*Discontinued* No Longer

To Be Helpless

Please comment!

**Harry Potter

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry Sir! I-I'll fix it! Please, just tell me how to fix it!" The boy cried out.

"Come here you freak!" Sir shouted.

Sir had a belt in his hand, and the boy knew he must have done something wrong. He was sorry! He hadn't meant to! Why wouldn't Sir tell him what he did wrong though? He was beaten every day, usually more than once.

Scared, the boy hunched in on himself and stepped forward. His shoulders were up at his ears, his eyes resolutely fixed on the ground in front of his bruised and cut up feet. Sir didn't like it when a freak like him made eye contact. He was too unworthy, and a useless brat like him deserved every beating he got.

He was already flinching when the belt was cocked back, and Sir growled low in his throat. Quickly, he corrected his posture and stood without flinching as the hard metal buckle hit him across his chest.

Another one came and the boy whimpered silently, fearing the consequences of any sound made. He counted each blow that landed, and at seventeen, tears were running down his cheeks, fast and wet and hot. 

At twenty, he cried out, falling to his knees. It hurt, it hurt so badly. He was sorry, he was sorry for being a freak. He was sorry that he had good for nothing parents and he couldn't do the chores well enough. He was sorry that he couldn't be as good as Young Sir, who never got beaten like he did.

Huffing now, Sir whipped his bare back. He knew that he must deserve this, Sir had said so, and so had Ma'am and Young Sir.

Tears leaked from his eyes, and he clenched his cracked and callused hands into tight fists against the agony of his back. He thought he'd get used to them, the brutal beatings, but every time they still pained him greatly.

"This-" Sir puffed out, "Is because you're a good for nothing-" pant, "freak! You  are a demon, a demon! You turned all the flowers in the garden silver! What do you think that says to the neighbors? You are a freak who messes up the world around him and I won't have it in my house! I will beat the corruption out of you!"

Broken sobs fell through his cracked dry lips, and the useless boy curled up on the ground. 

He had never met the neighbors, but he knew that they were the people who lived around them. According to Sir, it was very important that they didn't know about his freakishness. The boy was frightened of the neighbors, and had never exchanged so much as a word with them out of fear. What if they beat him worse than Sir?

Mercifully, the belt stopped coming down three hard strikes later.

The boy, no, he was a demon. That's what Sir had said. He was a useless freak who ruined everything, he was a demon. The demon's painful sobbing eventually let up, his strength gone, and a heavy thump sounded nearby. Sir must have tired himself out enough to rest in his reclining chair.

"Get up freak, and finish your chores. If there is so much as a single bit of food burned, no water for today. Now get out of my sight, and clean up that mess on the floor."

Painfully, the boy forced himself up to his feet. His back wouldn't straighten out, but he'd been expecting that. Often after beatings his body didn't work quite right for a little while.

On the floor beneath him, a large pool of blood had gathered and many smaller spots had been spattered by the swinging of the belt. He knew that if he walked around as he was, he'd get more blood everywhere, so he hobbled to the kitchen as fast as he could.

Just before reaching there, he got a very ratty cloth, and one of Young Sir's now too small shirts from his cupboard under the stairs, which Ma'am said he ought to be grateful for. He was. It was his space, and the family tended not to go in, even though they would yell at him to come out.