Chapter 2: There Is A House on Privet Drive

Seven Years Later…

It was a cold July in Surrey, England.

On this dark night under the waxing moon, on Privet Drive in Little Whinging, walked a diminutive man in a very dark, very expensive ensemble. He was clean-shaven, bushy eyebrows, brown eyed, and with an overly exposed forehead not caused by a receding hairline.

He was also currently very, very angry at whoever was on the other end of the line on his black iPhone.

"I really don't bloody care what the King of Hell wants me to do! Next time he wants to check a dark magic signature across the pond, he gets someone lower on the totem pole then the freaking King of the Crossroads! Just because I had business at this end of the world doesn't mean he can just dial me up through you! Now, you better start the paperwork needed for this mess, or I swear, when I get back, I will show you the real meaning of torture!"

He hung up on the poor sod on the other end of the line. Crowley missed the feeling of slapping a flip-phone closed for emphasis, but the iPhone had its benefit. He really couldn't blame the guy who called him up; he was a weak demon who just started out as his secretary – now he has to make an example out of him just to maintain his image.

"That deal with that skanky Marchioness was not worth coming out here for. Sure, I get her new Duchess soul in ten years but come on mate, I was expecting a shag or something from her royal britches. Instead, I get a quick kiss with no heat and a bloody dismissive wench! Oh, I will definitely abuse that loophole to take her down a few levels. I will make her the new Princess Diana by the time I am done with her." (1)

Crowley was getting annoyed at the worst possible time, but what was he to do – he was Scottish and way too high in rank to do something this menial. A job from Azazel – the current King of Hell - needed to be taken care of unless one wants to deal with the consequences of disobeying him.

From what he could gather, some idiot Hunters by the names of Dean and Sam Winchester opened a particularly nasty Devil's Trap back in the States. Normally, this would have been beneath him, but this trap was created by THE Samuel Colt. That damn cowboy built the thing in 1861 with five churches and whole-lot-a-railroad tracks to block a Devil's Gate in Calvary Cemetery of southern Wyoming. People always said that the United States was a cesspool of evil, but wouldn't it be if half a dozen gates straight to Hell were scattered through its land?

In any case, the opening of the gate allowed the release of a lot of demons straight from the lowest levels of the pits. Now, some of the spirits were on the waiting list for the boss, with their own specific tasks and agendas to be carried out.

Some spirits, however, jumped the line.

"Scavenging little wankers, couldn't wait for an opening in the job market like everybody else. No, couldn't work your way up like normal demons. Took me nearly two hundred years to become 'King of the Crossroads' but this new generation thinks they can just break out of Hell to prove themselves."

From the texts he got, the techies were picking up some kind of residual dark signs of magic from somewhere around the area. Why a demon would come out so far was beyond Crowley, particularly since it would have involved crossing a large body of freaking salt water to do so. In any case, whatever he was currently tracking was definitely not garden variety hoodoo.

Crowley kept waving around his phone trying to detect some trace of what he was looking for.

"Damn techies. They can make a phone that never loses reception or signal, but they can't make a gizmo that traces what I am looking for. I swear, where is this place…"

That's when he heard the yelling. Hard not to – the noise practically reverberated in the air.

"You piece of trash! I told you to go get the food from the kitchen, and yet you manage to mess that up as well! You ungrateful sod, all we had to do to keep you in this house! Why the heck did your useless parents have to go and die and leave a freak like you here with us..."

There were other voices as well, one in particular that seemed to be apologizing in a monotone voice, yet still laced in fear. Normal humans wouldn't have heard the pleas of the child over the screaming of the male and the shrill female – and another little kid – as well as the sound of plates breaking and furniture moving. Crowley was a demon, though, so he heard everything.

"Well, looky what we have here," as he approached 4 Privet Drive. The neighborhood consisted of the exact same houses over and over again, rows upon rows. But this house was different.

Crowley did a quick look over in the mystical spectrum, and he was stunned.

"What in bloody hell?"

He was looking at a thin, bubble-like barrier protecting the house. Like a membrane, it seemed to filter things entering and leaving the perimeter of the house. It also looked like to be the reason why the neighbors were not reacting to all the noises from the house – it was magically blocked out. The membrane also didn't look…normal, if the phrase could be applied.

"Hang on…a magic filter ward around a house…that's 'The Bond of Blood'! But that means someone in that home is under the 'Sacrificial Protection' – who even knows such Old World magic in this age?"

Old didn't do it – ancient was more appropriate. The Sacrificial Protection is a spell older than writing and required no incantation or materials. It did, however, require an ultimate sacrifice of the user's soul as a price at the peak of emotions to protect another. The energy provided from the sacrifice lasts forever and basically prevents anyone from harm by the darkest of magics and creatures for a long time – not even demon spells would affect the marked individuals. The Bond of Blood was an extension that was received when the protected is taken under the roof of a family member to be raised. The beneficiary is then protected from harm as long as the child is welcomed at home or becomes old enough to defend him or herself. But this…

"How in the bloody hell is such a spell so twisted and corrupted?"

Typically, the warding would ensure the safety of the protected but something…infected it. Usually, the barrier would filter out any malicious energies to protect the benefactors but something – or someone – has manipulated to keep all the evil instead.

"If the child in there is the one under protection, then that is some perverse understanding of security. Only an inexperienced practitioner would consider keeping everyone ignorant of what's happening to him in there as 'keeping the benefactor protected.' Such concentrated malicious miasma…no wonder the techies picked up a signal so far out."

Crowley now had two choices before him. He could either report that there was no evidence of a demon out here and rather an abuse of magic. That, or go inside the barrier and see if it was actually a demon's handy work in the child's suffering. The problem was, once he enters the bubble, he wasn't getting out until he got rid of the protection, which could be difficult unless he knew the parameters of the protection.

Crowley started to think, "This could be a set-up. Someone's plan to cut my head off and quickly catch the reins as they fall. Could be that red head…Nah, there's no poetry in this for the clever ones, and the savage ones would have made the quick kill when I was kissing that Marchioness."

Crowley kept twisting the phone in his hands considering his choices. Most magical beings would be too weak to penetrate the bubble, but Crowley was not one of those creatures – especially since demons were so far outside the magical hierarchy, they weren't even considered magical creatures for the spell to block against.

Crowley just smiled and shrugged, "Well then, bottoms up."

Bland.

That's the first word that comes to mind that one gets upon seeing the house. It was two floors, that if anything, were even neater than the perfectly presented garden outside. Downstairs was the living room, dining room, kitchen and a barren hall. Upstairs seemed to have all the bedrooms and the bathroom. The only redeemable feature of the house was the fireplace – which was boarded up.

"What is this, a catalog from the 60's? Pink kitchen with white cabinets, wallpaper living room with wooden everything? I've used torture rooms with more décor."

While Crowley did say this out loud, he was currently incorporeal and inaudible – one of the benefits of being a demon.

He approached the living room when he saw the scene which he heard outside. There were four people in the room: one adult male, one adult female, and two children with one currently on the floor bruised, surrounded by broken plates, food and thrown items.

The male – screaming at the child holding up his hands in defense on the floor - was a big, beefy man, with a large purple face due to his current rage. He had thick, dark hair, a bushy black mustache, with hardly any neck and small, blue, mean eyes.

The female – crossing her hands, standing in front of the standing child - was a thin, blonde-haired woman with pale eyes and nearly twice the usual amount of neck. She had bright green eyes which didn't fit her horse-like face and large front teeth.

One of the children – laughing at the one on the floor – had thick blond hair and watery blue eyes. He was large – not big, but fat. He was like a shrunken version of the screaming man, probably his father.

The other child – laying on the floor – had untidy jet-black hair and startling green eyes. He was small and skinny, with a thin face and knobbly knees, most likely due to neglect and malnutrition.

Crowley then caught a glimpse of his forehead…

"Woah," he said in surprise, "that is some curse."

On the physical plane, the child had a lightning shaped scar on the right side of his forehead. The magical spectrum, however, was a different story. Dark miasma was bleeding off the boy, affecting the three people around him, contaminating the house. If it wasn't for the warding outside, it would have dispersed and might have only slightly affected the people, but not to this extent.

"Hold up a sec, I've seen this before. Yeah, yeah…cursed objects. But how is the child one? And just what is he cursed with to have such a miasma?" Cursed objects are imbued with dark magic that can have a variety of effects and uses but with a price. But the point is that they are just that – objects. Creating a living cursed object was possible but short-sighted, as well as detrimental to the maker and the subject.

Crowley was zoning out the family while he was examining the home and family, so he tuned back in.

"…you had to use your freaky powers to levitate the plate to my son Dudley? Do you want my son to catch your disease?"

The wife now jumped in saying, "Put him back in the cupboard where he belongs. He is a 'thing' just like my sister. Why, why did we take him in when they died?"

The child – now confirmed to be the son of the two adults – just laughed at that, and while jumping cackled, "Yeah, put him in the closet! He made a mess of my cake."

The wife kneeled to her boy, "Of course, Dudley sweety. Here, let's go to the kitchen and get you another piece."

While the mother took the walking whale-child away to the kitchen, the father grabbed the smaller one – now understood by Crowley as the nephew of the mother – by the cuff of the neck and dragged him to the stairs.

"Now what are you planning to do with…"

Crowley never finished the sentence because he glimpsed where the child was being taken to. You wouldn't notice it on the first pass, but it was there – a cupboard under the stairs. As the father fully opened the door and was about to toss the boy in, Crowley was paralyzed but what he saw on the inside of the door – nails.

From the outside, the nails were painted to match the door color. On the inside, they were beaten in at various angles, too many to count. There was also padding on the corners and edges of the door to prevent damage and sound leakage.

All to make sure that the boy couldn't push on the door or scream for help.

The room had barely enough space to fit a bed, let alone move around or stand.

"They actually put a child into a makeshift Iron Maiden?" growled Crowley.

Now, every demon was tortured as a human soul to become what they are. However, the souls understood why they were tortured – they were in Hell, so they screwed up majorly. If they survived and became demons, they would only go on to continue the cycle.

A child is not made to be tortured. Even the infinitesimally few that did make it to Hell were born evil, not made. It takes time for true evil to form in a person. It's why the cultures of the world are so superstitious of the number thirteen. It's not that it's unlucky, but rather that it was the cut-off age for the distinction of whether or not a person could be judged in death accurately. If however the child was particularly bad and still managed to die before thirteen… Well, from what Crowley heard, the kid torturers has special contracts to work on them to avoid persecution from their coworkers and for benefits. Demons understood that it was 'just business', but it was still a taboo topic.

Crowley has never taken time on the other side off the slab, but he understood why it needed to be done – and that it needed to be done right.

Crowley was losing his temper, but he had to make sure. He walked through the cupboard door, to see what was the child currently doing.

The black haired child was on the bed, unmoving. He didn't sob, he didn't twitch – he was just resigned to what had happened.

He got up onto his knees and started to take off his clothes – carefully, to avoid the nails – which were clearly too large for his frame.

Crowley saw the scars and studied them. Some were fresh. Others were significantly older. Some were covering clear lines of breakages, burns, and everything else possible to give a child with the utensils found in a typical household. Some, however, Crowley couldn't explain right off the bat.

The child did a quick assessment of the damage, determine which were worse and which needed to be dealt with first. He took out what looked like a makeshift first-aid box from underneath the bed. He opened it up to take out the medical cloth, band-aids, and some other medical supplies.

Crowley watched as the child began to bandage, tie up, and sanitize the wounds he could get to. During the entire ordeal, the demons nails kept digging into his hands. If it weren't for his healing, he would have been bleeding at this point.

When he was done with the easy stuff, the child noted the deep cut on the right side of his abdomen. He pressed, checking for depth and sensitivity – didn't even wince, didn't even sigh. He started to take out a needle, string, and a lighter.

"No. He wouldn't…"

He started to heat the needle with a practiced hand, checking the cuts on his sides before starting.

"Oh, come now, don't tell me…"

The boy was clearly wincing in pain, but his eyes were dead – he was used to this, used to the pain.

"At least give him something to dull the pain. There has to be some booze in the place…"

He pushed the searing needle through the skin. He cried but made no sound. Crowley started to watch as the broken boy began to literally stitch himself back up.

That was the final straw for Crowley.

As Fergus Roderick MacLeod, Crowley lived a crappy life. No father, a mother who tried to sell him for three pigs, and orphaned at eight did some real damage. His crappy life made the life of his only son equally bad with his 'tough love'. Heck, he sold his soul for three extra inches below the belt.

But he never, ever left his son like this. At worst, he may have left him bruised and broken, but he took the effort to get him back in shape to beat him again in the future.

Crowley made his choice. A decision that would affect his life – and the child's life – forever.

Tonight, there would be three new souls in hell.

People always say that there is a calm before the storm. But most people can still sense it – a disturbance in the air. It varies person to person, but the most sensitive can feel the change in pressure preceding the storm.

The same can be said when a killer chooses a target.

The killer can be in hiding, but the target will sense something wrong. A chill in the air, a sound just loud enough to hear – those are just excuses. People have a sixth sense that seems to turn on when their life is in grave danger outside their own volition. Crazy stunts, driving drunk, skydiving - that's free will for you. But when someone decides to end your life without your consent – God gives you a warning. It's your decision to hear it and react.

The Dursley's chose not to listen to the bells that kept going off in their heads.

The father chose to attack the man who suddenly appeared in the middle of their kitchen during dinner instead of wondering how he got there.

The mother chose to scream at the person to get out rather than beg him to let go of her husband.

The child chose to shout at the man who interrupted his dinner rather than go hiding in the closet when the man easily snapped his father's arm.

The father chose to punch the man who broke his arm rather than beg for forgiveness.

The mother chose to scream in horror rather than take her son and run away.

The child chose to throw a cake at the short man rather than actually help his father up.

They made so many wrong decisions made at that moment.

Crowley made the better choices.

He made the right choice to pin the people to push the 'family' into the living room wall.

He made the right choice to push everything out of the way to get to the 'people' crying in fear.

He made the right choice to prep the 'animals' that would soon enter the furnace.

The warding around the house worked in Crowley's favor.

The smell of fresh blood, the sounds of screaming, the sight of the family pinned to the wall through the barely covered windows – nobody from the outside noticed a thing.

He sincerely lost track of time in his work – the sign that he loved his job.

He took the BlackBerry out of the suit with his bloody hands – 1:36 AM.

"My, look at how time flies. Spend a little over six hours cutting you friendly folks up."

Crowley took a passing glance at his work while he started to undo his rolled up sleeves.

All that could be said was that all three were still alive – the less said, the better.

Crowley began to take his favorite dagger out of the coat, "Well, guess I should finish up. I've already set up the address and postage on you lot. It's express shipping straight to Hell for you all."

The Dursley's were too weak to respond – all life was gone from their eyes. The mother was still crying now, pleading, "Please…help us."

"Oh, sweety…there's no mercy here."

"She was asking me."

Crowley twisted his head in the direction of the sound.

The dark haired boy stood in the corridor. No shirt, pants on, and a bloody hand with a dry spot of blood next to him.

Crowly made a guess based on what he saw, "You pushed through the door when you heard them screaming, huh?"

The child only nodded, unblinking, eyes still on the family that tortured him for years.

"Why did you injure yourself?"

The child answered, deadpan, unemotional, "I heard them screaming."

Crowley presented his hand and waved it in a circle, like a father asking for his son to continue, "And?"

"I wanted to see them."

The demon wasn't confused by the child's intentions. He just needed to hear the boy said it.

"And?"

The child's next three words sealed their fate.

"They deserve more."

Crowley accepted his answer. "You watched the whole time didn't you?"

The boy nodded.

"They saw you from their positions the whole time, and you did nothing?"

The boy nodded.

Crowley played with the bloody knife in his hand. He turned the knife around – handle out – and presented it to the boy.

Crowley decided to let him place the final nail in the coffin.

"Would you like to finish them?"

The Dursley's regained what life they had left and panic re-appeared in their eyes. They started to struggle, old wounds reopening, new blood spilling.

The boy went up to Crowley, slowly. He carefully grasped the knife, almost dropping it due to its weight and the child's weakness.

"Before you start," Crowley interjected to the child, "just be aware that it's your connection to the aunt that's keeping you here."

The child only tilted his head in confusion.

"Just saying, leave her for the end. When we are done here, there will be no house left."

And Crowley saw it – a smile appear on the boy's face, something completely foreign to the child.

"Will they burn?"

At that, Crowley chuckled. "Yes, they will burn."

The boy started to walk toward the family that tortured him, twisting the knife in his hands.

"Dudley goes first."

Crowley just stood in the back, watching, wiping off his hands, as the child on the wall began to scream in pain.

Crowley and the boy were standing on the cliff outside the community, watching a lone house burn in the night.

The firefighters would put out the home eventually, but there will be bodies left in the house to identify. Officials will say they burned away. In the end, all that the firefighters will have is a standing house with all the Dursley's belongings destroyed. They will also find the strangely undamaged cupboard, with evidence that someone actually lived in that horrid thing. Even in death, Crowley left one last thing to turn the Dursley's into pariahs.

The boy – now in a sweater and shoes – stood next to Crowley while he made a call.

"Yeah, sorry for my earlier outburst…Yes, there was no escaped demon out here. It was a cursed mirror that made a family go mad with the things it showed them…No, I destroyed it…It was a powerful cursed object but not useful enough to keep around… Too clunky and large for practical use… Did you finish the paperwork?... Good, add this new information on top and send it to the boss. If he asks, tell him I am on break and if he has a problem with it, tell him to shove it where light doesn't shine."

Crowley got off the cell and put it away. He glanced down at the boy on his side.

He was cleaned up now, but he still seemed to smell of blood.

"Are you like me?" asked the child.

"Like you how?" pondered Crowley.

"A freak."

Crowley chuckled, "Afraid not boy,"

Harry could only begin to hang his head when Crowley added, "I am a demon."

Harry's face got back up, but no emotion appeared, "Like the kind they talk about in church?"

"Yes, those sorts of demons."

Both stared back at the burning house in silence for a while.

"You are not freaked out?" asked Crowley in surprise.

"You a demon who responded to my prayers and I can levitate and burn things – you tell me."

Crowley actually got bugged eyed at this, "You begged for a demon?"

"I begged for someone to save me or kill them. You did both."

"Huh," shrugged Crowley.

The boy looked up at the man again, "Can I come with you?"

Crowley thought about it for a second, "Eh, why not. You have a name?"

"Only my first name – never heard my last name. My aunt never said it, and she took the husbands last name."

"Wow, seriously?"

He nodded.

"So what is your name?"

"It's Harry."

Crowley had to hold a laugh. "Huh. 'Ruler of the home' – how unfortunate."

Harry still looked at the man deadpanned.

"Alright then. The name is Crowley MacLeod. And since I am taking you with me, how about I give you my name?"

Harry thought about it.

"Harry MacLeod…Has a nice ring to it."

Crowley pondered it, "It really does. Just don't think too much regarding the meaning of MacLeod."

As Crowley put his hand on Harry's shoulder, "What does it mean, Crowley?"

Crowley laughed, "It means 'son of ugly.'"

Just before they teleported away, Harry chuckled, "So… you are saying your dad was ugly?"

The last words heard in the wind as it blew away traces of black smoke were Crowley saying, "You are gonna be a bucket full of fun, aren't you?"