[FFML] [Fanfic][Multi] Harry Potter and the Screwed-Up Life, Chapter One (Incomplete)

[Alexander CHEEZEM]

    Harry lay in bed much later, thinking about his latest alien encounter. It wasn't so much the fact that he now had a group of extra-galactic proctologic researchers living in his cupboard that bothered him, but rather what had been revealed about his birth family. Harry had, of course, heard the stories of what his life would have been like had he grown up with them, but he had, in a small corner of his mind, held out hopes that they were exaggerated.

    An alien voice resounded in his mind, interrupting his thoughts. "You should have just killed the fat fool," it said, using its tone to convey its displeasure at having to deal with Vernon Dursley.

    "Shut up, Isis," Harry thought back, not wanting the alien brain-snake with delusions of godhood to interrupt his attempt to sort out his feelings regarding his sole remaining blood relatives. The snake, of course, obeyed, having little choice but to do so.

    Petunia, in a way, wasn't quite so bad. Sure, she spoiled her son rotten and had some serious issues to work out, but she appeared to at least have some basic humanity. Vernon, on the other hand, was practically the poster-boy for bigots anonymous in addition to being overweight and prone to fits of anger. Dudley... deserved his own mental hospital. /Those/ were his remaining blood relatives? Okay, so Vernon, at least, wasn't technically related to him by blood, but still...

    Harry's brooding was interrupted by a knock on his door. "Come in," he called, reaching for the stack of ofuda he kept under his pillow.

    I opened the door and stepped through, closing the door behind me. "Hey, Harry," I said, giving my oldest son a somewhat sad smile.

    "Hey, Dad," Harry replied, separating one of his spirit wards from the remainder and placing it behind his back. "Password?"

    "Souten ni zase," I responded, the correct answer causing Harry to relax and lie back down. Noting his reaction, I sat down on the side of his bed.

    After a few moments of silence, Harry spoke up. "How could anyone be that /stupid/?" he asked, his eyes pleading with me for answers.

    I just sighed. "Harry," I said after a moment, "if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's to never underestimate the powers of human stupidity and ignorance."

    "But...," he protested.

    I smiled sadly. "I researched them, you know," I said after a short pause. "Back when you first came to live with me, that is. I wanted to know why they would have treated you..." I paused, searching for the right words. "Like they would have," I finished, somewhat lamely.

    Harry frowned. "You knew they were like that?" he asked.

    I shook my head. "No, Harry. I just wanted to be able to tell you about your family. I knew that, had you stayed with them, they would have turned out like that. I hoped..." I paused again, trying to explain, "I hoped that without you there, as a constant reminder, that they would have become... I don't know... something other than they did... maybe even something that you could have come to know as family." I sighed. "Family's important, you know... I never really understood that until I lost mine... and I thought that maybe... if the old wounds healed... that your aunt would have understood that." I chuckled, thinking about the other possibility. "Or perhaps that Dudley would have been less spoiled, anyway."

    "Dad," Harry said after a moment, "what did happen to your family, anyway?"

    "Absolutely nothing," I answered. "I still hope that one of the doors around here will reunite me with them. The problem..."

    "Is that you don't know which one, right?" Harry finished.

    I smiled, proud of the oldest of my adoptive children. "Exactly," I confirmed.

    There was a stretch of companionable silence before Harry spoke up again.

    "What did you mean when you said 'if the old wounds healed'?" he asked.

    I sighed. "You remember when I told you about Mouldieshorts, right?" I inquired, obeying the unwritten rule of the house to poke fun of his name at every opportunity.

    Harry nodded. "What does Venerealwart have to do with anything?"

    "Well," I answered, "you have to understand that while he may be an incompetent moron who obviously never read the Evil Overlord List, he did manage to inspire quite a bit of blind terror. Part of how he did that was through random attacks on people he felt were 'inferior'... such as your mother. One day, he launched one such attack on your mother's house. Fortunately, both your mother and Petunia were away doing other things, but your maternal grandparents were killed." I frowned. "Your Aunt Petunia was the one to find the bodies."

    Harry frowned, mentally turning inward as Isis's thoughts on the matter mixed with his own. "She blamed my mother, didn't she?" he asked after a moment.

    I smiled at his deduction, but shook my head. "Close," I admitted. "She blamed chakra, chakra-manipulation, and chakra-manipulators. Over time, she generalized it to anything 'unusual'... that is, anything that doesn't fit her twisted vision of 'normality'." I turned slightly reflective. "Meeting Vernon certainly didn't help, either," I added before noticing what had happened to my skin. "Damnit," I swore, "if you'll excuse me, I need to find out who's been playing around with the portal to Xanth /this/ time."

    "Okay, Dad," Harry said, trying to stifle his laughter. "See you later."

    I stood and grinned, knowing that the expression probably looked slightly odd with the way light was bouncing off of my face. "Tell me if you have any problems, okay? I'm always willing to talk... oh, and Harry?"

    "Yes?" Harry asked, somewhat curious.

    "Blood family isn't the only kind. What we have may be incredibly screwed up, but don't doubt for a second that we really are one. Now, I have to get going before we wind up having to dispose of another Lemon-Harangue pie."

    After I left the room, muttering about obscene edibles, Harry placed his ofuda back under his pillow and resumed his introspection... at least until it was interrupted a few minutes later by his hearing a loud cry of "I don't care what you think it is, get the bloody anal probe away from the interdimensional portal!"

-------------------

    Harry Potter and the Screwed-Up Life

    Chapter One

    by

    Aleh

-------------------

    By the time Harry had completely thrown off his melancholy, the summer holidays had started and things were back to what his family considered "normal." In the meantime, Harry had taken the opportunity to get to know his family's extraterrestrial houseguests, and had formed something of a friendship with S'to'ned, one of the more senior of the Assguard's xenoproctological researchers. Apparently, Assguard society was largely centered around understanding the mysteries of the "second oriface," something which the Assguard lacked, causing them to suffer something that his father called "Schlock Syndrome." As rectifying this condition was a high priority to the Assguard for some reason that Harry couldn't understand, the Assguard traveled the Galaxy, trying to understand how they could add such a function to their own anatomy. All in all, Harry thought it rather strange, but he had to admit that he was hardly one to talk.

    Harry was glad that school was over, but was worried about the next year. He had heard a lot about his biological parents' so-called "world," and the picture his father had painted was not entirely a positive one. When September came around, Harry would be leaving the only home he could remember and entering a society that seemed to be full of perverts, even if his father assured him that the people who kept on teleporting into his house and trying to rape his sister were hardly representative of the wizarding population as a whole.

    One day in July, Harry's father took Harry, Rei and Toushiro into London, saying that he wanted to introduce them to someone. Taking a quick ride in a taxi, the four of them found themselves in front of a fairly typical upper-middle-class home. Taking a moment to gather his children, their father approached the door and rang the doorbell.

    After a short wait, the door was answered by a somewhat short woman with distinctly bushy shoulder-length brown hair.

    "Hello," she greeted, noticing Harry's family. "So these are..."

    Harry's father smiled. "Harry Potter, Hitsugaya Toushiro and Ayanami Rei," he introduced, pointing to each child in turn. "I left Gaara, Robert and Rekka at home to watch over the aliens that are staying in my cupboard."

    The woman blinked as the man turned towards his family. "Harry, Toushiro, Rei, this is Janet Granger. Her daughter, Hermione, is going to be one of Harry's classmates at Hogwarts."

    Harry and his siblings bowed politely. "Pleased to meet you," they replied in an oddly synchronized fashion, the result of long practice at introducing themselves to the multiverse's statistical outliers.

    A few minutes later, the four part-time inhabitants of the Twilight Zone found themselves sitting 


--------

And that's as far as I got. You can probably see just why I never posted this; under normal circumstances, there simply isn't enough of it to properly enjoy as a fic.

The FFML's closing, however... yeah.

I did, however, find some of my notes on the dramatis personae. With a bit of editing:

The Family:

Gaara -- hates rapists and racists, is the vessel of a stoned Shuukaku, is publishing a manga in Sunagakure that details the family's exploits (while changing his name and writing him as a different jinchuuriki), and is a Naruto otaku.

Robert -- passionately hates rapists and racists, best friend outside the 'family' is Higurashi Kagome. Keeps getting kidnapped, usually by puuchuus or (later) psycho ninja house-elves.

Harry -- has been dealing with regular possession attempts of various sorts, is currently the host of the Goa'uld queen Isis, eats a bowl of Lucky Charms every day to ward off demons, sleeps with ofuda under his pillow, can command snakes.

Rei -- is suffering trauma from repeated 'rape' (obliviation) attempts.

Toushiro --    is close friends with Skuld.

Rekka -- attends school in Nerima and takes classes at the Tendo Dojo (post series). 

Others:

Assguard -- a blatant parody of the Asguard of Stargate.

Kenchuuriki -- the family's pet guard dog. (Comes by the name -- "Power of Canine Sacrifice" -- honestly.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.chez-vrolet.net/pipermail/ffml/attachments/20210630/660c0178/attachment.html>