Here There Be Dragons

metronomeihear:

Harry, when he was young, was violent.

(He raged and he burned. The clouds gathered and the winds grew)

When Dudley tried to beat him up, he didn’t meekly take it and step down. He fought back. When Vernon and Petunia tried to make him do an absurd amount of chores, he didn’t bow his head and do as he was told. He refused. When the Dursleys tried to make him sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, he didn’t allow it. As soon as his inexperienced mind figured out that making a child sleep there was wrong, he walked up the stairs and claimed Dudley’s second bedroom for his own.

(At night he dreamed. He dreamed of dragons and far off places. He dreamed of muscle moving smoothly, power in his limbs. He dreams of blood and gore and bones snapping under his hands. He could never quite remember them when he woke)

When the Dursley’s spread rumors about him, Harry fought back. When the teachers discriminated against him, he fought back. When his classmates got it into their heads to bully him, he fought back.

(Even if he didn’t know it–remember it–he was still a storm. Relentless attacks, never bowing down; that was what a storm was meant to do)

When Harry was 6 years old, Vernon Dursley tried to kill him.

Vernon had, of course, had the urge to off his nephew before. The brat was abrasive, rebellious, and horrible for the family image. He beat up Dudley whenever the boy tried something. He refused to cook or do chores. He was crass, stubborn, and an all around irritant. He never responded to punishment, physical or mental, and attempting to punish the brat lead only to one unnatural disaster or another. The boy was a freak, the son of a pair of freaks, and that unnaturalness refused to be stamped out.

Sometimes, he dreamed of wrapping his hands around that thick neck and just tightening the hold.

When Harry was 6, Vernon did just that.

(This was a turning point. Perhaps, if it hadn’t happened like this, then nothing would have changed. Perhaps, the turning point would have still found its way to Harry. Perhaps–)

Petunia was away shopping. Dudley was over at Pier’s. Harry and Vernon had been the only two people in the house and Harry had said something that just made Vernon… snap.

A pair of meaty hands were wrapped around Harry’s throat and squeezed. Air was cut off. His vision blurred. Spit ran down his chin and black spots started to decorate his vision. Harry, contrary to how most would act in his situation, didn’t feel panicked. He felt a wave of calm wash over him, the world moving in slow motion. He was all too aware of the hands around his throat, the look in Vernon’s eyes, his own life slipping away by the second.

I don’t want to die, he thinks. I want to live. I want to live.

Something within him broke. It shattered to pieces and his hands were on fire and Vernon was burning and the air around him felt hot.

(Like dragons just under his skin)

Flames, scarlet in color (red like a storm) roared around him and something just– clicked. Like this was right. Like he had been blind before and he was only just seeing the world for the first time. This fire dancing along his limbs, heating the air, disintegrating his uncle, felt so much like a part of him, like home, that he wondered why he had never felt it before.

When the flames vanished (hovering just beneath his skin–like dragons) and Harry could breath again, Vernon Dursley was nothing more than a burnt corpse on the ground.

Harry, knowing the way the rest of his relatives would react to finding a corpse on the floor, ran. He gathered every bit of money in the house he could find, packed a backpack full of food, water, and blankets, and ran as far as he could.

(That night, when he was sleeping in an out of the way alley, he dreamed of a chinese man with a long braid who had mastered every martial art he came across.. When he woke up in the morning, he remembered very little of it, only feeling like he was missing something important)

…

In which Harry Potter is the reincarnation of Fon. This changes things.