A Darker Form of Magic, book one: Dark Affinity

Chapter Four

Harry's last month with the Dursleys passed quietly. Dudley refused to be in the same room as the younger boy, fleeing with a squeal any time that Harry so much as was even close enough for the other boy to look at with those beady eyes of his. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had each taken to pretending that Harry didn't exist at all, something that Harry didn't mind in the least bit since it meant that neither would ever question where the boy had been when he stumbled into the Dursleys' home at all hours of the night.

They didn't question the bruises blooming on the boy's skin, or the dirt in his hair or the blood on his clothes when it was there.

Harry liked it better that way.

He liked living for a month without being struck by anyone in the house, or forced to do anything, or screamed at till one of the other occupants of the house reminded the perpetrator that the neighbors would soon become nosy if they didn't stop.

It felt like something akin to the boy that had never truly known any. Like a kind of peace.

On the last day of August Harry knew that he would have to break the routine that had formed, no matter how much he had come to treasure it.

Harry walked into the kitchen early in the morning as the Dursleys had sat down to eat breakfast. Ignoring the way that his own stomach grumbled at the sight, Harry stopped in front of his uncle and spoke tentatively to the older man.

"Uncle Vernon?" The boy said just loud enough to force a response.

The man however did not look up from his paper, but Harry heard the grunt his uncle had made and took that as about Sam much acknowledgment as he was bound to receive from the vile man.

"I need you to give me a lift to King's Cross Station tomorrow so that I can go to school."

Another grunt.

Figuring that this was just about as good as he was going to get, Harrybwas about to turn when, for the first time in a month, Uncle Vernon spoke to the boy.

"Funny way getting to a wizard school, the train," the man said, ruffling his paper irritably. "Magic carpets are all torn, have they?"

Harry knew better than to rise to the older man's bait, that doing so - answering his uncle right now - would mean something dangerous for the small boy even as Aunt Petunia and the cowering Dudley were still in the room. He especially didn't want to tell the man that magic carpets were actually outlawed by the British magical government, Harry didn't want to send the older man into a tangent.

"Where is this freak school of yours anyways?" Uncle Vernon asked with an almost self righteous voice.

For the first time, Harry realized that he didn't know. He had spent the last month reading every book that he'd bought from Diagon Alley, some of the shorter ones even a few times over, but it had never occurred to him to think of just where he would be learning all of these things.

It wasn't like he hadn't had other things on his mind as well though.

"Does it matter?" Harry asked instead of truly answering the cruel man. "It's nine months without me haunting your house."

His uncle actually laughed at that, as if he had said something humorous, that cruel laugh of his that Harry had come to know spoke of more violence than humor. "Right you are, boy," the man remarked, making Harry's skin crawl uncontrollably against his bones. "All right, we'll take you to King's Cross. We're going to London tomorrow anyway or else I wouldn't bother."

Though Harry doubted that the man would risk his chance to be rid of him for so long, the boy walked out of the door of the house before his uncle could think to change his mind.