February 24th, 1986

She opened the box with the utmost care, only to raise a bony hand to her open mouth.

"Oh Vernon…It's perfect."

Harry sat up, straining his neck to try and get a look at it only to be shoved back hard by his much larger cousin Dudley, who leered down at him nastily. Harry glared back furiously, rubbing his thin shoulder with a small hand.

"Oh, it fits!" Harry turned his attention back to his aunt only to see her raising her hand towards the light, a band of gold flashing from her index finger. However, the ring was out of sight in another moment, as Petunia threw herself forward to embrace her husband, who gave a startled grunt before chuckling.

"Glad you like it Pet."

"It looks expensive—"

"Yes, well, got to keep the woman of the house happy, eh Dudley?"

Dudley, who had gotten bored of having to watch other people open their presents and so had switched on the TV, did not reply. Vernon let out another booming laugh anyway, only for the jovial expression to slide off his face like tar as he caught the eye of his nephew.

"Boy, go get the dinner on."

Hiding a sigh, Harry slunk off to the kitchen.

March 7th, 1986

"Vernon – I feel quite faint."

Harry looked up from the counter where he was making a sandwich for his cousin's lunch, only to see his Aunt leaning heavily against the doorframe. Harry squinted. For someone that appeared to be fatless on a normal day, Aunt Petunia was looking particularly gaunt.

She stepped forward shakily into the room, and the daylight streaming through the window fell upon a white, haggard face.

Vernon grunted, not looking up from his breakfast. "I'll drop you off at the Doctors on the way to work, Pet."

April 1st, 1986

Aunt Petunia was dead.

She had made the third page of the Surrey Comet; 'Little Whinging Housewife Petunia Dursley dies of Unknown Causes'. The article detailed her speedy deterioration, and the lack of any knowledge as to the cause of it.

Uncle Vernon had taken to pacing through the kitchen, touching his dead wife's prized kitchen appliances. He hadn't been to work in three days, and was ignoring the constantly ringing telephone. He had even curbed his excessive eating habits, consuming just enough food to give him the energy to carry on with his pacing. It seemed quite strange to Harry. He didn't understand why his uncle was so distressed. Aunt Petunia hadn't been very nice.

The small boy peered at his guardian from his seat in the living room. The man had lost quite a bit of weight, although he didn't look any the better for it. His face was taking on the gaunt appearance his aunt's had after she had gotten ill, and his skin was sickly pale and heavily lined.

However, what struck Harry as the strangest thing of all was the ring. It was attached to Vernon's neck by a chain, bouncing up and down in time with his paces. What was so strange about it was that Harry had seen his uncle angrily throw it in the bin, the day he returned from the hospital with the bundle of his wife's clothing. Yet there it was, nestled against the older man's clothed chest.

He tore his gaze away from it's glinting, and carried on reading his book.

April 3rd, 1986

There was a sharp rap on the door, and Harry swallowed in trepidation – she was here.

Hearing no activity from elsewhere in the house, he resigned himself to the task of letting her in. As he entered the hallway all hope that he might be mistaken was dashed at the grotesquely large silhouette shadowing the glass of the door, and he reluctantly undid the catch.

"Oh." Aunt Marge pushed past him into the hall brusquely. "I didn't know you were still here. Bring in my luggage." As her small nephew struggled with several large suitcases, she surveyed the disordered hallway, tutting at the dirty shoes strewn messily across the floor and nudging an empty bottle of Sprite with her foot. "It's the least you could do to keep the place clean, boy, whilst your uncle and nephew are grieving. I suppose you always have been lazy - where's my Dudders?"

Harry didn't reply, and she growled at him like a dog, before stomping off up the stairs, the creaking wood screeching at her weight.

April 6th, 1986

There was something wrong. Harry could feel it.

Shutting the front door gently behind him, he padded through the hallway into the kitchen, quietly dropping his schoolbag by the door of his cupboard.

He was surprised to see that it was empty, before a rasping cough drew his attention to the area of floor hidden by the kitchen counter.

A mixture of intrigue and foreboding began to gnaw at him, and he slowly walked towards the noise. His eyes widened as a twitching pair of feet came into view, followed shortly by the expanse of a trembling body. It was male, and completely naked - clothes lay strewn over the tiled floor beside it.

The sight was horrifying. The body appeared to be fleshless, and the excess skin, stretched by fat that no longer existed, hung loosely around a skeletal figure from which bones were protruding obscenely.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Harry registered that this withered creature was his Uncle, and that his condition was far from natural – just that morning he had seen him, pale and withdrawn but still looking very much like the overweight middle-aged man Harry had always known him to be.

However, all he could focus on was the pair of dead eyes staring back up at him. For some implacable reason, they reminded him of a flash of green light and a splash of bright red hair long ago.

A flask of gold suddenly caught the boy's attention.

The ring was sitting benignly on the man's convulsing, shrunken breast, the shiny band flickering with the light from the kitchen bulb just as it had been when Harry first saw it. It's rich, golden colour clashed horribly with the sallow unhealthiness of Vernon's bare skin, and Harry felt a sudden urge to snatch it from him.

He stepped forward—

The front door slammed open.

He heard her storm into the kitchen. "BOY! How dare you run off ahead! I won't have it you little—"

His Aunt cut herself off with a quivering gasp, and there was silence for a moment before it was followed by an odd, shuddering whine.

"My—Vernon?" Harry had never heart Aunt Marge whisper.

There was silence for a second, which seemed to stretch into two, and three, until it felt as if hundreds of unnaturally long minutes had passed, aunt and nephew locked into silent, horrified observation.

Suddenly, he felt a shift behind him: a rustle of cloth. "You did this. Didn't you?" Her voice was unusually quiet. He tried to say no, but somehow the words were caught in his throat. "It was Petunia first…now, now you've taken my brother..."

Harry hunched a little, waiting for the blow that was undoubtedly coming.

Except it didn't.

He looked up over his shoulder at the great, flabby figure of his Aunt, which was shaking a little, and as he peered at her face he was shocked to see something in her eyes that he had never seen there before—fear.

"Vernon always said you were funny. Unnatural. I didn't doubt him, God knows your parents—but I—" Her words were damning, and along with the fear in her voice there was horror; disgust. "Just leave me alone. And Dudley, just leave us alone—"

They were both wrenched from their intense exchange as Dudley's heavy steps sounded in the hallway. "Auntie?"

Marge hurried from the room in a flurry of movement, no doubt to rush Dudley away from the horrors of what she had just witnessed. Harry had no such protector, and so he stayed staring at the body in the kitchen - or rather, at the pulsing, golden ornament around it's neck - until exactly eight minutes later the police siren wailed up Privet Drive and he was ushered away into the hands of the government.

May 14th 1986

"I'm afraid Harry, that you are going to be unable to live with your aunt."

The strange woman smiled at him weakly, her eyes scanning his for any signs of the distress and perhaps anger that she felt was likely to manifest. She looked old and tired, and she had forgotten to iron her shirt. Harry could count five creases in the material peeking out from under her navy blue jacket.

Her words barely registered. He'd never even entertained the idea of living with Aunt Marge: her last words to him had been a clear indication she never wanted to set eyes on him again.

"Of course, Harry, we'll do our best to ensure you still get to see your family, and that they will come to visit you."

An awkward silence hung in the air, both aware of the falsity of her well-intended statement.

"So where am I going?"

June 27th 1986

Harry quite liked the orphanage. It was big, and anonymous, and the people who ran it were nice to him - most of the time anyway.

They had made him go on a special diet, and while it had been hard to eat three meals a day for the first few months, he soon got used to it. In fact, he felt stronger and healthier than he could ever remember. He found, to his delight, that he could look in the mirror and find more to please him than just the jagged scar he'd previously reveled in; his skin was no longer just pale but had a healthy tinge to it, and, whilst he remained very skinny, he no longer looked emaciated – his ribs only stuck out when he inhaled.

He had his own bedroom; an actual room instead of a cupboard, with a full-sized single bed, a wardrobe, and four blank walls he was free to decorate as he pleased – he had quickly set to work on a number of drawings to make the space feel like his own. He had even been allowed to pick the colour of his bed sheets – green, like his eyes.

But, what was best of all was that his room had a window. The cupboard where he had previously slept hadn't had a window. It had been stuffy and dark; the only light being from the too-bright bulb swinging from above his bed, and the only air that which filtered in from the hallway through the grate fixed on his door. Now, daylight and fresh air breezed in, day and night. The care-workers, whilst occasionally commenting on the pretty ring that covered the pictures on Harry's wall, never commented on the ever-open window. Even on nights when the rain blew through, or the cold meant Harry had to have extra blankets. He supposed they were used to dealing with children like him. An open window was likely the least of the strange habits they observed in the children they looked after: the least unsettling hangover of a troubled past.

The other kids weren't too bad.

Some didn't talk, and there were a couple of older boys who picked on Harry a little when the mood struck them. But, overall, everyone was reasonably friendly, and there were a group of children around his age who he played games with in the garden after school.

School itself wasn't great. Not as nasty as it had been with Dudley, but the other children knew he was from the care-home, and tended to avoid him. As he heard a boy whispering in the playground one grey Tuesday: he was different.

November 4th, 1986

"Now, Harry, I take it you know why you're here?" Harry nodded at Mr. Gregory: he did. But he hadn't meant to, he really hadn't. Honestly, he didn't even know how it had happened! But Mr. Gregory looked angry, and he shrunk back into his seat.

"To climb up onto the roof is against the house-rules, and more importantly it is incredibly dangerous! Imagine if you had fallen!" Mr. Gregory's voice was raised, his tone almost scary.

Harry hung his head.

"Harry," Mr. Gregory's voice is softer, and Harry looked up to see the older man had slumped back in his chair, now looking more tired than anything else. "You're a nice boy - what exactly got into you? You've never given us any trouble before."

Harry bit his lip, looking up into the man's kindly eyes, which gave the impression of twinkling. The head of the orphanage always seemed like a nice man, and even the older kids in the home seemed to have an untold respect for him. He thought that perhaps if he explained what had happened, he would understand.

"I didn't climb up there, Sir, I swear I didn't." He emphasized the word swear, to show just how serious he was being. The older man looked back at him carefully.

"Come now, my boy, how would you have gotten onto the roof otherwise? No staircase goes up there, when we had to get you down we had the call the firemen—"

"I just – I just appeared up there! One minute I was down on the ground, running away from—running, and suddenly I was on the roof!"

Harry swallowed hard at the disappointed look on the older man's face. "That's a very naughty lie, Harry. People don't just pop up on roofs – that's impossible. You can't be in one place one moment and then, magically, just be somewhere else. I'm going to give you one more chance to admit what happened, or I'm afraid I will have to punish you, do you understand?"

Harry's eyes widened at the word: punishment. Memories of weekends without food and going outside flashed behind his eyes. He dropped his gaze to the floor. After a few long seconds of silence, he replied:

"I-I'm sorry sir, I did climb."

Lying wasn't something that came naturally to Harry; he took no pleasure in deceiving others. However, as Mr. Gregory accepted his apology with a smile and ushered him out into the hallway, he began to realise that lying might be something he was going to have to get used to. For his own good. The people here were nicer than the Dursley's had been, but, as Mr. Gregory had just shown, that still did not mean they understood.

January 5th 1987

It felt odd, sitting in one of the visiting rooms. Harry never got visitors.

Today the room was empty of everyone except him, Mr. Gregory, and the woman with the crumpled shirt. The faces of both adults were grave, and Mr. Gregory placed a small box of tissues on the wooden table whilst the woman shuffled tiredly through her files.

After a few minutes, the two adults exchanged a look Harry couldn't quite decipher, before the woman turned to look at him, her expression soft.

"Harry, I'm sorry to say I've come with bad news."

Mr. Gregory wordlessly pushed the tissue box towards him.

"It concerns your aunt and cousin." Harry's brow furrowed. He hadn't heard mention of either in months, and had supposed he'd never see his reluctant relatives again. He couldn't think of anything that could involve him—"Your Aunt has passed."

Harry stared at her, confused.

Mr. Gregory cut in, leaning in towards Harry slightly. "What Mrs Rosen means to say Harry, is that you Aunt is dead."

Harry jerked back in his seat. Dead? How could she be dead?

"There was an accident, at Mrs Dursley's home. A fire, as I understand it."

Harry stared at the man, eyes wide. "A fire? What about Dudley?"

The woman stared across at him, her eyes soft. "Your cousin is in the intensive care unit at the hospital. I'm afraid the doctors don't believe that he'll recover."

"I'm so sorry, Harry." Mr. Gregory reached out and grasped his small hand. "I can't imagine what it must be like to have experienced such loss. Know that we here at Aspen House will do our best to support you through this time of great difficulty."

This time, Harry could read the expressions on both of their faces. Pity. During his short lifetime, he had experienced the demise of his entire family; first his parents, then his aunt, then his uncle, and finally Aunt Marge and his cousin Dudley.

He had hated the Dursley's.

Nevertheless, as he sat there, in a home for unwanted children and without a relative in the world, he couldn't help but feel desperately alone.