felt magic seal the words. An oath, witnessed by the family magic that ran through all their veins. "I will always come back to you. Both of you. No matter what happens, no matter how hard it gets, I will always find my way home."
For the next hour, Harry sat in the nursery with his siblings, just holding them and talking to them and relearning the shape of their faces. Rose fell back asleep in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her small hand fisted in his shirt. Charlie stayed awake longer, asking questions with the relentless curiosity of a two-year-old, and Harry answered as best he could.
"Where you live?" Charlie asked.
"With our Aunt Petunia," Harry said carefully. "She's not very nice, but it's safe. The wards keep the bad people away."
"Why you not live here?"
"Because right now, this has to be a secret. There are people who would hurt you if they knew where you were. So I stay away to keep them from finding you."
Charlie frowned, processing this with a seriousness that seemed far too old for his age. Finally, he said, "You keep us safe. Like Gramma and Grampa."
"Exactly like that," Harry agreed.
"Okay," Charlie decided. "I like you, Harry."
"I like you too, Charlie."
Eventually, both children fell asleep in Harry's arms, and Dorea gently suggested that they let them rest. Harry placed them back in their cribs with infinite care, tucking their blankets around them, memorizing every detail of their sleeping faces.
"I'll come back tomorrow night," Harry said quietly. "And the night after, and the night after that. For as long as I can."
"Harry," Charlus began, but Harry shook his head.
"No arguments, Grandfather. I know what you're going to say—that it's dangerous, that I should stay here where it's safe, that I'm too young to be making these decisions. But I'm not too young. I stopped being too young the night Mummy died. And this is my choice. I choose to protect them. I choose to endure. And I choose to come home every night to be with my family."
Charlus and Dorea exchanged a long look. Finally, Charlus nodded.
"Then we'll train you," he said. "If you're going to keep doing this, if you're going to live this double life, then we'll make sure you have every possible advantage. Magic, combat, strategy—everything the Potter family knows, everything we can teach you. You wanted to grow strong? We'll make you the strongest wizard of your generation."
"And we'll make sure you're fed," Dorea added firmly. "You can't train on an empty stomach, and Merlin knows those monsters aren't feeding you properly. We'll have Pipsy pack meals for you, things you can hide and eat when they're not watching."
Harry felt tears prick his eyes again. "Thank you," he whispered. "For everything. For taking care of them. For being willing to teach me. For—for loving me, even when I couldn't be here."
"We never stopped loving you," Dorea said fiercely, pulling him into another hug. "Not for a single moment. You are our grandson, Harry Potter. You are family. And we will move heaven and earth to protect you, just as you protect your siblings."
Harry let himself be held, let himself accept the comfort and warmth and love that the Dursleys had spent two years denying him. And for the first time since that terrible night when he'd made his choice, Harry felt something other than grim determination.
He felt hope.
The routine that Harry established that first night became the pattern of his life for the next three years.
During the day, he was the perfect victim. He endured the Dursleys' abuse with stoic silence, accepted their cruelty as the price of his siblings' safety, played the role of the downtrodden orphan that Dumbledore needed him to be. He went to school, deliberately scored just below Dudley on tests, and spent every spare moment in the library learning everything he could about the Muggle world.
But at night—at night, Harry became something else entirely.
At precisely 10:00 PM, when the Dursleys were snoring in their beds and the neighborhood was dark and quiet, Harry would slip from his cupboard, unlock the front door with wandless magic, and step beyond the wards. Pipsy would be waiting for him, her wrinkled face breaking into a smile when she saw him, and they would travel via house-elf apparition to Potter Castle in Manhattan.
(The castle was in Manhattan because the Potter family's American holdings predated the founding of New York City itself, protected by wards so old and powerful that even the skyscrapers and urban sprawl couldn't touch them. To Muggle eyes, the castle's location appeared as an empty lot marked "Private Property—Keep Out." To magical eyes, it was an impregnable fortress.)
And then the real work would begin.
Charlus and Dorea had meant what they said about training him. From that very first night, they threw themselves into the task of turning their five-year-old grandson into a wizard who could protect himself and his siblings. The schedule they developed was brutal, even by adult standards, but Harry had never complained. Not once.
6:00-7:00 PM (Manhattan time, when Harry arrived): Physical conditioning. Charlus, who had fought in both World Wars and against Grindelwald's forces, believed that magic without physical fitness was magic half-learned. So Harry ran laps around the castle grounds, did push-ups and sit-ups and exercises designed to build the strength and endurance his malnourished body desperately needed. Dorea supervised meals during this time, forcing nutrient potions and carefully balanced food into Harry that would help him grow despite the Dursleys' starvation.
7:00-8:00 PM: Occlumency with Dorea. She started slowly, teaching Harry the proper mental exercises, the correct way to build his mind's defenses. "Your mother gave you the foundation," Dorea would say, "but now we're building the fortress itself." Harry proved to be a natural—partly because of his intelligence, partly because he'd been practicing for two years, but mostly because he had such powerful motivation. His siblings' location, his father's survival, the entire deception they'd constructed—all of it lived in Harry's mind, and he would die before he let anyone steal those secrets.
8:00-9:00 PM: Academics with Charlus. The Potters were famous for their mastery of Transfiguration and Runes, ancient magics that required not just power but deep understanding of magical theory. Charlus taught Harry both, starting with the basics but quickly moving to more advanced concepts as he realized his grandson's capacity for learning. They also covered Arithmancy—the mathematical language of magic—which Harry took to with frightening ease. His understanding of Muggle mathematics and science gave him frameworks that pure-blood wizards lacked, allowing him to see connections and patterns that others missed.
9:00-10:00 PM: Practical magic with both grandparents. Charlus handled combat magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts, teaching Harry offensive spells, defensive shields, and the fluid movement necessary for dueling. Dorea, drawing on her Black family heritage, taught him Charms, Potions (theory only—he couldn't practice brewing at Privet Drive), and Healing magic. But her most controversial lessons were in the Dark Arts themselves.
"Knowledge is neither light nor dark," Dorea would say, her aristocratic features serious. "It's the intent behind magic that determines its morality. You need to know how these spells work, Harry, not so you can use them indiscriminately, but so you can defend against them—and so that when the time comes, when your siblings' lives are on the line, you have every tool at your disposal."
Harry learned the theory behind the Unforgivables. He learned curses that could flay flesh from bone, hexes that could stop a heart, jinxes that could shatter minds. He learned them all, filed them away in his perfectly organized mental fortress, and swore to himself that he would only use them if there was no other choice.
10:00-11:00 PM: Family time. This was sacred, inviolable. Harry would spend this hour with Charlus and Rose, playing with them, teaching them, loving them. As they grew from toddlers into young children, Harry watched with fierce pride as they began to show signs of their own formidable magic. Charlie was drawn to Transfiguration and physical magic, already showing the raw power that marked Potter men. Rose demonstrated an aptitude for Charms and mental magic, her mind as sharp as Lily's had been.
And both of them adored their big brother with a devotion that made Harry's heart ache.
At 11:30 PM, Pipsy would return Harry to Privet Drive, depositing him back outside the wards at 7:30 AM London time (the time difference worked in Harry's favor—he could spend six hours in New York and return to England with the Dursleys none the wiser). Harry would slip back into his cupboard, lock the door, and sleep for an hour before the Dursleys woke and his daily torture resumed.
It should have been impossible. The schedule should have killed him, or at minimum broken him. Five hours of intense training every night, on top of school and the Dursleys' abuse and the constant mental strain of playing his role perfectly?
But Harry thrived.
By age six, he was a Level 2 Occlumens, capable of organizing his thoughts into clear, protected sections that would resist casual Legilimency. By seven, he'd reached Level 3, able to construct false memories and mislead even skilled mind-readers. By eight, he was Level 5—a Master Occlumens, his mind a fortress that even Dorea, who was Level 6 herself, found difficult to breach.
The levels of Occlumency, Dorea had explained, were clearly defined:
Level 1 (Novice): Basic mental organization. Can resist emotional manipulation and sort thoughts.
Level 2 (Apprentice): Can construct simple mental shields. Resists casual Legilimency.
Level 3 (Adept): Can create false surface thoughts. Resists moderate Legilimency attacks.
Level 4 (Expert): Can fully compartmentalize memories. Can resist skilled Legilimens for extended periods.
Level 5 (Master): Complete mental fortress. Can deceive even powerful Legilimens. Can organize thoughts with perfect clarity under extreme stress.
Level 6 (Grand Master): Can actively bend magic to will through mental discipline alone. Magic responds to thought as quickly as to wand work. Only a handful of living wizards achieved this level.
Level 7 (Legendary): Instinctive magic. Can feel spells before they reach you, react to danger before conscious thought. Not seen since Merlin and Morgana. Most scholars believed it was mythical.
Harry was determined to reach Level 6. He practiced obsessively, pushing his mental disciplines harder every day, because he knew that in the world he was preparing to enter, the strongest defense would be a mind that couldn't be breached.
His magical education proceeded just as rapidly.
By age six, Harry had mastered every charm in the first-year Hogwarts curriculum and most of the second-year spells as well. Lumos and Nox were trivial—he could cast them wandlessly without even thinking about it. Levitation charms, unlocking spells, summoning charms—all of them came as naturally as breathing.
By seven, he'd moved on to Transfiguration, and here his true genius began to show. The mathematical precision required for Transfiguration, the deep understanding of how matter could be convinced to take new forms—it all clicked for Harry in a way it rarely did for other students. He could look at an object and see not what it was, but what it could become. By his eighth birthday, he was successfully performing N.E.W.T.-level Transfigurations, turning complex objects into other complex objects with a thought.
Combat magic was where Charlus pushed him hardest. The old warrior had seen too many friends die, had fought too many battles against wizards who used their power for evil. He was determined that Harry would never be helpless, never be caught unprepared.
"Magic is a weapon," Charlus would say, his wand moving through offensive patterns that Harry mimicked. "And like any weapon, it's only as good as the wizard wielding it. Power means nothing without skill. Skill means nothing without speed. And all of it means nothing without the will to survive."
Harry learned offensive spells that most adults struggled with. Stunners, blasting hexes, cutting curses, bone-breakers. He learned to chain spells together, to cast multiple spells simultaneously, to move while casting so he never presented a stationary target. Charlus set up training dummies—magical constructs that could fight back, that could cast their own spells, that became progressively more difficult as Harry improved.
By age eight, Harry could hold his own against training dummies programmed with O.W.L.-level combat ability. He wasn't just competent—he was dangerous.
But it was the Dark Arts where Harry's talent truly frightened his grandparents.
Dorea had taught him reluctantly at first, worried that exposing a child to such magic might corrupt him. But Harry approached the Dark Arts with the same analytical mindset he brought to everything else. He studied them like he studied science—examining how they worked, why they worked, what principles underpinned their terrible power.
And he understood them. Instinctively, intuitively, in a way that even Dorea, who'd been raised in the Dark Arts-practicing Black family, found unsettling.
"You have a gift for this," she'd said once, watching as eight-year-old Harry perfectly executed a curse that most N.E.W.T. students couldn't manage. "But gifts can be double-edged swords, Harry. The Dark Arts seduce through power. You must never forget why you're learning them."
"I won't," Harry had promised. And he meant it. Every dark curse he mastered, every terrible spell he added to his arsenal—he learned them all with his siblings' faces in his mind. This power wasn't for glory or domination. It was for protection. And Harry would wield it without hesitation if it meant keeping Charlie and Rose safe.
By his eighth birthday, Harry was easily at the level of a fifth or sixth-year Durmstrang student in the Dark Arts. Not because he was inherently dark, but because he understood that power came from knowledge, and knowledge meant studying everything, even the magic that others feared.
He also continued his Muggle education with the same intensity. The Dursleys thought he was stupid, that he barely passed his classes. In reality, Harry was teaching himself physics, chemistry, advanced mathematics, and computer science from library books and whatever materials he could find. He had an innate understanding of technology that seemed almost magical in itself—he could look at a circuit board and intuitively grasp how it worked, could write code as easily as he could write essays.
"Magic and technology aren't opposites," Harry had realized early on. "They're two different languages describing the same fundamental forces. If I can learn to speak both languages fluently, I'll have advantages that neither pure wizards nor pure Muggles could match."
And through it all, through three years of brutal training and careful deception, Harry never lost sight of what mattered most.
His siblings.
Every night, after his lessons were done, Harry would spend that precious hour with Charlie and Rose. He'd play with them, teach them, tell them stories about their parents (carefully edited to hide the darker truths). He'd answer Charlie's endless questions about how magic worked, encourage Rose's creative spell experiments, mediate their occasional arguments with the patience of someone far older than eight.
They grew up knowing Harry as their protector, their teacher, their hero. And Harry grew up knowing that everything he endured, every sacrifice he made, was worth it to see them safe and happy.
Potter Castle, Harry's 8th Birthday
The castle had been decorated for the occasion—floating candles, magical streamers that changed color, a cake that sang "Happy Birthday" in perfect harmony. Charlie and Rose had spent days making Harry presents (a drawing from Rose that showed their whole family together, including stick-figure representations of their parents; a carefully crafted friendship bracelet from Charlie that he'd woven himself, the Potter family colors of red and gold).
But the best gift, the one that made Harry's breath catch in his throat, came from his grandparents.
"We're taking you to see your father," Charlus said.
James Potter lay in a bedroom deep in the castle, protected by wards and monitoring charms and every protective spell that Charlus and Dorea could devise. The room was comfortable—warm lighting, soft blankets, windows that showed an illusion of the outdoors since James couldn't go outside. Nutrient potions were administered via a complex system of charms. Healing spells maintained his body's health. Everything that magic could do to sustain a comatose patient was being done.
But James remained trapped in his own mind, locked away by a curse that no one understood.
Harry approached the bed slowly, taking in his father's appearance. James looked almost exactly as he had that terrible night—maybe a little older, a few more lines around his eyes, but essentially unchanged. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths. His heart beat strong and sure. But his eyes remained closed, and no healing magic in the world had been able to wake him.
"We've had mind healers from around the world examine him," Dorea said quietly, her hand on Harry's shoulder. "The best specialists in magical neurology, curse-breakers who've studied dark magic for decades, even a few experimental researchers who work on the cutting edge of mind magic. They all say the same thing."
"The curse fried his neural pathways," Charlus continued, his voice heavy with grief. "Not destroyed them—that would have killed him. But scrambled them, rewired them in ways that shouldn't be possible. His mind is intact, trapped somewhere inside, but it can't connect to his body. The pathways are there, but they're... wrong. Like a maze where all the corridors lead in circles."
"We've tried everything," Dorea added. "Spell damage reversal, neural reconstruction charms, even experimental potions that might regenerate the pathways. Nothing works. We've had him under the strongest diagnostic spells, examined every aspect of the curse's effects. And the consensus is..."
She couldn't finish. Charlus did it for her.
"Nothing short of a miracle can cure him. The curse is unknown, which means we can't develop a counter-curse. And even if we could identify it, the damage is so extensive, so fundamental to how his brain now functions, that trying to fix it might kill him. We're keeping him alive, keeping him comfortable, but we can't bring him back."
Harry stood looking at his father's still form, his mind racing. A miracle. They needed a miracle. But what constituted a miracle in magical terms? Ancient magic? Ritual magic? Something from the Potter or Black family grimoires that predated modern spell-craft?
Or...
An idea began to form. Dangerous. Probably impossible. But maybe, just maybe, worth exploring.
"I'll save him," Harry said quietly. "I don't know how yet. I don't know if it'll take me years or decades. But I'll find a way. I promise."
Charlie and Rose, who had been hovering nervously by the door, came forward now. They'd never known their father as Harry had—their only experience of James was this sleeping man, this father-shaped absence in their lives. But they loved him anyway, with the pure uncomplicated love of children who knew only that this was their daddy, and he needed help.
"We'll help," Rose said firmly. "When we're bigger. When we know more magic. Right, Charlie?"
"Right," Charlie agreed. "We're Potters. Potters protect family."
Harry felt his heart clench. They were so young, so innocent despite everything. He wanted to protect them from this burden, to let them grow up without the weight of their father's curse hanging over them. But he also knew that they needed purpose, needed to feel like they were contributing.
"Okay," Harry said. "When you're older, when you've learned enough magic, we'll all work together. We'll research every possible avenue, study every healing technique, explore every option. The Potter family doesn't give up. And we won't give up on Dad."
The three of them stood together beside James's bed, hands linked, and Harry felt magic hum between them. The family magic, recognizing their shared resolve, their shared blood, their shared determination to save their father.
It wasn't much. It wasn't a cure or a solution or even a real plan.
But it was hope.
Little Whinging, Surrey - Age 8, October
The attack came on a Tuesday afternoon, on Harry's walk home from school.
He'd been practicing situational awareness like Charlus had taught him—noting the people around him, identifying escape routes, staying alert for anything unusual. But he'd also been distracted, his mind on the Transfiguration problem Charlus had set him the night before, and he didn't notice the van until it was too late.
It pulled up beside him with a screech of tires. The side door flew open. Three men in tactical gear and black masks lunged out, moving with military precision. Harry's wand (a thin strip of wood he'd carved himself and infused with a core of his own hair—not a proper wand, but better than nothing) was in his pocket, but before he could reach it, something hit him in the neck.
A tranquilizer dart.
Harry's vision blurred. His legs gave out. The last thing he saw before darkness claimed him was the HYDRA logo on one of the men's tactical vests—a skull with six tentacles spreading from it.
Then nothing.
When Harry woke, he was in a cell.
Concrete walls. A single bare bulb providing harsh light. No windows. No furniture except a metal cot bolted to the floor. The air smelled of disinfectant and fear.
Harry sat up slowly, his head pounding from the tranquilizer, and assessed the situation. His wand was gone—they'd searched him thoroughly. His clothes had been replaced with a thin gray jumpsuit that offered no protection and no hiding places. The cell door was solid steel with a small window, currently closed.
And most concerning of all—Harry could feel the magic-dampening field that blanketed the entire area. It wasn't complete suppression, not like the wards that could shut down magic entirely, but it made casting significantly harder. Wandless magic, already difficult, would be nearly impossible here.
The door opened. A man entered—tall, with a thin face and cold eyes, wearing an expensive suit that looked out of place in this utilitarian prison. Behind him, two guards carrying weapons that looked like a cross between guns and cattle prods took up positions flanking the door.
"Harry Potter," the man said in a German accent. "The Boy-Who-Lived. What an unexpected prize."
Harry said nothing. He'd been training his Occlumency for three years specifically for moments like this. His real memories—his family, his training, everything that mattered—were locked away behind mental walls that even Dorea had trouble breaching. On the surface of his mind, he maintained carefully constructed false memories: the Dursleys' abuse, school, the library. A scared eight-year-old boy who knew some accidental magic but nothing more.
"You're wondering who I am," the man continued, circling Harry like a predator. "I am Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. And you, young Harry, are now the property of HYDRA."
HYDRA. Harry filed the name away, along with everything else he was learning. The organization's name, the technology they used, the way the guards moved—all of it went into his mental archives for later analysis.
"You're probably wondering what we want with you," von Strucker said. "The answer is simple: magic. HYDRA has pursued enhanced abilities for decades—the super-soldier serum, the Tesseract, various attempts at human enhancement. But magic... magic is the ultimate enhancement. And you, the boy who survived the Killing Curse, are our key to unlocking it."
Harry's blood ran cold. They wanted to experiment on him. To vivisect his magic and see if they could replicate it.
"We will start with simple tests," von Strucker continued. "Observations, measurements, scans. But eventually, we will need to become... invasive. We need to understand how your magic works at a cellular level. How it integrates with your physiology. How it can be extracted or replicated."
He leaned closer, his cold eyes boring into Harry's.
"You should know that we have spent years developing techniques to break magical subjects. Pain tolerance training, sensory deprivation, chemical enhancement, psychological manipulation. Whatever secrets you think you can keep locked away in that small head of yours—we will extract them. Eventually, you will tell us everything."
Harry met von Strucker's gaze steadily, his face carefully blank. Let them think he was a frightened child. Let them underestimate him. That would be their first mistake.
And in the deepest, most protected part of his mind—the place where his siblings' faces lived, where his promises were kept, where his true self remained unbreakable—Harry Potter began to plan.
Warning: This section contains descriptions of torture
They started the next day.
Harry was strapped to a medical chair in a white room that reminded him horribly of a hospital. Except hospitals didn't usually have restraints quite this heavy, or quite this many monitoring devices attached to your body.
"Today we establish baseline readings," a scientist in a white coat explained, as if she were discussing a science experiment rather than a child. "Heart rate, respiration, pain response, magical output. Nothing too invasive. Yet."
The first test involved needles. Many needles. They drew blood sample after blood sample, far more than could possibly be necessary, while Harry gritted his teeth and refused to give them the satisfaction of crying out.
The second test involved magical measurements. They had devices—complex pieces of technology that shouldn't have worked around magic but somehow did—that measured his magical signature, his output, his potential. Harry felt the machines pulling at his magic, trying to quantify something that defied quantification, and he let them. Let them measure what was on the surface. The real depths of his power were hidden, locked away behind his Occlumency shields.
The third test involved pain.
"We need to understand pain response in magical subjects," the scientist explained clinically. "Magical children often demonstrate resistance to certain types of damage. We need to map those resistances."
They used electrical shocks first. Small ones, then progressively larger. Harry's body convulsed, his muscles spasming, but he kept his screams locked behind his teeth. They mapped his responses, noted everything, increased the voltage.
Then they used needles in pressure points. Then chemical irritants on his skin. Then focused ultrasound that made his bones feel like they were vibrating apart from inside.
And through it all, Harry held his mental fortress secure. The pain went into compartments, neat and organized. This hurt, yes. This was worse than the Dursleys, yes. But it was still just pain. And pain could be endured.
The real torture started on day three.
Von Strucker himself supervised as they strapped Harry into a different chair, one with electrodes attached to his temples. "We've been too gentle," the Baron said. "The boy has surprising resistance for his age. Time to be more direct."
They turned on the machine.
Harry had thought he understood pain. The Dursleys had taught him about physical suffering. The magical experiments had shown him what technology could do to the body. But this—
This was something else entirely.
The machine sent electricity directly into his brain, stimulating pain receptors, fear responses, every negative sensation a human could experience. All at once. All amplified. All designed to crack even the strongest mind.
Harry screamed.
He couldn't help it, couldn't stop it. His body arched against the restraints, every muscle locked rigid, and the sound that tore from his throat was barely human.
"Tell us about your magic," von Strucker's voice came from very far away. "Tell us how you survived the Killing Curse. Tell us everything."
The machine's intensity increased.
Harry's mind fractured. Not broke—he'd built his walls too well for that. But fractured, pieces flying apart under the assault, and he had to work frantically to hold them together. The memories of his siblings tried to surface, tried to swim up through the pain, and Harry shoved them down with desperate strength. They couldn't have those. They couldn't know about Charlie and Rose and his grandparents and his father and everything that mattered—
The machine turned off.
Harry slumped in the chair, sobbing, his body shaking uncontrollably. Sweat soaked his jumpsuit. He tasted blood where he'd bitten through his lip.
"Interesting," von Strucker observed. "Most subjects break in the first session. You held out for seventeen minutes. Impressive for a child."
Seventeen minutes. It had felt like seventeen years.
"We'll try again tomorrow," von Strucker continued. "And the day after. And the day after that. Eventually, Harry Potter, you will break. Everyone does."
They dragged him back to his cell. Harry collapsed on the metal cot, his entire body trembling with aftershocks, and did something he hadn't done in three years of Dursley abuse.
He called for help.
Not out loud—they were watching him, always watching. But in his mind, in the place where the family magic lived, Harry reached out with every bit of strength he had left.
Pipsy. Grandfather. Grandmother. Please. I need help. I don't know where I am but please, PLEASE find me.
He didn't know if they could hear him. Didn't know if the call would reach across whatever distance separated them. But he had to try.
Because Harry Potter had survived the Dursleys through strength and determination. But HYDRA was something else entirely. And he was very much afraid that this time, survival might not be enough.
In his cell, surrounded by enemies, subjected to torture that would break most adults, eight-year-old Harry Potter curled into a ball and tried very hard not to lose hope.
His siblings needed him.
His father needed him.
He had promises to keep.
He would survive this. Somehow.
He had to.
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