Of Mice and Men and Serpents too.

When Aunt Petunia had shaved off his hair, saying it looked like a filthy bird's nest, and it had grown back by the next morning, Harry had been sure something strange was going on. Hair didn't do that, he was sure. His Aunt and Uncle had definitely thought something strange was going on aswell. What wasn't strange was the fact that he got the blame for it.

Aunt Petunia had screamed when she saw him and he got a hard clip round the ear and thrown back into his cupboard. They didn't let him out for three days. He was five.

When he was seven and Dudley and his friends had been 'Harry Hunting' and suddenly he found himself on the roof of the school, Harry couldn't figure it out. The school nurse insisted that he had blacked out and climbed up there somehow. But Harry knew there hadn't been enough time.

But he didn't tell the school nurse that. He kept quiet like usual and decided to think on it some more.

When Uncle Vernon had asked him what had happed, Harry had half shrugged.

"I don't know, Sir. It was like magic."

The blood had drained from his Aunt and Uncle's faces. Then Uncle Vernon had gone bright red with purple splotches and Harry knew he was in the worst kind of trouble. That was the first time he felt the lash of Uncle Vernon's belt. The only sound he allowed himself to make was a sharp hiss as the last stroke ran over the one before it.

In his cupboard that night, when he was absolutely sure the rest of the house was asleep, Harry let tears come to his eyes. But not because of the pain. He had pushed that away in the hours spent laying on his thread bare cot mattress. But because it didn't make any sense. It wasn't his fault strange things kept happening. It was so frustrating when things didn't make sense. Harry liked answers.

He soon wiped them away on his pillow. Crying was no use. No one ever gave him any answers. He had to find them himself. He closed his eyes and calmed his mind, thinking about the field of tall straw-like grass and colourful wild flowers that he had seen on TV once. He sat in the field and felt the grass on his skin, smelt the country breeze tainted with the sweet scent of the flowers surrounding him. He imagined the breeze lifting the ends of his now chin length hair and rustling through the grass and distant leaves on distant trees. It was the happy place he'd build in his head so far away from anyone else.

He replayed the day over again. One minute he'd been seconds from his cousin's clutches, the next he was on the roof looking down at his stupid cousin's fat face. It was like he teleported. But that wasn't possible, was it?

"NEVER SAY THAT WORD AGAIN! THERE'S NO SUCH THING." His Uncle had yelled as he brought the belt down for a fourth and final time.

But what explanation was there, if not magic? And they lied. His Aunt and Uncle. They lied about him all the time. What if magic was real? And he had it?

Harry shifted slightly and felt the dried blood on his back pull his skin tight. Alone in his cupboard, he grimaced. The sparks of pain were beginning to creep back in now he'd thought about it and Harry began to focus again on pushing it away. On being only in his mind and not his body, like he had done so many times before, trapped in the darkness of his cupboard. Far away in his field.

If he was magic, couldn't he heal himself?

He started imagining his back and what it probably looked like. He focused on the image of the cut sealing back together and the bruising fading. How much he needed to heal like he had needed to get away form Dudley. He kept that image in his head for hours until he drifted from meditation to sleep.

When he awoke the next morning to heavy feet on the stairs above him he found the pain gone. In it's place was a bone deep tiredness and a hunger he had never felt before, like someone had carved out his stomach. Hesitantly he reached one aching arm up to where the highest welt had been. He felt the crusted blood on his skin but no open wound. His skin was bumpy though. He had scars, he realised.

Well what was one or two more, he wondered bitterly to himself. There were two on his left arm, where Uncle Vernon had broken it, pushing him down the stairs. He'd hadn't let anyone walk behind him since. There was also the remnants of a rather nasty gash from when Dudley had purposeful rode his new BMX into him. It now sat gathering dust in the garden shed practically new still. There were others that Harry thought were so faint and small that he was the only one who could see them.

And, of course there was the lightening shaped scar on his forehead that he got the day both his parents had died in a car crash.

He slipped a clean shirt over his head, still marvelling at his healed wounds. It was as he did that he realised he would have to act as though he were still hurt. Magic was real. He'd proved it. But from last night's punishment, he knew better than to show it off. He fell back to sleep to the sound of his cousin's high pitched whinge and his stomach grumbling.

They didn't let him out of the cupboard for two weeks which was the longest he'd ever been banished to his tiny room. He got bread and water once a day. It made the acting easier either way. He spent most of his time practising his magic. It left him really tired but he managed to make one of his soldier's hover for a moment by the time his punishment was up.

And so for the next three years Harry practised so that when he was powerful enough, he could leave and no one would hurt him ever again.

By the time the occupants of Number Four Privet Drive were making their way to the Zoo for Dudley's eleventh birthday, Harry no longer felt so tired after he'd healed himself. He was still very hungry afterwards but he was hungry most of the time. He'd taken to stealing food where ever and when ever he could, including the supermarket and at school. He'd only been caught once, years ago. It had resulted in a broken arm and he'd learnt to be better at it.

He could move things much easier as well. He'd taught himself to unlock his cupboard so he could sneak food in the middle of the night and to keep himself warm in his cupboard when it got cold. He never used his power on his relatives, as tempting as it often was, he just wasn't strong enough yet. And he knew the beating he'd take in retribution wasn't worth it. If there was one thing the Dursley's had taught him, it was patience.

When he was in the library he looked at books on anatomy and science trying to better understand his magic and how it worked. At first he'd looked into fiction as his best source of a magical education. As entertaining as some of them had been it soon became clear that vague fantastical imaginings aimed at children were not going to help him, even if they did occasionally give him ideas.

Once he understood how the body worked better, his healing abilities had gotten better aswell. He could still feel the scars on his back when he finished but they were much smaller and less textured now. Harry had even managed to quicken the healing of what he was sure had been a wrist fracture. Within four days it had been almost as good as new. It only ached when he'd been writing for a long time.

When he began to outgrow the school's library the year before he had gone in search of a public library and returned there as often as he could.

Harry sat in the back of the car with Dudley and his friend, Piers. It didn't take them long to begin throwing jibes his way. Harry shrugged them off. They weren't anything he hadn't heard a thousand times before. He felt the anger bubble up inside him when they started talking about his parents but he pushed it aside and continued to stare out the window.

He wasn't really sure why they'd brought him along. When Aunt Petunia had said Mrs Figg couldn't watch him, Harry had hoped he could sneak away to the Library again. But she insisted he couldn't be left alone in her precious house. He'd blow it up or something. His Aunt and Uncle were too stupid to realise as much as he hated it there and hated them, he had no where else to go. Not yet.

When Uncle Vernon complained about motorcyclists, Harry remembered his dream about the flying motorcycle. He wondered if he could really make himself fly with magic. He idled away the rest of the journey turning that thought over in his mind. If he could hold a pocket of condensed air beneath him, could he use it to give himself lift? Maybe repulse himself off the ground? But how would he stabilise so he didn't break his own neck?

Uncle Vernon pulled him aside in the carpark after they got out of the car, grabbing his arm with much more force than was necessary.

"I want none of your nonsense today, Boy." His face reddening as he spoke. "You will not ruin today for Dudley. Be thankful you're here at all."

"Yes, Sir." Harry answered, wiping the spit from his face with a glare when his Uncle turned away.

He trailed after his relatives and glanced at the animals as he passed. He wasn't very interested in the Zoo. He felt abit sorry for the creatures. They were locked in cages just like him. Of course looking into the creatures eyes he could see they were of lower intelligence so maybe it wasn't as bad for them as it was for him. Ignorance was bliss and all that.

Mostly he watched his cousin and Piers. He wanted to know the moment they got bored of the enclosures and started a round of Harry Hunting. So far it was like they had forgotten he was there. Just the way he liked it.

They were banging and pressing their faces against the glass in the reptile room. The snake on the other side appeared to be asleep. How she slept through all the noise, he didn't know. They soon tired and moved on to the next tank.

Harry wandered up to the snake. She was pretty, he thought. Her scales were a nice mottled green.

"Hello." He said quietly.

The snake opened his eyes and peered at him. He was a little shocked but he kept his face an impassive mask.

"Do you understand me?" He asked cautiously.

The snake nodded at him. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Dudley and his friend were still occupied further along the room. He looked back to the snake, it's eyes moving over him with an intelligence the other animals lacked. It was assessing him. Friend or Foe? He rather liked it.

"I'm Harry. What's your name?" He asked.

"I am Tiago." The snake hissed, it's tongue tasting the air.

"Sorry about him." Harry shrugged over his shoulder at his cousin. "I suppose you get that a lot."

The snake nodded looking up at him with curious eyes.

"I've never spoken to a boy before." The snake uncoiled herself some more inching towards the glass.

Harry smirked and gave a little snort.

"I've never spoken to a snake before."

Tiago made a stuttered hissing that Harry took to be a chuckle. He'd always thought he was funny and here was the proof. Harry thought the snake would enjoy his commentary on his pig of a cousin and his walrus of an uncle.

Then Harry heard Dudley's overly loud voice close to his ear and was violently pushed to the floor.

"Mummy! Dad! Come look! Potter got the snake to move." He shrieked pressing his face to the glass once more.

Not since Dudley and his friends had beaten up the new kid in their school almost two years ago had anyone wanted to talk to him. And Tiago had seemed interested. She hadn't told him to go away at least. His elbow throbbed where he had hit it on the stone floor and he was sure to have a large bruise up one thigh in the morning. Harry watched Dudley bang on the glass like he did to Harry cupboard door, demanding the snake do something.

It all made Harry angry. And with the anger came a heat. It momentarily filled his body and then the glass was gone. Dudley fell face first into the snake's enclosure. Seeing her opportunity, Tiago slithered over the wall and on to the floor, sending many people to panic.

"Thanks" She hissed to Harry as she passed.

Harry just blinked as he watched her bid for freedom.

Dudley's shrill cry and Aunt Petunia's scream drew his attention and he saw that the glass was mysteriously back in place, with his cousin trapped inside. He felt his lips twitch into a smirk but quickly crushed it as he looked for his Uncle.

True to form, his Uncle had turned a purple colour and was scowling at him from across the room. There was no doubt he was in trouble again. He hated how his magic was not always under his control.