Disclaimer: If you recognize it from J.K. Rowling's books, then it obviously isn't mine. This is inspired by The Parent Trap, and also has minor elements from A Little Princess (regarding magic and how it works). No copyright/trademark infringement is intented.

WARNINGS: There is mild slash (RL/SB), mention of child neglect, swearing, and of course it's very AU. There are no OCs, but some minor canon characters are slightly expanded out of necessity.

Regarding the point-of-view: This is mostly in third person omniscient. However, some parts focus more on one character's experience, and resemble 3rd person limited more than third person omniscient. To make things less confusing, if the POV changes significantly, I will start a new chapter for it. I also tend to start new chapters when time skips ahead. Some chapters may be shorter than others because of this.

Chapter 1 : The Boy in the Cupboard

Harry Potter was a skinny little boy with bright, large green eyes, which were quite near-sighted and almost hidden behind a pair of ugly round glasses. He had a mop of very messy, very tangled black hair, scuffed elbows and knees, and a vivid scar on his forehead that resembled a lightning bolt. He was wearing hand-me-downs which had once belonged to his cousin, Dudley, and which were both too large for him and so worn that they resembled rags. In all, he was a pathetic, neglected little figure.

It was the expression on his face that made him all the more pathetic. He was looking down at his too-large shoes, through the holes in which his toes, blue from cold, protruded.

There was very little light in his cupboard, but there was enough to look at pictures by, and that is what he had been doing. He had one book, which was really not much of a book at all, but just the cover of one, with several torn pages inside, held together with bits of sticky tape. Still, it was his own, and it did have lovely pictures.

The fact of the matter was, however, that even reading could not take his mind off the cold tonight. It was the coldest night of the year. His cupboard was bare except for a thin mattress with many broken springs, and only one thin blanket. His clothes, ragged as they were, were not warm enough to make a difference.

"It's okay, Harry," he murmured tiredly. "It must be nearly morning. Aunt will let us out soon, and we can stand close to the stove and hold our hands out, and won't that be wonderful?"

The child often talked to himself in this odd manner. He was hardly ever spoken to by his Aunt and Uncle, except to be yelled at, and at some unknown time far back before he could remember, he had invented a little fantasy to help him through the lonely hours spent in his cupboard. He didn't think he could have lived with the Dursleys if not for the other Harry. Sometimes he seemed quite real. Just now, with the light so dim and the wind howling over the roof far above his head, and the dreadful cold, he thought he could almost see a little boy next to him, smiling encouragingly and nodding as if he agreed that it had to be nearly morning and nearly time for someone to come down and open the cupboard door.

He wasn't mad. In the daytime, and when he was not so hungry and cold, he knew very well that there was no other little boy. It was only when things were at their bleakest that he thought he almost believed it. He was, after all, only five years old, and perhaps if he had had a teddy bear or a velvet rabbit or a doll, he might have almost believed that they were real, too.

He wiped a tear that had escaped from the corner of his eye. He was still staring at his shoes in a sort of stupor.

"Oh," he said suddenly, a few minutes later. "It is getting warmer, isn't it? I think I can sleep now. Do you think you can, Harry? I feel like I could sleep forever, I'm so tired."

He was, sadly, more right that he could have known. His small body had stopped shivering, but it was not because it was no longer cold in the cupboard. The cold was lulling him into a dangerous doze.

Curling up on his side, he drew the blanket around himself. "Good night, Harry."

He imagined he heard an answer, just as his eyes fell closed.