Chapter Text
His stomach let out a hollow, pitiful grumble. He didn't know how long it had been since he last ate. A week? More? At some point, he had stopped counting after three. The ache had become constant, an unending gnawing beast inside him. His belly, already too small for a boy his age, had shriveled into nothing. And if he was honest with himself, he doubted he could even keep food down anymore. The chain digging into the raw, inflamed flesh around his neck made sure of that.
It was cold. The clothing clinging to his thin frame itched and scratched, stiff with dirt and sweat. He wanted to whimper. He wanted to cry. But he didn't. Whimpering brought attention, and attention brought shouting, sometimes worse. They would call him strange names, words that felt sharp and wrong, words that were not his name.
Not that he really remembered his name anymore. Not clearly. But he knew what they called him wasn't right. He knew, deep in his aching bones, that they were wrong.
He wanted his red and his brown. He wanted his Padfoot and his Moony. He wanted warmth. He wanted arms that held, voices that soothed, faces that smiled. Not these creatures that locked him outside in the dirt, that left him to starve and burn under the sun. Not these creatures whose words cut like knives, whose eyes carried fear and disgust whenever they looked at him.
So he curled in on himself, trying to ignore the itch of fabric, the sting of wind, the rattle of the chain. His messy black hair fell into his face, hiding the sheen of tears threatening to spill.
He wanted his family.
He wanted to go home.
This wasn't home.
But no miracle came.
Days bled into weeks, and weeks into months. His world became a prison no larger than a three-meter stretch of dirt behind the shed. The grass had long since withered there, leaving only hard-packed earth. Desperate for shelter, he had once clawed his way under a pile of lawn tools and rusting scraps, burrowing out a cramped hollow that leaked when it rained. It was no more than a coffin of tin and wood, but it was something. Beggars can't be choosers after all.
A chipped bowl served as his water source. Food came rarely, if at all. Scraps. Bones stripped of meat. Molded bread. Just enough to keep him breathing, never enough to give strength. Hunger had become his oldest companion, gnawing at him, consuming him until there was nothing left but skin, bone, and ache.
At first, they beat him daily. The two largest ones would drag him by his chain and strike him until his skin bloomed purple and red. But eventually, he stopped reacting. He learned not to cry. He learned not to scream. And when his silence robbed them of satisfaction, the beatings dwindled. Until they stopped altogether.
Not that it mattered.
His body had betrayed him. With no food to heal on, wounds refused to close. Infections festered. Fever came and went. Worst of all was the chain. It had always been too tight, but now, malnourished, yet still growing, the metal had eaten into his throat. The skin was raw and broken, the wound wet with blood and pus. Sometimes, when he dared touch it, he could feel the chain sunk deep beneath his flesh. His fingers always came away sticky, trembling.
He grew weaker by the day. His sight blurred, though he couldn't tell if it was his failing eyes or the sickness rotting through him. Once, he thought he heard a voice, gentle, calling for him. But he dismissed it. Hallucinations. Dreams. Hope was dangerous.
And hope was gone.
He would die here, chained like an animal to the shed. Forgotten. Alone.
That thought no longer scared him. It was simply the truth.
Collapsing in his makeshift shelter, he couldn't even lift his head to chase shade from the blinding sun. His body convulsed with a wet cough, rattling his chest. He turned his face from the light and closed his eyes, sinking into the shallow, restless darkness of sleep. A final surrender.
Magic is a strange thing. It's alive in ways no human wizard ever truly understands. It listens. It watches. It answers. It bends and twists, not bound by reason, not bound by time.
And when it heard the desperate cry of a soul too small, too broken, it moved.
It reached out, tore through walls and chains, through fire and sun, through time and death. It snatched him away, cradling him in its formless arms.
He could not stay as he was. The body was too ruined, the magic too weak. So it changed him. It rewound him back to the point when his magic had been strongest, when he was only an eighteen months old babe. A new beginning, wrapped in old sorrow.
And so magic sought a place where the boy would be safe, where cruel hands could never reach, where the Barrier itself could cradle him, hidden from the world above.
Far beneath the earth, beneath Mount Ebott, the tiny babybones opened his eye sockets for the first time.