The Life of Hadrian Black

Chapter 3- Rescue Dogs

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Harry was an unusual child, and he knew it. Ever since he was a baby (when his Mum and Dad were still alive, and when his Uncle Paddy and Uncle Moony were still around) he's always known he was different, and it was not just because of all the 'funny business', as Uncle Vernon calls it, that happens around him near constantly. For one, he could remember his very first hours of life to a near perfect degree, and he shouldn't be able to. That's how he knew his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were liars, despite the fact that lying, according to Aunt Petunia's shrieking nonsense, ironically, was a sin. The 'M' word was not really a bad word, and magic really did exist because Harry remember's his Uncle's performing it to entertain him. His parents didn't die in a car crash because the man with pretty, crimson eyes killed them instead.

Although, even as a four year old boy, Harry couldn't bring himself to hate the man. He resented, and felt angry for what he did, without a doubt, and at times, Harry even thought up furious four-year-old rants as he did the chores, making sure to say the Red Snake (as he'd taken to calling him in his head) was a poo-head more than once.

But hate was just not something Harry could bring together for the man.

Maybe it was the fact that he had crimson red eyes, Harry had always found unusual things to be intriguing, like a little magpie bird, as his Uncle Paddy would often say. Or maybe it was because the man moved like a snake, silent and deadly, and they had always been his favourite animal. They have been since a young grass snake slithered into into the house unknowingly, and spoke to Harry before he found himself at the Dursley's Dumping Ground. It might possibly have been because 'I'm sorry to have to do this to you, child. Perhaps if I knew you would one day join my cause, things could be different. But you are a Potter, meaning Dumbledore will keep you in his line of sight at all times, so I doubt that. Magic be with you, child.' was a most unusual choice of words to say to someone before trying to kill them. Either way, Harry was more curious about Red Snake more than anything.

No. He hated the Dursley's. The Dursley's who made him weed the garden, scrub the kitchen (like he was now), and write apology letters for existing and being a freak. The Dursley's who made him sleep in a cupboard, starved him and neglected him. The Dursley's who hit him when he did something better than Dudley.

The Dursley's who made sure his entire existence was utterly miserable.

Harry also looked different. Sure, he was slightly small for his age, and was definitely skinnier than what was inherently healthy. But that was usually overlooked when one set their gaze to his face. Well, not face, per say, but his eyes. Harry's eyes, his babysitter, Arabella Figg, would often say looked like they'd lived for more than one hundred years. They were a bright, almost glowing, verdant green. The same colour, he'd deducted one time when he was cleaning the bathroom as a punishment, and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, as the haunting green light that came from Red Snake's wand.

Even Aunt Petunia once commented, or complained is a more accurate description, about them to Uncle Vernon. She had said that Harry must be more freaky than the rest of the freaks from Freakville because his eyes were not that of a human, and went to hang another dozen crucifixes round the house. Quite frankly, if his eyes scared his Aunt so much, well, Harry absolutely adored them.

He was scrubbing at the kitchen floor, hands overly raw from vigour, with his eyes, unfortunately, downcast, as Aunt Petunia read one of her many garden magazines that never seemed to motivate her enough to plant the damn flowers herself. Dudley, her son and Harry's older cousin by a week or so, sat next to her watching Thunderbirds on the Tv- something, of which, Harry found incredibly dull.