Once upon a time, there was a little blond prince. He knew he was a prince because his mother told him so before the door to the attic closed.

He was three.

They let him out in the moonlight, sometimes, for walks in the gardens accompanied by house elves, and they fed him only good things: the sorts of things adults believe to be good, like broccoli and carrots. He never got chocolate or sugar or even a cookie, but that didn't bother him very much as he didn't know what those things were. Instead, he ate what they sent, foods that appeared like magic on dishes that left the same way, and he read.

That was one thing no one could deny him.

Even in the darkness of the attic, there were books, and there were ways to let in light. His father would come sometimes and threaten nasty things if he allowed anyone to see him from the attic windows -- windows his father kept covered -- but still, he was brave, and he broke the shutter on one of them to let in light so that he could see the letters on the pages. There were fairy stories, tales of Magic and Great Evil defeated by Greater Good, and tales of princes and princesses bound in magical sleep. There were stories of roses and death and pain. He liked these, but he liked the fairy stories best.

He always wondered if there might not be a very good reason that those who represented Great Evil *were* so wicked and treacherous, but he thought perhaps he would not ask his father. His father would be angry if he knew about the broken shutter, and might take away his books, and then he'd be left with nothing but daydreams and dust. He was not stupid. He was not a coward, either, only he had come to understand that one only made a stand when there was a chance of one winning.

He wondered why Great Evil never understood this.

In the twilight depths of the attic, he grew slowly, slim and graceful and willowy as any creature might when deprived of sunlight. He grew, and he remained moon-pale, all silver elegance and beauty, alone and quiet.

He was almost eleven before they let him out.

"You're going to school," he was told, and there were no more words. He wasn't even entirely certain that it mattered to them whether he knew what school was or how to read or do arithmetic. He felt sure that it didn't, and he was very glad he had taught himself from the books up above, from the primers for reading to algebra and calculus. He was very glad not to be stupid.

The sun was blinding the first day he went out into it and it frightened him. The crack of his father's palm against his cheek was nothing new, but the way he yelled at him to be a man, that it was only the fucking sun, sent him into a blind panic. How could it not? He had never seen the sun like that before, only the silvery reflection of the moon. Still, he swallowed it down, emulated his father's behavior, and he kept quiet.

He kept quiet until he saw the other boy as the female person made cloth around him, and he wondered that there were other creatures like him. He'd never seen any, only big people and house elves, and so he made words like his father's, and wondered about the face that the boy made.

When they were done, it was back to the attic again, and he was grateful for that. The attic was close and warm and dark and safe, and there were no people to look at him strangely, and none of those small creatures like himself to make his heart beat frantically against his ribs. He was a prince, his mother had said, and so surely he should be given reign to avoid such beings as those?

They took him out a second time to introduce two more of the small beings, except they were not quite so small nor nearly so pretty as the blond prince himself or the green-eyed boy who'd looked at him with such strange emotion in his gaze. Again, he played at being his father, and these fell around him like wheat to the scythe, fawning strangely at him, and he thought perhaps he should try it anew with the green-eyed boy if he ever saw him again. He felt certain that he would.

He was not wrong, for he met him once more later and found a name for him, as well. Potter, Harry, they had said, the Boy Who Lived. He wondered what it might be like to live instead of cowering in an attic. He wanted to ask, but when he saw him, there was that strange look again, and there was the red-head with him. His father had told him about the Weasleys and not to go near them, and he imparted this knowledge also unto the Potter, but the Potter did not like the sound of it, it seemed.

The Potter did not like the sound of a great many things, the moon-pale attic-child found, and this left him feeling emotions that he did not understand for a great many years. They were eleven and then twelve and then fifteen and then seventeen, and still he did not understand. Still he pretended to be his father, and still he was grateful to return home to the warm darkness of the attic. School was slow and boring and easy for him, too easy, so he had an abundance of time perhaps to wish for the womb-like sussuration of creaking boards and wind sighing around corners.

Graduation came, and it was the last of their days together. He wondered if he would go back to the attic forever, now, but his father had some plans, he knew. Great Evil at work again, he suspected, and fear drove sharp spikes deep into him, and he wondered if he could still pretend to be his father. The potions master, above all, had noticed his strangeness, but even he said nothing. The Potter never noticed anything, of that the blond prince was sure, and he shivered at the thought. He wondered, sometimes, if he were a prince as his mother had said, if a kiss would not wake him to his true self, so that he could stop being his father.

No one gave him one.

When his father came to get him, they did not go home. Instead, they went to the snake man, the Parselmouth, they called him. He-Who-Could-Not-Be-Named. His father took him, and gave him, and there was burning and pain and strangeness all around.

He desperately wanted to be back in his attic again.

Great Evil, he learned, fought because it was stupid. He fought because he did not know what else to do. He could not go back to the womb of his childhood. He could not ask the Potter to keep and protect him as he did others, for the Potter hated him -- he knew now what that look had meant.

He was not a prince; or if he was, he was only prince of darkness and moonbeams.

Finally, as he lay dying, he saw those emerald eyes again, warm and wet, and he smiled. He smiled because he was terribly glad that Greater Good had won, making all of those fairy tales right.

"It's all right," he whispered, bloodstained lips tilting upwards, trembling. "Greater Good is supposed to win."

"Be quiet," the Potter whispered, wiping at his lips, casting spells one after the other. That, too, was a sign of Greater Good, wasn't it? Trying to save those unworthy of them

"Hurts," the prince sighed, silver eyes closing slowly. "Wish I'd never been taken out of the attic. It was good there. It wasn't like what father's made me do..."

There was silence, thick and heavy for a moment, and then it came -- the kiss that woke princesses, broke spells, turned frogs into men.

Even kisses can't rescue the dead.