The Before Times

I do not own Harry Potter or any of its subsidiaries. I only own this story and then not even all of it. I repeat, I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER!

Also, anything you recognize I don't own. Any similarities to real life are purely coincidental and completely unintentional.

Now that that's taken care of, enjoy the show ladies and gents!

It was a perfectly normal day at number 4 Privet Drive in Surrey, England. A perfectly normal day indeed. The only slightly abnormal thing about today was the tabby cat that sat on a brick wall watching the occupants of the house, and this was purely abnormal in that it did not happen every day in this normal little town.

When night arrived, a loud crack was heard as a man dressed in outrageously bright robes approached the house, nodding to the cat as he walked by. The cat leapt off the small brick half-wall and shifted into a woman wearing dark green robes and her hair pulled up into a tight bun high on her head.

A roaring sound could be heard as a motorcycle came down from the clouds.  A top it sat a very large man holding a small bundle of cloth in one arm. After a bit of conversing, the bundle was set on the outside of the door on the top step of number 4 Privet Drive, with a letter attached.

Two sharp cracks and a roar of motorcycle engines later and the street was once again empty, except for the not very warmly wrapped baby. The baby with messy black hair and vibrant green eyes.

1988

"BOY! GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE AND MAKE US BREAKFAST!" hollered Vernon Dursley, a man who weighed several hundred pounds and none of it muscle.

"Make it yourself you lazy piece of shit!" Yelled back the boy from inside the cupboard under the stairs. 

A kid with exquisite green eyes and long black hair that reached down slightly past his shoulders. This boy, one Harry James Potter, was an abnormality from abnormalities. He held himself with confidence despite the constant beatings that came by the hand of his relatives. He had ran away from this place several years ago, only to get dragged back several months later. Those few months though, taught Harry everything he needed to live and survive. He was taught how to pickpocket someone, how to lockpick, and how to steal. When he was dragged back by an elderly man with an overly large beard and garish purple robes he started stealing from the general area. Several very successful heists later and he started to gain a name for himself, as Nightmare Griffin, Thief Extraordinaire.

Late last night he had a sale, it went tits up, and he had to run, thanking that incident involving the Dursley Gang, Harry Hunting, and the school roof.

Flashback

Running was all he could do now, for if he stopped with this many pigs chasing him, he would surely be quite thoroughly crushed. As he turned a corner to try and escape their notice, only to come up to a dead end. As he swore colorfully under his breath. He heard a voice that spelt instant pain.

"Where are you, freak? We just wanna play freak," the voice of Dudley Dursley singsonged.

'Shit' thought Harry. He started to frantically search for a way out other than back. As the gang turned the corner, he closed his eyes, awaiting the beating that was going to occur.

"Where'd the freak go," asked Piers Polkiss, Dudley's right hand.

As Harry opened his eyes he saw himself on the school roof, looking over he had to try very hard to keep himself from laughing as the gang that tormented him was searching through dumpsters and behind wood palettes all in search of a small boy who wasn't there.

Deciding to try and replicate the feat, he tried to remember everything that had happened between him closing his eyes and him opening them back up. He remembered standing in shadows a feeling of falling backwards and him suddenly being in the shadow of the water tower. Deciding that shadows were the key factor here, he thought of his infinitely dark cupboard and figured that that was as good a place as any to try to go to using this strange method. As he focused on transporting himself to the cupboard, he felt as if e was falling backwards and keeping his eyes open the entire time, saw his vision briefly taken completely over by darkness. As his vision cleared it was still dark, but now he could see the rough shape of his mattress and of the shelves that held the few toys he owned. Grinning to himself he transported back to the school, first to the roof to check if Dudley's Gang was still there, then to a broom closet next to the class he needed to be in.

End Flashback

This talent proved to be very useful for thieving, for as long as there was darkness he could Fall. Falling is what he had taken to calling this strange ability. Over the years he discovered other things that he could do with the shadows, least of all create an area of darkness in a brightly lit room, although the more light he had to contend with, the more tiring it was. After discovering this affinity for the dark, Harry went out to a local department store and stole a large overcoat that fit perfectly, a black stetson and some loose-fitting clothing. As he took his purchases into the changing room, he swapped them out for the oversized hand-me-down clothes and teleported back home where he dropped all the outfits and proceeded to rob the store blind of jewellery and other small stuff. That was a very profitable week indeed.

1989

Seeing something that caught his fancy, he stole an old wireless music player. When he got home, though the shared inhabitants didn't like each other, they left each other alone after trying to hit Harry only for the layer of solid darkness that existed underneath his duster to stop all of their attacks. He found a particular interest in American Country Music. He learned to play his favorite songs on a beautiful guitar, and his hair was now at mid back length and tied back into a low ponytail with a white ribbon, the only white in the entire outfit.

He ran a very successful, if not particularly well known and definitely highly illegal, business, could get anywhere in the world in an instant, and was generally happy with his routine life. He was known as Nightmare Griffin, Thief of Darkness.